Tammy and Luc live in The Netherlands. Tammy is American, Luc is Dutch and they are the owners of the best Wedding Cakes Specialist of The Netherlands SUGARLIPS CAKES. They rented a gorgeous villa in Radicondoli, Tuscany and held an intimate celebration with nine of their best friends, enlisting photographer ALEXANDRA VONK to document it. After an emotional and intimate ceremony in the grounds of the villa, they then had a picnic on the hill overlooking the stunning Italian landscape.
ééòWe choose Italy because of all the elements it had to offer. We based our entire wedding around the Italian ambiance and left most of the decorations to the country-side itself. I of course love flowers, so we added touches of that here and there, but all of the elements of our wedding were taken from the villa we were staying at, so everything was true Italian and it was perfect!ééò
HOW DID YOU MEET? Luc and I met in Boston while he was studying abroad and I was in New York studying patisserie. He is actually from Holland and was in Boston studying. We met through my best friend, and spent our first date arguing over a Lakers vs Celtics basketball game!
TELL US ABOUT YOUR PROPOSAL: It was actually quite perfect. He had taken me around the entire day doing things that we love, visiting a Pixar exhibit, having dinner at a Michelin star restaurant, and I was convinced it was going to happen. Then he loaded me up on the train to take me home, and I thought it was over. I was absolutely exhausted, and he took my off the train at the wrong stop, and convinced me it was so we could switch trains (I had absolutely no clue because I didn’t know how Dutch trains worked yet). It wasn’t until we were 500 meters outside of the train station that I realized it was a lie, and started to figure out something was up. He took me to a hotel in Utrecht (where we were moving in a couple months) and the room was covered in flowers and rose petals. It was perfect!
TELL US ABOUT FINDING YOUR WEDDING DRESS: That was a fun one. Originally I had planned on finding a dress in the States, because I knew there would be many more options. Because of practically, I started the search in Holland before we left on our holiday to Los Angeles, just so I could see if there were even some options. The first store I went to was a let-down and exactly what I had expected to find, very old-fashioned dresses. I decided to give it one more chance because I didn’t want to have to ship a dress from California to The Netherlands, and I got lucky! I took Luc with me, because I honestly only wanted his opinion on the shape of the dress (to make sure he would be happy), never thinking I would actually find “the one” in Holland. I was in the dressing room and put it on and immediately yelled to him “uh oh, we’re in trouble!” I was willing to let the dress go and find something cheaper (because it was over our original budget), but he could see how happy I was in it, and convinced me to buy it!
ANY DIY OR BUDGET ELEMENTS: We had our wedding in Italy and wanted to use that as most of our decoration, so there wasn’t a need for a whole lot extra. We also had a wonderful wedding planner, who took care of moving some of the decorations from our villa around, to bring in that romantic Italian feel. We did however make our own wedding cakes! We own a cake studio in Holland, and were only planning on making ourselves a tiramisu, but somehow ended up making three cakes for our big day!
DESCRIBE YOUR WEDDING FLOWERS: My flowers were perfect! I love almost all flowers, so I wasn’t too picky. I had mentioned to Leontine (our wedding planner) what I liked, and the colors I was going for, and she hit it on the head. I really just wanted a soft, romantic, and very loose bouquet, and I couldn’t have been happier with the results. I was just sad I couldn’t bring it home with me from Italy!
FAVOURITE DETAIL OF THE DAY: One of our favourite details was definitely the fact that we were in Italy. It gave us the opportunity to take gorgeous pictures in an olive grove, have a Tuscan dinner under the stars, and give us an idyllic Italian village to spend the afternoon in.
MOST MEMORABLE MOMENT: Our ceremony was definitely a memorable moment. We had only 9 guests in total, and because it was such a small group, we were able to be really honest in our vows. It was really special and we had all the girls crying, including our wedding planner and photographer! It was very special.
Photographer ALEXANDRA VONK / Videographer GATTOTIGRE VIDEOMAKERS / Cake SUGARLIPS CAKES / Florist PROFUMO DI FIORI / Stationery SHE SAID YES / Venue COLLETALI COUNTRYHOUSE, RADICONDOLI, TUSCANY / Planner & stylist LEONTINE LAUFFER, IL MATRIMONIO ITALIANO / Celebrant ROSARIO MERCADANTE
