Andrew & Nelson — A Villa Aye Destination Wedding, on Film

Andrew and Nelson came to us in late 2022 with a clear picture: an elegant same-sex destination wedding at Villa Aye. What followed was a year of shared spreadsheets, direct feedback, and a warm working partnership — culminating on Saturday 11 November 2023 in a traditional Chinese tea ceremony, a Western vow exchange over the pool, and a sixty-six-guest evening reception, all held inside one private villa in Kamala. The full-length film sits at the top of this page.

The planning phase — a spreadsheet partnership

Andrew and Nelson reached out in late 2022 with an elegant Villa Aye wedding already firmly in mind. Their preferred date wasn't available, so we worked through options together and settled on November 2023 — a small piece of flexibility that unlocked the rest of the year of planning. From the first calls it was clear they treated the process as a partnership: shared spreadsheets for the guest list, the dietary requirements and the transport plan, direct feedback on every vendor short-list, and calm, quick decisions when a decision was needed.

The vendor short-lists were narrowed the same way — with research, not guesswork. They chose Madiow for photography and Khun Man for videography after looking closely at the specific aesthetic each brought. The film on this page is the result of that decision, and the reason it sits at the top rather than at the bottom.

Logistics and personalisation

As the wedding approached, the plan tightened into a series of precise, considered choices. A traditional Chinese tea ceremony was integrated at 3 PM — the tea set, the seating and the space to hold it were written into the schedule early rather than bolted on late. The evening menu settled as western-style silver service. The DJ playlists were refined together across several rounds. Family seating was decided by name, not by table number.

The transport plan was the other quiet piece of engineering — sixty-six guests moving cleanly out of three different hotels (Thavorn, Cape Sienna and Glam Habitat) to arrive at Villa Aye on schedule. Every question about budget, VAT or logistics was answered directly and in writing; when we identified a calculation error on our own side around VAT, Andrew and Nelson were gracious about it, and the correction was made the same day. That kind of communication is what makes a plan of this size actually deliverable.

The wedding day — Saturday 11 November 2023

The day itself moved cleanly through three distinct phases. The traditional Chinese tea ceremony opened the afternoon in the intimacy of the villa's interior — an unhurried moment for close family before the villa filled up. The modern wedding ceremony followed on the wooden platform Villa Aye configures over the pool, with the Andaman beyond and the villa's palms framing the aisle. The evening reception carried the sixty-six guests into dinner and dancing at the same address, with a late sunset portrait session slotted between the ceremony and the reception while the light was still with us.

Every element — the transport arrivals, the tea ceremony logistics, the silver-service dining, the DJ set — landed on the schedule Andrew and Nelson had signed off on. The film at the top of this page is the record of that day.

After the wedding

The correspondence after the wedding was warm in a way that only really happens after a good day. When the highlight photos arrived in mid-November, Nelson wrote back from Singapore — back at work and in what he called a post-wedding mood — to say the photos had lifted the week. The rest of the message we'll simply quote below.

Andrew and Nelson's day is one we point to when a couple asks what a proactive planning partnership actually looks like on the day. It looks like this: a shared spreadsheet, a clear schedule, an honest conversation about VAT, and a villa in Kamala at the end of a long year of decisions — with a film to keep.