Emily + Johan's Epic Austrian Ski Resort Wedding...

A Epic Ski Resort Wedding…

Today we have a stunning Austrian wedding to share with you featuring ski loving bride Emily and snowboarder groom Johan.

Captured beautifully by Cat from Wild Connections, this awesome duo knew that the mountains had to play a huge part of their special day. Emily is a skier from Canada and Johan grew up snowboarding in Sweden; so winter sports was a shared love and plays a huge part of their lives.

Its a gorgeous destination wedding with an emotional first look reveal on the mountain tops, a ceremony overlooking the resort (OMG those views!!) and a cosy dinner with candles and fur rugs… lush!

Day two involved sambuca shots and hitting the slopes… what a perfect way to round up the celebrations!

Emily + Johan…

How did you meet and get engaged?

Johan and I met on a weekend in London, but became close on ski trips in Val D’Isere. Since the mountains are obviously such a big part of our lives, Johan decided to propose on our 4-year anniversary at a small ski hill in Stockholm. All that mattered was that it was a surprise and that we were on snowboards!

Was there an overall theme to your day? If so, what was it?

The inspiration behind our wedding day was to not focus too much on big decorations or colour themes, but to use the backdrop of the Austrian mountains! There wasn’t much we had to do with the venue. We really tried to keep it simple with a classic winter/mountain chalet theme. Luckily our venue already had a lot of decorations that we were able to utilise i.e. sheep-skin carpets for the benches inside and outside of the venue.

If you could relive one part of the day all over again, which part would it be?

Our toast-madame organised the wedding perfectly by having games throughout the dinner, also including speeches. Some of the games included spinning a big wheel where guests had filled in fun options earlier in the evening such has take a shot, hold a toast etc.; the ‘shoe game’, and another game where our guests were prompted to stand up if they had done something specific with us i.e. stand up if you are from Sweden -we then had to guess why that group of people were standing. We also had a personalised shot-ski available for our guests once the part started; instant print cameras for our ‘photo-booth’; and old wooden skis for our guests to sign with markers.

What are your favourite part of the day?

The reveal – it was the best recommendation we had for the day! Originally we did not want to do this, but having a reveal afforded us with the opportunity to take photos at the top of the mountain that are truly special and one of a kind! The reveal also helped calm some nerves and allowed us to have alone-time before the wedding. We also loved our ‘trash-the-dress’ photo shoot the day after the wedding with friends.

Tell us about your wedding outfits, and why you picked them.

Johan loves his suits and had a bespoke suit made specially for the wedding. I decided to go dress-shopping in London with girlfriends. Our looks were based on us having a winter/mountain wedding. Thick fabric for the suit and a flowing, long sleeved dress went perfectly with our theme.

Do you have any advice for couples currently planning their wedding, for either the planning or the lead-up?

Easy – you will spend a lot more money than you hope to! Don’t worry about the tiny details – as long as the food is good and the drinks are flowing, everyone will have fun! Keep it fun! But keep track of your budget and have some extra money set-aside of unanticipated costs.