How we Planned our Wedding without a Plan

Prepare for Last Minute Vows, a Dress in a Doggy Bag, and Forty Forks you Simply Cannot Find Anywhere - The Wedding Without A Plan

THE RED THREAD

There was one red thread running through our wedding from beginning to end. Not a spreadsheet, not a coordinator, not a color-coded timeline. Just trust.

Our planning looked more like two people continuously saying not yet while everyone around us quietly started panicking on our behalf.

Have you sorted the rings? No. The seating chart? No. The vows? ...Working on it.

Then we'd look at each other, shrug, and continue drinking our coffee.

THE WAY WE WORK

We are both always moving. Always building something, creating something, full of too many ideas for one lifetime. And somewhere along the way we figured out that the only way to actually feel what's happening is to stop trying to manage it before it arrives. Not squeezing all the life out of an experience by planning it to death.

That became the quiet foundation underneath everything.

THE PERFECT PLAN THAT HIT ME IN A PORTA-POTTY

It started on October 1st, 2025. Bouke proposed with the idea of eloping to New York City Hall, just the two of us, witnesses pulled off the street, wine somewhere afterward while the city hummed around us in disbelief.

Perfect.

Except City Hall had no availability.

Which meant we suddenly had to invent an actual wedding. A dangerous thing, when two creative people get involved...

The new plan arrived one day later, in a porta-potty at Bryant Park. I was sitting there when Philine suddenly appeared in my mind, my photographer, the only person who had ever managed to capture me in a way that actually felt like me. No stiff posing. No nervous system running wild. Just playing, being me and getting captured.

Before I'd properly put down my skirt and washed my hands, I knew.

I ran back to Bouke, already talking too fast, words falling over each other. He looked mildly concerned, the face he makes when he senses another I have a vision but absolutely no structure yet moment arriving.

But it made sense. Her studio was an old garage turned photography space. Raw concrete floors. Industrial edges. Vintage furniture. Half romance, half rock 'n roll. Bouke loved the roughness. I loved the softness hidden inside it. Together it became this strange, perfect middle ground where both of us existed naturally.

Phil was in. We exhaled. The rest would come. 

➛ Visit Nozem Studio

THE DRESS

The dress had already found me before I started looking.

I was in Ibiza in February 2026, finishing a program I'd spent months building. The second I closed my laptop I went vintage shopping, because that's how I celebrate, and somewhere on the way there a sentence fell out of my mouth before I'd consciously formed the thought: I might find my wedding dress there.

The next day a woman named Katja appeared at my doorstep with designer dresses in her arms, as if this had been arranged somewhere beyond us already. The fitting was quiet. Intimate. Fabric everywhere. Every dress teaching me something.

And then there it was. Not the kind you suffer beautifully in. Not the kind that only works if you don't breathe too deeply or sit down wrong. This dress moved with me. I could dance in it, eat in it, exist in it. It felt less like becoming a bride and more like becoming more myself.

My dress is by De La Vali, an Ibiza-born brand inspired by the island's bohemian spirit and its muse, Vali Myers, a woman who lived life entirely on her own terms. ➛ Discover their beautiful collection

The moment I had put it on, I knew. This is the one. I started wearing the dress around the house sometimes. Which meant it soon began joining me on increasingly ridiculous errands.

Every shoe fitting. The earring store. The hairdresser. At one point nearly all of The Hague had probably seen my wedding dress being pulled out of what Bjarny lovingly described as a pathetic little black plastic bag, looking less like couture and more like I was carrying something considerably less romantic around the city.

THE DETAILS

Almost everything else was collected by hand. Our own cabinets. Thrift stores. My mother-in-law's cupboards. Forgotten corners that slowly assembled themselves into a wedding.

We rented only what we truly couldn't source: forty forks, twelve tables, forty-seven chairs, two refrigerators. Everything else had a story attached already. The tablecloths were handmade. The napkins too. Every plate, glass, and candleholder gathered over months like small treasure hunts hidden inside ordinary days.

EVERYTHING ARRIVED JUST IN TIME

We found the perfect rings two weeks before the wedding, while Bouke was sick in bed. I wandered into a jeweler with my best friend, not entirely sure why, and found the rings of our dreams. Just in time for her to resize them. The hairdresser had availability the moment I walked in.

THE DAY BEFORE

The day before, Bouke, Philine and I turned the studio upside down together. Tables, candles, fabric, flowers. Beer arrived to make tiramisu in a kitchen that was essentially just a sink. Bjarny came to walk us through the logistics, when the rings happen, when to kiss, what comes next.

By then we were both so overstimulated that about thirty percent of it actually landed. We looked at each other. That look that had carried us through the whole thing already.

We'll follow your cues. We trust you. We trust this.

THE VOWS

The vows I had planned to improvise entirely. Stand there, speak from the heart, let it arrive.

Someone who knew me well pointed out that being sleep-deprived, overstimulated, emotional, and perceived by every person you love might not be the ideal conditions for accessing your deepest feelings with perfect clarity.

Fair enough.

So instead small fragments started finding me, a sentence while cycling somewhere, a realization while cooking, something that landed in the middle of the night. No structure. No document. Just thoughts collected quietly whenever they appeared.

Both of us still ended up writing our vows on the morning of the wedding itself.

Which, in hindsight, feels entirely on brand.

Of course, the perfect writing atmosphere has to be created first. That it takes up more time is beside the point.

THE WHOLE POINT

And maybe that was the entire wedding, in the end.

Not perfection. Not control. Just two people continuously stepping into moments before they fully knew how they would unfold, trusting the next piece would show up when it was time.

It always did.

So if you came here wondering what actually happens when you plan a wedding on trust: this. A porta-potty revelation in New York. A dress in a plastic bag. Forty forks you couldn't find anywhere. Vows written on the morning itself. And somehow, at the end of it all, a day that felt completely and entirely like us.

That's what trust does. It doesn't remove the chaos. It just makes the chaos feel like it belongs.

Here's to keep trusting and rock and rolling, my love.