A Stylish Wedding With Mallorcan flavors, Bulgarian Rakia—and Dancing Under Moonlight

Yahoo

2 days ago

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ILL GANDER
Dessislava Boneva and Shane Davis bonded over aesthetics on the night they met in 2015: Seated together at an event, they 'talked the whole night, criticizing the production and design,' laughs Des, who is an interior designer who grew up in Bulgaria and Singapore before moving to the United States. 'We felt like kindred spirits,' he adds. Shane is the cofounder and creative director at Public Records, a multifunctional culture and arts space in Brooklyn, where the couple now resides. Together, they own Studio Kos, a design and development studio.
When they got engaged in 2019, the design-minded couple knew they wanted a destination wedding. 'Being from Bulgaria, I was adamant that it be in Europe. I wanted to be somewhere by the water, while Shane wanted to be by the mountains,' Des says. They were searching for venues in Greece or Sicily when the pandemic hit.
During that time Des and Shane welcomed their first child and got legally married, and the idea of a bigger wedding got put onto the back-burner—until one fateful trip to Mallorca with their son. Ahead, the stylish pair explain how inspiration struck like lightning, why they needed to fire their first planner, and how they executed the June 2024 celebration of their dreams in about five weeks.
Choose a destination based on one spectacular venue
During their pre-pandemic search, the couple had struggled to find a place that felt exactly right. 'We couldn't really find anything we loved. Everything had an issue: The cuisine wasn't good enough; the design wasn't good enough; the location wasn't good enough,' Des says. Their list of needs had only gotten longer during their multi-year break in planning; now they also sought a place where they and their guests could stay on site for several days, and with kids.
'Since we were bringing people from all over the world, we wanted them to spend time together and have the chance to speak with everyone,' the bride says. 'And honestly, post-pandemic, we really just wanted a vacation with our friends and family.'
A lot of the extremely high-end, architectural marvels they were interested in weren't equipped to fulfill all those requirements. While location-scouting, they decided to swing by one last place in Mallorca: the five-star hotel and wellness retreat Es Racó d'Artà.
'As soon as we pulled up to those gates, it was just absolutely jaw-dropping. Everything is monochromatic, with the design and landscape blending into each other,' Des says. Located less than 15 minutes from the beach, the estate smelled like salty Mediterranean air blended with white flowers and fig trees, which reminded the bride of the scents of her childhood. And with a main house dating back to the 14th century, two multi-bedroom villas, and a handful of casitas on the premises, as well as a restaurant, the property could actually house them and many of their 68 guests.
Listen to fate
While they loved the space, the couple weren't quite sure they had finally found their unicorn venue—until Des stopped by the spa and noticed some beautiful clothes on display. Back in 2019, she had selected a wedding dress by the Spanish designer Cortana. As she admired the precious silk and linen garments in the shop, she realized they all had the same tag. 'All of a sudden the light bulb goes on. Oh my god, that's Cortana!' she says.
It turned out that the label's designer, Rosa Esteva, had helped design the space with her father and brother, the architects Antoni and Tomeu Esteva, making material selections and choosing the staff's neutral linen uniforms. 'That sealed the deal. We knew right there and then,' Des says.
Don't be afraid to drop the wrong planner
Their visit to Mallorca happened in October 2023, right before the property mostly shut down for the winter. For their next steps, the couple reached out to the wedding planner they'd previously spoken to in Greece. 'As novices of weddings, we asked, 'Hey, since you do Greece, can you do Mallorca?' And she said yes,' Des says. 'That was probably the biggest mistake of this whole wedding.'
It didn't take long for the couple to realize that the planner's lack of expertise with the Balearic Island, and Es Racó's relative inexperience with weddings (theirs would only be the third thrown there), would make plotting the celebration an uphill battle. 'They are incredible, but they don't run a wedding-planning business. They run a hotel,' Des says.
Struggling to nail down a date, what type of vendors they would need (like an AV team and furniture rentals), and the capabilities of different layouts or spots for each event, the couple finally flew from New York to Mallorca to hammer out the plan on site in April 2024. 'Our wedding planner turned out to be unprepared. She took me to a flower shop that was completely clueless, even when I had sent over inspiration multiple times,' says Des. 'So three days in, we fired the wedding planner.'
With the wedding only six weeks away, they started over by asking Es Racó about the event planners that had worked on the two previous weddings held there, and ended up hiring Pauline de Saussure at Saussure Events, which was an instant game-changer. 'They knew the contact, the venue, the AV and logistics needs, and who could show up to the middle of the mountains with a wedding cake,' Des says. 'She brought to the table so many things that I didn't even know you had to do for the wedding.'
Hold tight to your aesthetic vision
While that first florist the couple saw had put forth dainty little blooms, Des and Shane had a bigger statement in mind for their florals—which is that there would barely be florals at all. The decor complemented the Mallorcan surroundings instead of competing with them, via warm wooden chairs, white candles in glass vessels, and spare explosions of palm leaves standing tall and architecturally, all handled by Enesencia Design. 'We chose to do a ton of candles to keep the light low. I think people look stunning when the light is at your eye level. It gives you that golden glow,' says Des. 'We had these very tall greens to add some height, since the tent was so tall.'
Though vendors kept pushing them toward string lights, the couple wanted something more commanding, with James Turrell's fine-art installations as a reference. 'Our AV team figured out how to do LED tube lights and string them up in the tent, which made the perfect golden orange color—a strong request of Shane's,' Des says of their work with Velvet Productions. 'It wasn't necessarily adding functional light, but a glow to the height of the tent that felt more like an art install.'
Hire your friends
While their wedding was in many ways a celebration of this corner of Mallorca, they did call on a few of their own creative pals to lend their support to the festivities. Shane's friend Tal, who owns the store and fashion label Colbo in New York, created custom suits for the groom and the couple's son, while their photographer friends Andrew Bayda and Everett Bouwer (who shoots under the name Ill Gander) captured the wedding. Their wedding band wasn't a wedding band at all, but an ambient jam group called The Zenmenn based in Berlin, who are friends of the couple's. Shane's cofounder at Public Records, Francis Davis, who's a major collector of vinyl, also DJed after the band wrapped up.
For her makeup, Des breached the best of both by researching whom the Cortana team used for their dreamy fashion photo shoots. Barbara Urra did the makeup of not just the bride, but that of her mother, mother-in-law, and sisters. Rosa Esteva of Cortana wound up helping Des get dressed on the big day, too. 'It was really, really special, because I have such admiration for her creations. Every dress and outfit I wore during the weekend were hers! It was a nice little treat to spend time with her,' says Des.
Create a solid slate of plans
For the proper vacation with loved ones they dreamt of, the couple pulled together a full itinerary around their wedding. On Thursday afternoon, they held welcome drinks at Es Racó, followed by a welcome dinner on the rooftop of Forn Nou, a homey restaurant in the nearest town of Artà. On Friday, they held a rehearsal dinner on site at Es Racó, followed by dancing. 'We actually had to kick everybody out at 1am, because nobody wanted to go to sleep,' says Des.
Saturday began with a meditation with guests under a tree, with the moment dedicated to Shane's father, as it was the anniversary of his passing. That afternoon, they held a pool party, followed by another dinner on the property. 'Since we had bought out the hotel, it was four days of full immersion with the people we love at all points,' Des says.
The wedding itself began in the early evening on Sunday, so that their son and the other invited children wouldn't get too cranky. The ceremony was held on the lawn, followed by a cocktail hour nearby with a local band, the Nayla Yenquis Group, playing. Guests were summoned to walk through a vineyard to a tent for dinner, while dessert and cake-cutting were held back on the terraces, under moonlight, where the dancing began in earnest.
Share the local flavors
As nearly every wedding event was held on site at Es Racó, the food was coordinated by the venue. 'They were excited to talk to us about the food because we wanted not just your run-of-the-mill catering; we wanted a culinary adventure with both food and wine, walking people through Spanish tradition and Mallorcan flavors,' says Des.
Chef Maria Solivellas of the restaurant Ca na Toneta, which had been awarded a green star by the Michelin guide for its efforts in sustainability, led the catering. 'The restaurant is pretty intense about local ingredients and sustainable farming,' says Shane. For the rehearsal dinner they enjoyed local fish and lamb cooked over an outdoor firepit, along with roasted vegetables, many of which were grown on the property. 'It was all just really simple local seafood, which was what we wanted,' he continues.
During cocktail hour, guests were offered classic Mallorcan bites, like anchovies, crunchy cod and tomato, roasted eggplant croquettes, and patatas bravas, while dinner itself was a grilled sea bass.
Party with a taste of home
The wedding dinner opened with a sip from Des' native Bulgaria: Small glasses of the fruit brandy rakia were handed out for a stiff toast. 'There's one in particular we love, and I figured out how to procure it and ship a few cases to Es Racó from Bulgaria,' the bride says. It was even served alongside an opening salad of mainly cucumbers and tomatoes, which is how it is typically consumed in her culture.
After all the dancing and merriment (and cocktails), the group was wiped by the end of the wedding, so the partying didn't exactly follow the Spanish tradition of winding into the wee hours. And that suited the couple just fine—after all, they were parents.
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