Alice Wace, who founded the fine jewellery brand Incador with her sister, walked into her Franschhoek wedding wearing pieces she had drawn herself, then married Jamie in a day that braided Vietnamese, French, English, Caribbean and South African threads into a single room. It felt like two people showing 115 guests exactly who they are, across every country that shaped them.
Location: Franschhoek, Western Cape, South Africa
Style: Verdant, Candlelit, Multicultural
Time of planning: 1 year
Number of guests: 115
Setting: Vineyard Estate
Season: Summer
The two met four years ago at a friend’s fashion label launch, where Alice had modelled the debut collection and Jamie had come along to support the founders. He sent a couple of friends over to break the ice, got nowhere, and eventually walked across the room himself. Alice asked for his number that night, and three weeks later they were together.
"I noticed Alice on the leaflets and then saw her in real life. I sent a couple of my girl mates to go over and speak to her but to no avail, so I went up to her myself, and word vomited everything I thought she'd want to hear. Somehow it worked!"
The proposal landed on the ninth of February 2025, on a quiet sunrise route up Table Mountain. Jamie kept rushing the pace so they would not miss the light, then asked the question the second the sun broke. He followed it with a video of her family and friends sending their congratulations, then a surprise lunch at Babylonstoren with her closest people, before revealing he had quietly booked them in for the night.
Bride's Morning & Fashion
Alice got ready in a bias cut silk slip with her hair in a soft, undone updo and pieces left loose around her face. Her scent was Gucci Bloom, a tuberose and jasmine mix that leans white floral rather than sweet.
Every piece of jewellery on her came from Incador, the fine jewellery brand she runs with her sister Karen, so the pearl designs in floral silhouettes, the gold vine necklace set with diamonds and the bespoke ring holding both of their birthstones, peridot and alexandrite, were all drawn up in house. Designing your own wedding jewellery is a flex, and doing it with your sister is the part that actually sticks.
For the gown, Alice designed a two piece herself and had it made by Samantha at Emmanuel Haute Couture in Penang, the Malaysian city where she grew up, pairing a structured Thai silk corset with a soft satin chiffon skirt she can shorten and rewear on future anniversaries.
The quietly wild part came when her mother shipped over her own wedding dress and it turned out to be a two piece as well, an instinct Alice had inherited without ever knowing it. She finished with heels from Linzi Shoes and carried a sculptural bouquet that followed the couple’s ban on the usual wedding flowers, trading roses and peonies for calla lilies, amaryllis and anthuriums.
Groom’s Fashion
Jamie’s morning came with a small crisis, because the dry cleaner had left his tailored suit trousers out of the bag entirely. Alex, married to Jamie’s sister, lent him a Roderick Charles tux that ended up fitting better than the original, which Jamie now openly prefers. He wore it with Church’s shoes and a pair of Gucci cufflinks his brother had given him, plus his bespoke Incador band. The groomsmen kept it clean in black tie, which suited a setting that was always going to call for it.
With love, from Vietnam
Alice is half Vietnamese and half French, and the part of the day that landed hardest for her family arrived when the couple appeared in matching red Vietnamese áo dài with the traditional hats. Red carries luck and joy in Vietnamese tradition, so the move from the sage and white running through the rest of the day into fully saturated red read as a statement rather than a wardrobe change. Jamie’s young nephew wore a tiny matching set the couple had picked up in Vietnam the year before, which is the sort of detail that makes an entire family lose it.
"One of the most memorable moments for me was wearing the traditional Vietnamese red áo dài and seeing how emotional it made my Vietnamese family."
Ceremony
The ceremony happened in the Sanctuary at La Roche Estate, a small glass building set on an island in the middle of a lake with the mountains stacked up behind it. Two stone statues of bridesmaids flank the entrance, which only adds to the slightly unreal quality of the place.
Alice walked in with her father across the water to Pachelbel’s Canon in D, which is about as cinematic as an entrance gets without trying to be. A South African choir sang before and during the service, their voices carrying across the water, and the couple folded in two English hymns for Jamie’s side alongside personal vows they wrote themselves.
That mix of a very English structure and a very open setting is what gave the whole thing its charge. Both of them grew up around water, Alice on an island in Malaysia and Jamie with ties to the Caribbean, so saying it out loud in the middle of a lake was never accidental.
"After the ceremony was the first time I properly saw all of our wedding guests and I had no idea I could feel that much happiness at once. I was honestly bursting with joy and could not stop smiling. It felt like living a dream."
Moments Together
Photographer Andrea Cronje shot the day with a light, unforced hand, the kind that lets a wedding look like itself rather than a staged set, and the couple’s portraits by the lake at golden hour are the proof. Drinks happened outside the Festival Hall under bistro lights strung from the trees to the building, while Jamo Harrison played live saxophone over the canapés and set the tempo for the night.
Reception
The room itself stayed restrained, with draping in sage, soft green and white and a canopy of fairy lights doing the heavy lifting. That palette is bang on the 2026 forecast that planners keep naming, olive green with a burgundy lift, the one they describe as leaning European.
Dinner came from Two Chefs, the bar poured wine grown on the estate itself, and Alice’s father Philippe Chave ran a wine tasting for anyone who wanted to go deeper into what the farm makes. A Biltong bar brought in a South African note that most of the international guests were meeting for the first time, and the cake from Caked by Nazlah leaned into a berry topped, meringue style dessert that reads like a Dutch still life you are allowed to eat.
"The most memorable moment for me was on the dance floor, when everyone was on each other's shoulders singing don't look back in anger. We were singing at the top of our lungs, it felt like pure joy. I remember thinking in the moment that life doesn't ever get better."
The first dance was Can You Feel the Love Tonight, an Elton John and Lion King pick that basically chose itself for an English groom getting married in South Africa, and Alice’s childhood best friend Meeshanth sang it live as a surprise nobody saw coming. He followed it with Forever Young for the dance between Alice and her father. Later the floor turned into a full singalong of Don’t Look Back in Anger with everyone up on shoulders.
Two quieter details tied the day together. The couple skipped a first look so the aisle would be the first time they saw each other, and they hand wrote a personal letter to every single guest, which people opened during the evening and got genuinely emotional over. With 115 guests and more than forty nationalities in the room, the day worked less like a wedding and more like a reunion of a family scattered across the planet, which is exactly what Alice and Jamie were going for.
Advice from the couple:
• Do as many of your portraits as you can before the event properly begins. The day goes by incredibly quickly and you’ll be overwhelmed with emotion in the best possible way. Once everyone is there, you just want to spend every second with your friends and family, taking it all in and also finding little moments together as a couple. It really is the best day of your lives, so our biggest advice would be to protect as much time as possible to actually enjoy it!
PHOTOGRAPHER Andrea Cronje | VIDEOGRAPHY Sage Media | CONTENT CREATION The Richards Photo and Film | WEDDING PLANNER Dear Grace Event Specialists | VENUE La Roche Estate | FLORALS Winterbird Events | STATIONERY Alice and Jamie Wace | MAKEUP Rozelle, Marnel | DRESS Emmanuel Haute Couture | JEWELLERY Incador | CATERING Two Chefs | CAKE Caked by Nazlah | ENTERTAINMENT Jamo Harrison
