Gitt & Jeroen — Worth the Wait, at Villa Aye

Gitt and Jeroen first booked with us for March 2020 at Villa Aquila. The pandemic pulled that date apart, and what followed was a multi-year rescheduling — through the birth of a child, through changing borders, and eventually to a new villa. On Thursday 23 November 2023 the wedding finally happened at Villa Aye, in the pink, white and greenery palette they had held onto through every re-plan.

The original plan — Villa Aquila, March 2020

Gitt and Jeroen came to us in 2019 with a clear picture: a March 2020 wedding at Villa Aquila, on the west coast. Everything was in place. Then the pandemic arrived, borders closed, and — like every wedding we were holding that spring — the date had to move. What followed was not a single postponement but a slow, patient re-plan across three years, alongside the joyful news that their family was growing in the meantime.

A new villa, a new date — November 2023

By 2023 the shape of what they wanted had settled again. We moved the wedding to Villa Aye in Kamala — a villa we know intimately, and one better matched to the guest count and evening rhythm they had grown into. The date was locked for Thursday 23 November. The palette they had chosen back in 2019 — pink shade, white and greenery — carried through unchanged.

The ceremony — over the pool, with a water blessing

The ceremony itself was set on a custom wooden platform built directly over the villa's pool — a shape Villa Aye holds particularly well, and one we have used before for couples who want the ceremony to sit at the visual centre of the villa rather than at its edge. Gitt and Jeroen exchanged their vows in a Western-style ceremony, followed by a traditional Thai water blessing — a small integration that let them honour heritage inside a ceremony that otherwise sat in English.

Dinner, family-style

Dinner was served family-style — a deliberate choice, meant to keep the room communal rather than formal. The menu was a considered tour of Thai cooking: a Tom Kha Gai amuse-bouche shooter to open, then family favourites like roasted pork belly, duck red curry and soft-shell crab, and a mango-passion fruit cake to close. The kind of food that suits the setting rather than fighting it.

Three years, one day

Across every version of the plan, Gitt and Jeroen were consistently kind about the communication and the responsiveness on our side — the small, steady work of holding a wedding together through years of uncertainty. When the day finally arrived it was more than a ceremony; it was the culmination of a long, dedicated journey that brought their family and friends together to celebrate a couple who never lost sight of what mattered most.