Africa Part 3: Terrence and Karen’s Wedding on Zanzibar Island, Tanzania at the Neptune Pwani B
FINALLY, the blog you have been waiting for! Terrence and Karen’s stunning wedding on Zanzibar Island, Tanzania. Terrence and Karen are two of the most wonderful, generous people I have ever met and after meeting both of their families, I know where they get it from! It is so amazing that we met on skype once and were able to coordinate meeting on the other side of the planet and how smoothly and perfectly everything turned out! I am so lucky to have had the help of the super talented, Sarah Natasha Horowitz, not only with her photography, but doing the hair and make-up for the bride and wedding party! Seriously, we were ALL over the place!
Our hotel, the Neptune Pwani Beach Resort, took care of almost ALL of the other details including: hand woven chairs and archways out of palm leaves with flowers woven in, building a canopy on the beach with a long red carpet as the aisle, hiring Masai Warriors to stand at attention with their spears for the bride as she walked down the aisle, creating a long table with old fashioned Zanzibar-style lanterns for the reception…(all catered with the freshest seafood catch of the day) and finally creating the bouquets out of fresh picked flowers and bamboo. Honestly, it was SO stunning and you couldn’t have asked for a better backdrop than the emerald green and turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean with all of the old boats sailing past.
After the ceremony, we paid $5 to some local fisherman to bring their boats in and let us use them for our bridal portraits…THAT was my favorite part of the day and it made for some AMAZING photos. Sarah’s hat came in handy too as a prop (covering up Terrence’s head wound:) and just adding some flair. But the reception beach party itself was perfect! We had such a huge feast that could have fed double the amount of people we had and the weather was perfect! Everyone was barefoot in the sand dancing the night away under an almost full moon and honestly, it was one of the most romantic weddings I have been to.
