The Bride and the Sea

Strandkombuis at Yzerfontein on the West Coast, is renown for beautiful weddings. No wonder! Yzerfontein has many acres of pristine white beach. A wedding can take place on the sand, maybe in the 'long-shadows-hour', shortly before sunset. And afterwards in the disappearing light, guests can enter the beach shelter for a feast to remember!

A lovely venue! Now add a striking bride! Melissa Madore, a tall, dark-haired French-Canadian beauty, met Tiaan, a South African who has spent much of his youth in Europe, when they were both lecturing in Taiwan. Melissa came to live in South Africa for a year - it became five years! Where to get married? Being such seasoned travellers, they had plans to marry in Kenya where they once had a holiday. Not very practical if you have to transport all your guests including Tiaan's newly-born nephew over there!

In Melissa's own words: "I still very much wanted a beach wedding. Then we looked at Strandkombuis and we both fell on our knees, thinking: 'This is it! This is the place!' "

All the guests, including the bridegroom and his best man, wore white. The chairs had white cotton dust covers and a white tent-type shelter with a flower-covered arch was ready for the ceremony. Then Melissa appeared in a sensational dark blue dress with lots of frothy white lace echoing the sea and the foamy waves. Striking and original! I did not want to paint the wedding photographs and used three different photos to work out a composition where the bride looks down onto the scene from the dunes higher up.