This Spain wedding looks good everywhere: on paper, in person, and in every single frame that Still Miracle managed to pull out of a weekend. Jennifer and Ian got married on a cliff above the Mediterranean in S’Agaró, at one of the most quietly iconic hotels on the Costa Brava, in a place they had literally discovered together on their first trip as a couple. The weekend turned out so specific to this place that it makes you want to book a trip immediately, even if you are nowhere near planning a wedding.
Location: Hostal de La Gavina, S’Agaró, Spain
Style: Mediterranean, Verdant, Classic
Time of planning: 1 year
Number of guests: 64
Setting: Boutique Hotel
Season: Summer
Jennifer and Ian met in Chicago in April 2023 through Hinge, and a few weeks in, Ian suggested a trip to Spain. Not dinner, not a weekend away, but Spain, which tells you everything you need to know about him. They ended up at Hostal de La Gavina, a waterfront hotel that has been sitting at the edge of the sea since 1932. That trip became the turning point Jennifer describes as the moment you stop wondering about something and just know.
Ian proposed on the eve of her 30th birthday, eleven months after that first trip, and from the start, their vision for the wedding was genuinely simple: their favorite people, the place that had already shaped them, and a celebration that felt, in Jennifer’s own words, sybaritic.
Welcome Day
The weekend opened the way every wedding weekend should: slow, golden, with the specific energy of people glad to be somewhere together. The welcome day unfolded in a whitewashed village courtyard, green shutters, and afternoon light. Jennifer and Ian, coordinated in ivory and white, relaxed in the way that it should be.
Jennifer had talked about wanting the weekend to feel like Costa Brava itself: lush, sun-washed, each afternoon stretching long into the evening, intimate and joyful. The welcome day was that promise made visible before the wedding even officially started. More like a long, slow aperitivo that just kept going.
Bride's Morning & Fashion
Jennifer went into dress shopping with a clear reference in mind: Sarah Seven. Clean lines, minimal, the silk dress she had always imagined herself in. And then she walked into Bella Bianca in downtown Chicago, tried on a Lazaro gown, and her plans changed a bit.
Lazaro does something very few American bridal designers manage: doing load-bearing work. And then there is the overskirt, which Jennifer describes as something she did not know she was craving until she had it in front of her.
Groom’s Fashion
Ian went custom with BALANI Custom Suits in Chicago, which is the correct call for a destination wedding to survive Mediterranean summer heat. It was midnight navy, fitted without being precious about it. On his feet: Santoni, an Italian shoe brand that does not require explanation, which is exactly the energy.
The groom prep photos are genuinely cinematic. And then there is the prep table detail, which might be the single best styled moment in the entire wedding: La Vanguardia newspaper, sunglasses, a citrus cocktail sitting in the light.
First Look
Before the ceremony, before the guests, before any of it became official, Jennifer and Ian had a moment that belonged entirely to them. They chose to see each other before and read their personal vows to each other privately.
Ceremony
The ceremony location is not something you find in a vendor directory. It is the private garden terrace, perched on the edge of the cliffs above the Mediterranean, on the property of the hotel’s owner.
Ian had spotted it from their hotel room balcony on that very first trip to S’Agaró. Six weeks into knowing each other, he said out loud that it would be a beautiful place for a wedding. Jennifer laughed. Eleven months later she knew he was right, and Samkoma World built a ceremony inside that space that understood exactly what it was working with.
When your backdrop is a cliff above the Mediterranean inside an aristocratic private garden, you do not compete with it. So the team figured out what the space is already doing and added precisely what is needed.
The ceremony arch is the centerpiece and it is spectacular in the most disciplined possible way: floor-to-ceiling, architecturally structured, built entirely from dense dark green foliage with tight clusters of white and ivory roses. This arch is emphatically and deliberately anti-boho, and in a landscape still littered with the aesthetic ghost of that era, that reads as a statement.
The chairs are rounded-back bistro style in warm honey gold, and the bridesmaids came down the stone steps ahead of Jennifer in ivory-yellow midi dresses. Jennifer walked to the aisle with her father, carrying a bouquet that matched the arch in every way that mattered: large, loose, and lush, the kind of bouquet that looks like it was gathered from the garden you are standing in.
“The ceremony was everything I could have asked for. It was serene and we were surrounded by the people we love most.”
Cocktail Hour
After the ceremony, guests spilled into the catering space, and the whole energy of the day shifted. Cocktail hour was soundtracked live by Maria and the Inventors, friends of the couple playing a set that included songs Maria had learned specifically at their request.
On the food side: J5 jamon, which for context is the highest classification of Ibérico de Bellota and costs somewhere north of $200 per kilo, served at cocktail hour because why would you do anything less. Alongside it: acorn duck magret, steak tartare, croquettes, anchovies on coca bread con tomate. This is a Catalan tasting menu served standing up at your own party, and it tells you immediately that the couple who planned this menu are people who eat seriously and travel with full attention.
The signature cocktails were designed by the bride and groom. Ian’s was a riff on a Marianito, red Spanish vermouth and gin, a classic Barcelona aperitivo order, and essentially a love letter to the city where they met, made drinkable. Jennifer’s was called Jen’s Velvet Verde: rum, avocado syrup, coconut. In an otherwise very precise wedding,
Reception
The reception moved, carrying the garden-by-the-sea atmosphere into the evening. The tables are long banquet format with no rounds anywhere, which is a power move that far too few couples are willing to make. Long tables mean your guests are forced into actual conversation with the people next to them, making the dinner generative rather than just a meal slotted between speeches.
Florals by Maite Mach carried the ceremony’s green-and-white palette into the reception without interruption: tall white tapers in candelabras with trailing ivy cascading down, lush greenery framing every surface. And then, sitting in the middle of all of it: a dusty pink cake.
The dinner was a long, indulgent journey through aperitifs, courses, toasts, and digestifs that stretched deep into the evening, exactly the way a meal in Catalonia should. Guests raised glasses of Cava, Manzanilla, and Green Chartreuse at various points across the night, each toast delivered by someone who clearly came prepared, and the whole sequence read like a very good dinner party that happened to have a couple at the center of it.
“Every moment of the weekend was unforgettable but we still talk all the time about the phenomenal toasts our friends, Jen’s dad and her siblings made. They were each hysterical, sincere, loving masterpieces – our only regret is that we didn’t record videos of all of them.”
Somewhere between dinner and the dance floor, Jennifer changed into her Albina Dyla mini and a pair of Jimmy Choo heels, which is the correct footwear decision for a night that still has a lot left in it. The cake moment happened. And then Jimmy Casanovas took over and honestly the rest of the night was just that: people who love each other, with a DJ who clearly understood the assignment.
Advice from the couple:
• Ask your friends and family to make toasts and hope that they are great.
• Take tons of photos of your loved ones.
• Take the time to get involved in planning the details early, even if that’s not your bag. Your own personal touches will be the bits you love the most.
• And if your wife shoots down your mechanical bull idea, make sure you insist on it at your next birthday party.
PHOTOGRAPHER Still Miracle | PLANNING & DESIGN Samkoma World | CONTENT CREATOR The Social FRM | VENUE Hostal de La Gavina | FLORALS Maite Mach | MUAH MUA BCN | DRESS Lazaro | DRESS SHOP Bella Bianca Bridal Couture | RECEPTION DRESS Albina Dyla | GROOM’S SUIT BALANI Custom Suits | GROOM’S SHOES Santoni | INVITATIONS Blush Waters | CALLIGRAPHY JLF Calligraphy | RENTALS Abanik | BAND Ad Libitum | DJ Jimmy Casanovas | RINGS Tivol KC
