Naledi & James

A weekend under the Simonsberg oaks

They saw four venues in one exhausting Saturday and booked the fifth on a Tuesday, in the rain. “The oaks were doing all the work,” Naledi says. “We realised we could stop paying for décor and start paying for time.” So they took the whole weekend: rehearsal dinner in the cellar on Friday, the wedding under the trees on Saturday, a slow braai by the dam on Sunday.

The guest list was the only fight, settled with a rule: nobody either of them wouldn’t phone on their birthday. A hundred and forty made the cut, from Jo’burg, Gaborone and one determined aunt from Perth.

Marli Steyn shot from the getting-ready coffee to the last of the dancing and disappeared so completely they only remembered she’d been everywhere when the previews landed. Fynbos & Fern kept the flowers to what the veld had that week — proteas, restios, one ridiculous king protea on the cake.

The spreadsheet closed at just over R310 000 — about R2 200 a head — with the weekend hire the single biggest line and, they both insist, the one they’d never cut.