The bride knew exactly what she did not want: nothing heavy, nothing stiff, nothing that looked forced. Her style was minimal, elegant and timeless, and for her hair she asked for an updo with a relaxed, casual feel, with the odd strand that seemed to have slipped loose on its own. Behind that ease lay careful planning, because a strand that falls naturally has to be placed exactly there, and the result was just what she had in mind.
It was a destination wedding: the couple came over from the UK to marry at El Molino del Duque, a finca in Manilva, on the Costa del Sol, built around an eighteenth-century flour mill and surrounded by tropical gardens. The setting is romantic, rural and countrified all at once, and she wanted her look to tell the same story, so that the dress, the hair and the place turned on a single idea, with nothing competing for attention.
With the bridesmaids, the aim was the same from a different angle. Their hair had to sit in harmony with the bride's without copying it: each of them kept something of her own personality, so the group looked like a set without looking like a uniform. The bride's mother wanted something discreet and relaxed too, in the same spirit of simplicity as her daughter.
The morning flowed easily, and much of the credit goes to them. There was a relaxed, playful energy in the room, the kind of willingness that lets everything move along without tension, and it shows in the photographs: the bridesmaids laughing as they button the bride's dress, arranging her train, her mother looking at her once she is ready.
One of the loveliest moments of the morning was placing the veil. It was a fine, almost sheer tulle, and I set it just above the updo, so that it fell down her back, let the hair show through the fabric and followed the clean line of the dress.
If this wedding had to be summed up in one idea, it would be elegance without excess. María Benítez captured it in every photograph: the light in the gardens, the bridesmaids' pink dresses, the laughter of the morning and, later, bouquets in hand, a bride whose updo looked exactly as it had been planned.
