Float With Me, staged this spring at a brutalist winery in Portugal’s Alentejo, is built around a feeling: the pull between staying grounded and moving toward whatever comes next. Planner Franziska Bitsolis brought the shoot together with Studio Kowalski, whose artist Sandy designed the concept from the floor up. Franziska is the kind of planner who treats a celebration as a piece of design rather than a run of show, and that instinct runs through every choice here.
"With this work, I want to bring a different approach to wedding design. It's about creating an experience, not just decoration. Something that tells a story, invites curiosity, and leaves space for interpretation."
Bride
The bridal look leaned into the logic of movement. Alex Vidal Atelier, a Valencia house now in its third generation, built the gown in finely pleated fabric that catches air with every step, finished with an off the shoulder neckline that keeps the whole silhouette soft.
A single organic pendant from Solanna the Label carried the jewelry story on its own, its shape echoing the raw, natural forms in the florals. Hair and makeup by Sophie Hamedani stayed bare and low key, a loose braid and skin left to breathe, all of it built to hold the focus on how the gown moves.
Groom
The groom’s tailoring answered that softness with structure. A sharp black tuxedo from Wilvorst, worn with clean shoulders and a bow tie, gave the styling its architectural counterweight. The pairing works because the concept needed both at once, something fluid and something built, standing in the same frame.
Concept
The design followed one rule: let the flowers move with the architecture. Herdade do Freixo curves in slow circles, so the florals by Matiz curved right along with it, reading as a current running through the space instead of a set of centerpieces.
Near the entrance the arrangements sat low and knotted, dense shapes that behaved like roots, heavy and tied to the ground. Further along they loosened and lifted, thinning out and drawing everything toward one central point. That shift from anchored to airborne is the whole thesis of the shoot.
Table
The surprise material was rope. Rough, strong, industrial, it ran through the tables as a line of tension against the softness of the dried blooms. It stands in for the idea at the center of the concept, which is holding onto something solid while you move into something new.
Dried orchids in deep browns, tangled amaranthus, and trailing mossy forms sat against pale linen, worked in a palette of sage, cream and taupe that let the darker botanicals register as the accent.
Low domed lamps and tapered candles kept the light quiet. The stationery from No Naked Design Studio arrived as handwritten calligraphy on a long trailing scroll, one more object designed to move rather than sit still, with rentals supplied by Aura Rentals.
Photographer Meike Rupp shot the two figures as part of the set rather than the subject placed on top of it, letting them settle into the curved concrete and the floral current so people and space read as one composition. That framing is what sells the idea of floating, two people held inside a room that seems to drift around them. Videography came from Blou Films, carrying the same slow, suspended energy into motion.
PLANNING & DESIGN Studio Kowalski for Bitsolis Franziska | PHOTOGRAPHER Meike Rupp | VIDEOGRAPHY Blou Films | VENUE Herdade do Freixo | FLORAL DESIGN Matiz | STATIONERY No Naked Design Studio | HAIR & MAKEUP Sophie Hamedani | DRESS Alex Vidal Atelier | JEWELRY Solanna the Label | SUIT Wilvorst | RENTALS Aura Rentals | MODELS Paulette, Duskin
