An Intimate Wedding at a Spanish Olive Farm
This wedding was a love letter to their friends, every detail was created with heart and intention to show each guest how treasured they were, and how deeply woven in they are to the life this couple is building. They wanted their wedding to feel like the best cozy dinner party you’ve ever been to; warm, intimate, easeful, and soul-filling. They also wanted to incorporate things that are really meaningful to them as a couple: poetry, music, their farm, and Spanish food and culture.
Photos by Sara Lázaro Photography
THE FOUNDATION
Location: Maset Antonia, a private olive farm, Catalonia, Spain
Guests: Fewer than 20 close friends and family
Duration: Three days (Friday–Sunday)
Core Meanings
Community - Everyone feels seen, valued, and part of a shared story
Wonder - Experiencing awe through nature, beauty, and unexpected magic
Guiding Intention
“To celebrate and share the beautiful life we are building together and share the magic of our favorite place with our favorite people. The design invites our guests to feel deeply appreciated, connected, and present while experiencing the beauty and simplicity of Mediterranean life on our olive farm.”
Design Pillars
These pillars are guiding principles for designing weddings that move people: emotionally, sensorially, and relationally. Each one represents a quality that shapes how an experience feels. Find the complete list of Design Pillars here.
Presence - Sensory choices (lighting, sound, pacing) invite calm and attention and transitions that help guests slow down and truly arrive
Heart - Centering love and humanity over perfection and every choice reflects what truly matters to the couple
Belonging - Make every guest feel seen, included, and valued for who they are and design rituals and spaces that create a sense of “we”
Play - Weave in opportunities for lightness, curiosity, and spontaneity where guests feel free to interact, experiment, or be delightfully surprised
Sensory Anchors
Smell: It’s fig season so the primary scent note is figs. With the scents of citronella, eucalyptus, and lavender creating scent memory, while doubling as mosquito repellent
Flavors: Honey, olive oil, figs
Colors: Terracotta, olive green
If you want to work together to build your own Experience Foundation for your wedding, click here:
THE EXPERIENCE
Anticipation / Building Excitement and setting the emotional tone leading up to the event
Target Emotions: Excited, curious, taken care of
One month before the wedding confirmed guests receive a welcome package in the mail with a hand-drawn map of the farm and surroundings, a sort of local travel guide of the couple’s favorite places. It also includes a fig-scented candle with a small card describing the cultural significance of the Temps de Figues in Catalan culture, the time of the figs. The intention is to build curiosity and excitement about visiting the region and start to create a sensory anchor to the event with the smell of figs.
A wedding website outlines all of the logistical and practical details and serves as an informational hub. But it also includes a note about gifts. While gifts are not necessary, it acknowledges that some people enjoy the ritual of gift giving, so the couple would love to start a collection of candle holders for their farmhouse, handmade, thrifted, or regifted, their gift will become a permanent part of their farm life.
Immersion / Creating the lived experience and emotional depth during the entire celebration
Friday: Spanish Barbeque at the farm
Target Emotions: At ease, welcome, loved
As a soft landing and warm welcome, the couple invite everyone to their farm the night before the wedding for a traditional Spanish barbeque with sangria and bachata lessons. The couple gives a brief tour of the farm but intentionally keeps the ceremony spot a secret, building in mystery and curiosity.
They split into two teams for a competitive game of Viking Chess, a game that has personal significance to the bride’s daughter’s father, who was Danish and passed away the year before.
At the end of dinner, guests are all invited to choose a small sealed envelope. Everyone has one, including the bride and groom. Inside is a small printed card with the name of another guest on it. The bride explains that by the end of the weekend, you have to choose a song for this person, and present it to them. It is an invitation to get to know them a bit throughout the weekend, but since it is a secret, you have to be stealthy about getting to know them, which invites getting to know everyone.
Guests also receive gift bags which include local delicacies, including local honey, as the wedding takes place in the honey capital of Catalonia, olive oil, natural insect repellent, moisturizing water spray to cool off, and homemade fig jam from figs picked on the farm, deepening the connection to place. The bags are handmade by a local artist, and are all unique.
Saturday: Wedding at the farm
Target Emotions: Nourished, moved, rooted, present
Cocktail Hour: Cocktail hour is before the ceremony, so that everyone can hang out together over drinks before the ceremony. The couple love poetry, so they have magnetic boards on the cocktail tables where guests can make their own love poems, creating a shared playful activity.
Ceremony: The ceremony is under an olive tree that is more than 1000 years old, representing the resilience and adaptability of marriage. The couple include a vow to their community to always have an open door and that everyone present is always welcome. (Offbeat Wed did a post dedicated just to their ceremony, check it out here.) The bride’s older daughter did a reading about the honest challenges of long term love. Guests threw olive leaf confetti from the farm, and the couple walked out to a cover of the Bruce Springsteen song “If I Should Fall Behind” by a singer friend of the bride’s with the lyric There 'neath the oak's bough, soon, we will be wed, changed to, ‘neath the olive tree.
Peak Emotional Moment: After the ceremony the guests are gathered between two trees right at sunset, and the couples give a toast acknowledging how meaningful everyone’s presence is, celebrating the importance of all relationships, not just this romantic one. As they speak, music starts to quietly play, and as it builds to a crescendo, with the sun setting behind them, twinkling LED firefly lights hidden in the trees are turned on remotely, as if by magic. It creates a magical shared moment. As the sky starts to darken, the couple walk around with a small bag and each guest is invited to choose a small stone, collected from their favorite beach, each with a number painted on it in gold. The couple explains that each number is a tree on the farm that the guest has now adopted. They are invited to name their tree, which are labeled onto a map of the farm, and guests are invited to find their tree, and to come back and visit it anytime.
Dinner: In the dark, guests walk together with lanterns to a table hidden among the olive trees, lit by candles, and lights strung between the trees. On each place setting is a small mad libs wedding toast and a pencil. Guests can fill in the blanks before revealing the full toast, everyone is invited to share theirs, they are silly and playful, and most use the opportunity to continue into a more heartfelt toast. Every guest gets to give a toast without the social pressure of having to think of something to say. They eat seafood and paella prepared in front of them over an open fire.
End of Night: Finally the group retires back to the cocktail hour where they drink and relax and eat dessert. The bride’s young daughter has a disposable camera and a custom photo scavenger hunt where she has to get each guest to pose for a specific photo, creating funny interactions. There is a rare black moon that night, resulting in a profoundly clear night sky with infinite stars visible, sharing a moment of collective awe. They end the night with a piñata, filled with treats and hand-written love notes, again leaning into the pillar of play.
Sunday: Beach day at a Mediterranean beach club
Target Emotions: Ease, joy, togetherness
The couple rents out all the lounge chairs at a beach club and has an open tab for guests. The vibe is relaxed and low key, allowing everyone to just hang out with no pressure. There is badminton and viking chess, and guests give their songs to each other. It’s fun and relaxed and rejuvenating.
Reflection / Creating lasting memories and extending the emotional resonance beyond the event
Target Emotions: Inspired, gratitude, energized, connected
The Week after the wedding: The couple sent the playlist of everyone’s dedicated songs and a photo of their dinner table set with all of their new candle holders and candlesticks. Having a specific song dedicated to them also acts as a memory trigger that connects them to the memory of the person who dedicated the song to them, or the person they chose a song for.
Two months after the wedding: The couple sent thank you notes along with small printed poetry books with the magnetic poems from the wedding reprinted alongside photos from the wedding (which they had photographed to save). The guests were listed as the authors.
Four months after the wedding: During the couple’s first olive harvest, they sent photos to the wedding group WhatsApp group with photos of individual trees getting harvested and trimmed with silly notes, like “Bernardo getting a haircut.” Then they mailed 250mL containers of olive oil to all the guests, with custom labels with their tree’s name on it, reminding them of their small claim to this special place.
Conclusion
Guests felt like honored guests that have something to return to and for. A taste of the good life they can create for themselves. Warmth, longing, a feeling of take me back. Right place, right time, right people.
