Wedding | Enerel & Arthur

Tell us a little about yourselves!

We’re Enerel and Arthur, and our love story began eight years ago. What started as a casual Thursday evening date somehow became a whole life together. We fell in love, moved in soon after, adopted a cat, moved again, survived a pandemic, moved again, adopted a dog, moved again, became parents, got engaged, moved again— and through all of it, stayed each other’s favourite person to do everything and nothing with.

We had our civil wedding on 31 July, and celebrated with all our family and friends the following weekend, on 8 August. The date felt almost too perfect: we were celebrating eight years together, on 08.08.26. Having all those eights come together felt like a little wink from the universe.

In many ways, our relationship has always been a meeting of two worlds and two heritages (Mongolia and Swiss/Valais) but we share a very similar idea of what makes a good life: good food, great wine, discovering the world, being close to nature, and enjoying the simple things with the people we love.

So our wedding didn’t really feel like the beginning of something new. It felt more like pressing pause for one evening to look around at the life we had already built together — and celebrate it with the people who had been part of it along the way.

Why did you decide to get married where you did?

We always knew we wanted to get married somewhere that had a real connection to us. We looked at a few places in Italy, which is our favourite holiday destination, and around our hometown, but somehow nothing quite clicked. Our own garden was also a little too small for the kind of dinner and party we had in mind.

Then we realised the place we were looking for might have been right in front of us all along: Arthur’s family home, La Maison de la Forêt.

The house is beautifully secluded, tucked away at the entrance of a forest, with a big garden that feels a little like its own hidden world. It’s also somewhere we already spend a lot of time, so there was something very familiar about celebrating there.

We loved that it didn’t feel like a wedding venue at all. We could have long tables in the garden, dinner outside, everyone around us and dancing late into the evening under the stars. It was private, familiar and just removed enough from the rest of the world to make the evening feel a little magical.

How many guests did you have?

58 adults, 2 dogs and 1 toddler - intimate enough that we could actually spend time with everyone, but still big enough for a proper party. And naturally, the dogs were non-negotiable.

What was your budget?

When we started planning, we actually asked each other what our ideal wedding would look like and what we felt comfortable spending — and luckily, we were completely on the same page.

We knew there were a few things we really cared about: good food, great wine, beautiful photographs and music. For everything else, we were quite happy to keep things simple.

Tell us about your outfits.

The outfits were one of the most personal parts of the day. We wanted them to have meaning, but still feel effortless and like something we would actually choose to wear.

It was important for me to wear something connected to my heritage without going too traditional. I knew I wouldn’t be wearing white and chose blue instead, inspired by the endless blue skies of Mongolia and also my son’s favourite colour. The dress was custom-made in Mongolia, with the traditional vest as a separate piece.

The vest was full of little details that told our story: edelweiss flowers, which grow in both our countries; stars, which became an important theme for us after so many nights spent looking at the sky together; and two horses, referencing both the Fire Horse year we were in and my own birth year, the Year of the Steel Horse. Horses are also deeply symbolic in Mongolia. We also incorporated traditional Mongolian symbols representing husband and wife, as well as our wedding date, 08.08.2026, written in traditional Mongolian script.

The jewellery and accessories came together almost at the last minute, when I found little star pieces that happened to match the embroidery.

Arthur knew he wanted to wear full linen for the summer evening. We walked into an Italian suit shop he already knew, and the first piece he saw was the one. His brown monochrome look ended up being the perfect complement to the blue dress. The detail that made his outfit particularly meaningful was his grandfather’s watch, which had been passed down to him.

Our wedding rings were also made in Mongolia, using gold sourced there, and engraved in Switzerland. They became another small connection between our two worlds.

In the end, both outfits brought together different parts of our story — our backgrounds, our families and a few symbols that mean something to us.

What was the most important aspect for you, in terms of planning your wedding?

For us, the most important thing was to make decisions based on what we actually like, rather than trying to recreate what we thought a wedding was supposed to be.

We planned most of it ourselves, and it was honestly quite fun. It started with a lot of Pinterest boards, which slowly became our moodboard. From there, we created our little wedding logo — two stars dancing with a glass in their hands — and that became a small visual thread throughout the day.

We also did the invitations, website, stationery and some of the little animations ourselves, including personalised temporary tattoos. We really enjoyed those details because they gave us the freedom to make the wedding feel a little more playful and very specific to us.

Beyond that, we tried not to overthink every decision. If we both liked something, we went with it. If we didn’t, we didn’t. It made the planning feel much more like creating a party for ourselves than organising a traditional wedding.

Were there any elements that were important for you to incorporate?

The ceremony ended up being one of the most important parts of the day, which is slightly funny because, at the beginning, we weren’t even sure we wanted one. We had always found wedding ceremonies a little performative, and we couldn’t really imagine what one would look like that felt natural to us.

Then, about a month before the wedding, we changed our minds. We asked two of our closest friends to officiate and gave them a lot of freedom.

Around the same time, we randomly went to an event and came across a beautiful yurt. We initially thought, “That would look great at the wedding.” And then, almost immediately: “Wait, why don’t we just get married under it?” So that was that.

At the same event, we also met a woman who creates beautiful pieces in traditional Mongolian script. We loved the idea of incorporating our heritage in a way that our guests could experience themselves, so we invited her to the wedding to create a little piece of Mongolian calligraphy for each guest to take home.

On the day itself, we walked in together, hand in hand, while our jazz band played What a Difference a Day Makes. At some point, our son and our dog naturally joined us, and the four of us ended up walking to the ceremony space together as a family. None of it had been planned — it simply happened, which somehow made it feel even more special.

We exchanged our own words to each other, our friends brought plenty of humour into the ceremony, and my parents included a traditional Mongolian blessing. They made wishes for us as newlyweds and offered us milk to drink from traditional silver cups that had been specially designed for us.

It ended up having everything we had hoped for without really knowing how to describe it beforehand: tears, laughter, a few unexpected moments and lots of emotion. And when it was time for our celebratory kiss, This Will Be (An Everlasting Love) played in the background, which felt like a pretty perfect way to seal the deal.

We also wanted to share something homemade with our guests. Arthur made a digestive using rosemary from our garden, while I made jam with the Japanese plums from our garden tree and apricots from Valais. We love gardening, cooking and making things ourselves, so it felt much more natural than choosing a traditional wedding favour.

Any tips for couples getting married?

Our biggest advice would be to plan a wedding that feels like your life, rather than the wedding you think you’re supposed to have.

There are so many opinions, traditions and ideas around weddings that it’s very easy to get carried away. We found it much easier once we stopped asking ourselves what a “perfect wedding” should look like and started asking a much simpler question: would we actually enjoy this?

And don’t be afraid to change your mind. Some of our favourite parts of the day were things we decided on quite late, simply because they felt right.

Most importantly, once the day arrives, let go. You’ve spent months making decisions, so at some point you just have to trust them and enjoy what you’ve created. The things that don’t go exactly to plan might end up being the things you remember most.

Are there any vendors that you would like to tell us a little more about?

We were really lucky with the people we chose to work with, but there are a few we would especially love to mention.

Alexia Linn, our photographer, was one of the first people we booked and we immediately clicked with her. A few months before the wedding, we also had a family photoshoot with her, which really helped us ease into being in front of the camera. Alexia has a wonderful ability to immerse herself in her surroundings and capture sentimental, natural moments without ever making you feel like you’re posing. She was incredibly helpful throughout the whole process, not just on the day itself, and made everything feel very easy. She also introduced us to Simple Tastes, our caterer, which turned out to be another great match.

Simple Tastes took care of everything from the food preparation to the service. They served generous Italian dishes family-style around the table, with pizzas making their way around throughout the evening. The whole thing felt abundant, relaxed and convivial, and it meant we could actually sit down and enjoy the dinner rather than thinking about what was happening behind the scenes.

And Amandine Bula was a lifesaver on the day. We knew we wanted to be fully present rather than spend the whole day thinking about timings, suppliers or whether everything was running smoothly. She took care of all of that, while also being a great sounding board during the planning. She also handled the flowers, buying them at the market on the morning of the wedding and arranging them based on the moodboards we had created. Whenever we started wondering whether we had made the right decision about something, she was very good at calmly reminding us that, yes, we probably had.

We honestly couldn’t have been happier with the three of them. They each brought something different to the day, and all three made the whole experience feel remarkably easy.

Photographer: Alexia Linn @alexialinnphoto | Planning: Amandine Bula @amandebula | Ceremony Location: Arthur’s parents home | Hire: Ekip Event ekipevent.ch | HMUA: Hannah Nathalie @hannahmaquilleuse | Catering & Beverages: Simple Tastes @simple.tastes, Provins @provinsvalais