Georgina Guedes learns that not everything happens at Joburg speed, when she got married down in the Karoo.

"I was determined not to let my wedding get me down. I've seen too many brides lose their cool and weep through the trauma of the planning phases to know that this was not the kind of wedding I wanted us to have."

So, we decided to have the wedding on a private game farm, managed by my aunt and uncle, about an hour out of Graaff-Reinet. We knew that our best friends and closest family would be there, and thought that the broader network of loved ones would be adequately represented by those who made the effort. Click here to check out the bridal gallery.

It would be a small and intimate wedding

It was not without some alarm that we received the inflow of overwhelmingly enthusiastic “yeses” from all the people we invited. “How will we feed all of them?” I asked my fiancé. “Where will they sleep?”

And so, our cozy wedding became a production of epic proportions. My mother and I made two investigative trips down to Graaff-Reinet – never a trial regardless – and started to make things happen.

Small-town planning

Although, being a bit of a foodie, my initial plan was to cater the wedding myself, my ever rational aunt offered the life-saving suggestion that we use a caterer who ran a little restaurant in town instead.

I wanted to go “authentically Karoo” with all the food, using local cheeses and preserves and serving up a lamb curry for the main course. In negotiations with the caterer, in her cool, vine-shaded epicurean haven, it emerged that it would be cheaper for us to buy the sheep ourselves, and for her to prepare the curry for us.

Here, I wobbled a bit. I know, intellectually, where lamb comes from. I’ve spent holidays on farms my whole life, but the sudden realisation that it would take two sheep – we calculated – to feed our guests, made me feel like we were lining livestock up for a ritual wedding day slaughtering.

The caterer distracted me by suggesting that we might want a jazz band. We went to meet Archie in the unlikely Metro warehouse setting, and his enthusiasm alone sealed the deal with his three-man band. We were also instructed to go to the tyre-fitment centre to secure a DJ with a sound system to carry the party well into the early morning.

Having thus arranged the basics, we came back to Johannesburg to arrange flights, car sharing, mosquito repellant and all the other bits and pieces that go into having an out-of-town wedding with 90 guests.

Little hiccups

When we arrived in Graaff-Reinet the week before the wedding, the manager of the bottle store we had booked to manage the bar spent a meandering and very apologetic half an hour explaining to us that they had no record of our booking. The small-townishness of this soliloquy was particularly frustrating to me as we had seven other people to meet with and I could see that that page in her diary was blank. Simple solution - just fill us in.

Every other meeting we had was punctuated by offers of coffee and cake, and I suspect that we came across as very strung out to the laid-back Graaff-Reinet folk. However, ruffled feathers aside and bookings secured, we made our way back out to the peace of Asante Sana game reserve.

A heavenly venue

Asante Sana is exemplary of the kind of quirkiness that the Karoo is famous for. The owners, great fans of and participants in the game of cricket, established an oval among the remains of a small, defunct Karoo village of Petersburg (a bride versus groom cricket match was scheduled for the day after the wedding).

Those guests who could fit into the cottages dotted around the remains of the village were staying with us. The complement, who we felt would prefer a bit of luxury, stayed at Mount Camdeboo, an elegant game lodge next door.

A grand entrance

For someone who suffers from terrible stage fright, I made my entrance on the day in a remarkably overstated way. Working the loose morals angle, I had elected to get married in tart-red silk, in teetering stiletto heels, but with a Victorian lace veil to introduce some small element of brideliness.

Although Karoo weather is predictably hot and sunny at this time of year, with current climate weirdness, the latest summer has been unseasonably wet. This had its benefits and disadvantages – everything was gorgeously green but on the day, the skies were heavy with velvet grey clouds.

Fortunately, not a drop of rain fell and the greens and greys created a perfect backdrop to show off my dress in the photos.

The ceremony and reception passed in a blur of reds and greens, the church intense with heat and emotion, and the guests made heady with “Karoo Breeze” cocktails served outside while they waited for the bride.

After the theatrical drama of my (terrified) entrance, and with the help of a few glasses of champagne, I was even able to make a speech without cringing with mortification at all the attention being paid to me.

Archie’s jazz band helped us to hit just the right note of quirky decadence and old-world elegance. The party afterwards unconstrained as booming music echoed across the cricket pitch, keeping away roaming rhinos and buck, while white tablecloths fluttered in the gentle wind and hurricane lamps twinkled in the night. I discarded my stilettos in favour of a pair of pink floral gumboots and danced til dawn.

I didn’t manage to eat a bite of the sacrificial lamb, though.

Our guests told us that it was the best wedding that they had ever been to, and while, of course, they had to say that, we felt that the combination of such a gorgeous setting with the novelty of finally tying the knot made for a spectacularly special occasion.

The Karoo is not only brilliant for weddings. Check our packages and go out and explore