Wedding | Kathi & Hannes

Tell us a little about yourselves!

We’re Kathi and Hannes, and we’ve been together for almost twelve years. We met on Tinder — our very first match and first online date — over coffee by the river Main in Frankfurt. What began as one beautiful afternoon has since grown into a life we’ve built together across different parts of the world.

For the past seven years, we’ve called Cologne home, where we live in a beautiful apartment with a garden and our two cats, Leona and Violetta. Hannes is a doctor of internal medicine, while Kathi works as a manager in the field of climate change and corporate sustainability.

We had known for a long time that we wanted to spend our lives together, and we feel incredibly lucky to have found one another. For us, a wedding was always meant to be a true celebration of love: bringing all of our favourite people together, creating unforgettable memories and throwing one very joyful party.

Why did you decide to get married where you did?

We got engaged in January 2023 in Chile, the country where Kathi’s father was born before coming to Germany as a political refugee in the 1970s. We were in no rush to get married and wanted to give ourselves the time to find a place where the celebration could become something more than a single evening.

Over the years, we had danced at many weddings and gradually discovered what felt right for us. We wanted an entire weekend with our guests, somewhere that felt like a holiday and allowed for real quality time rather than a succession of quick hellos and goodbyes. Freedom was essential: we wanted to make our own decisions, work with as few restrictions as possible and celebrate until the following morning.

Kathi also had one very clear wish: there had to be a pool. The château in Burgundy offered exactly that, alongside the privacy, beauty and sense of escape we had been searching for. The pool became the heart of the week during the intense summer heat and, fittingly, also the setting for the wedding’s final chapter. The night ended with a now-legendary pool party that continued until eight in the morning, with everyone eventually abandoning their clothes and jumping into the water.

We had initially searched in Italy, but eventually discovered the château through Airbnb. After contacting numerous properties and discussing every detail with the hosts, Kathi booked it for an entire week in May 2026. It gave us the rare luxury of settling in, slowing down and creating a celebration that felt less like a wedding day and more like a shared adventure.

How many guests did you have?

We welcomed around 90 guests for the official wedding weekend, which ran from Friday to Sunday. Alongside our closest family members, the majority of our guests were friends.

The week leading up to the wedding felt just as special. It began quietly with our parents and gradually grew as more friends arrived each day. By the end of the week, around 50 of our favourite people were staying with us on-site, helping us prepare the château and bring the celebration to life. That slow build-up created such a wonderful sense of anticipation and made the wedding feel like a shared experience rather than a single event.

What was your budget?

What mattered most to us was that the budget felt proportionate to the experience we were creating. After requesting a number of quotes, we quickly realized how significantly wedding prices had increased in recent years.

In the end, for roughly what many venues and suppliers would have charged for a single day, we were able to have the château for an entire week and host a full wedding weekend from Friday to Sunday.

Including the venue, food, drinks and all of our suppliers, the total came to approximately €30,000. For us, it felt like the right balance: investing not only in one beautiful celebration, but in several days of shared experiences and memories with the people we love.

Tell us about your outfits.

We gave a great deal of thought to our outfits. We both love fashion and wanted everything to feel elegant, timeless and personal, but never too serious. For Friday, Hannes wore a bespoke double-breasted brown pinstripe suit by Cove in Düsseldorf, with a relaxed cut and pleated trousers. For the wedding day, he chose a made-to-measure black tuxedo by SuitSupply, paired with a custom wing-collar shirt by Cove, a black silk bow tie and Ace & Tate sunglasses.

Kathi always knew she wanted to wear silk. After a long search, she found a small atelier in Hội An, Vietnam, through Etsy, where her dress was made to measure and later refined by a tailor in Germany. The evening before, she wore a sheer, softly draped two-piece by Greek label ESTHÉ.

Red became the playful thread running through the weekend. We love a little spice, excitement and sensuality, and red felt like the perfect symbol of passion and love. Kathi found two vintage red leather bags on Vinted and several pairs of red leather pumps, allowing her to switch between higher and lower heels throughout the wedding day. On Friday evening, we matched in red Havaianas, while on Saturday Hannes wore red flowers from Kathi’s richly layered red bridal bouquet on his lapel. The contrast between classic silhouettes and bold red details felt completely like us: elegant, passionate and fun.

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

The most important thing was to be honest about what truly makes a celebration unforgettable. For us, that meant freedom, atmosphere and generosity.

It began with the location: somewhere beautiful enough to require very little decoration, private enough to celebrate without neighbours or closing times, and spacious enough for everyone to settle in and feel as though they were on holiday.

Food and drinks were equally important. We wanted everything to feel abundant, sensual and genuinely delicious. We selected our favourite wines and beers ourselves, hired a refrigerated trailer to keep every bottle perfectly cold in the Burgundy heat, and visited a local crémant estate with friends and family to choose what we would serve during the festivities.

We were also incredibly lucky to find Plates4babes, two exceptionally talented chefs from Cologne who approach food as a form of art. They travelled to Burgundy, spent days preparing the menu and created what was honestly the best food we have ever experienced at a wedding (or ever???).

Throughout the planning, we tried to spend intentionally: saving on anything that felt secondary and investing in the things that would shape how the weekend felt — the setting, the food, the drinks, the music and the freedom to celebrate until morning.

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

It was very important that the wedding reflected our cultures, our shared history and the personalities of the people we love. We wanted to bring together Latin American warmth and vibrancy, French laissez-faire and the feeling of escaping somewhere new.

Friday became our Chilean night. Latin American music played throughout the evening, and the day before, together with friends, we made around 300 empanadas using the family recipe of Kathi’s Chilean father, who passed away a few years ago. Preparing and sharing them felt like a beautiful way of keeping his presence and heritage part of the celebration. We served them alongside other Chilean dishes and Spanish wines from a region we had explored years earlier while living in Madrid during our Erasmus semester.

One of the most meaningful elements was our ceremony itself. Our close friend Alessia Heider, who has known Hannes since school and Kathi for almost the entirety of our relationship, conducted our symbolic ceremony on Saturday. Alessia is a gifted speaker and moderator who also professionally accompanies wedding ceremonies, but for us, it was above all her friendship that made the moment so special.

Personal details appeared everywhere. Kathi’s mother baked our wedding cake, a traditional Frankfurter Kranz made from a family recipe that has been served at important celebrations for more than seventy years. There were tiny disco cats watching over the DJ booth, deeply personal speeches from friends and family, and an unforgettable ABBA dance performance created by Kathi’s closest girlfriends.

Our friends were not simply guests; their talents became part of the celebration. They DJed disco, house and electronic music, decorated the marquee, helped prepare the food, and one friend travelled from Vienna to tattoo guests during the party.

Photography and film were another essential element. We both love visual storytelling, and Kathi is particularly drawn to analogue photography, so we wanted the weekend to be captured with emotion rather than perfection. Through mutual friends, we found Mistys, whose mix of editorial and documentary photography preserved not only how everything looked, but how it felt — vivid, intimate, slightly wild and completely alive.

Any tips for couples getting married?

There is no single right way to have a wedding. The best celebration is simply one that feels honest to the couple and generous towards the people they have chosen to share it with.

Try to separate what truly matters to you from what a wedding is supposed to look like. The picture-perfect details can be beautiful, but they are rarely what gives the day its soul. That comes from the people, the music, the personal words, the affection in the room and the freedom to be fully present.

We were also reminded how special it is to bring together people from different chapters of your life. If you are fortunate enough to be surrounded by people who know how to enjoy themselves, allow enough time and space for them to meet, connect and create a community of their own. That energy becomes part of the wedding.

So, focus on the essentials and let the rest remain imperfect. An unforgettable wedding can happen almost anywhere — even in your favourite bar. Take your time, resist the pressure to perform and plan an experience that you would genuinely love to attend yourselves.

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

We were incredibly fortunate to work with people who understood that we wanted the wedding to feel elevated and beautiful, but also relaxed, personal and full of life.

Misty's Weddings captured the weekend through both photography and film. Their work has the editorial quality we love while still feeling spontaneous and documentary. They understood how important visual storytelling is to us and preserved the atmosphere without ever making the celebration feel staged. Looking at the images and film now feels less like revisiting a wedding production and more like stepping back into the weekend itself.

Plates4babes, a duo of exceptionally talented chefs from Cologne, travelled to Burgundy and spent almost a week preparing the food. Their approach sits somewhere between cooking, art and performance. Every plate was visually striking, generous and genuinely delicious. They created, without exaggeration, the best food we have ever eaten at a wedding (or ever?).

Our friend Alessia Heider conducted our symbolic ceremony on Saturday. She is a brilliant speaker and moderator who has known Hannes since school and Kathi for almost the entirety of our relationship. We have travelled together and shared many defining moments, so having someone who truly understood our history and personalities guide us through the ceremony made it deeply emotional and entirely unique. Alessia is also remarkably multilingual and can conduct ceremonies in German, English, Italian, French and Spanish. For anyone looking for an exceptionally warm, eloquent and genuinely personal celebrant, we could not recommend her more highly.

Photography & Videography: Misty's Weddings @misty.weddings | Ceremony & Reception Location: Airbnb in Burguny | Celebrant: Alessia Heider @alessia_heider | Catering & Beverages: Plates4babes @plates4babes | Dress: Etsy Esthe.Clothing @esthe_clothing | Suit: Suitsupply @suitsupply; Cove @coveundco