Alexandra & Jan's Creative Team

Bride: Alexandra Schouteden
Photographer: Hanru Marais, with venue images by Daniela Canny and detail/sunset shots by Amarens Kingma
Videographer: Vision on Fire
Venue: Kruijd
Planner: Kraak
Content creator: Amarens Kingma 
Dress designer: Eva Lendel 
Second look: @Retrofete
Shoes: Alaïa, René Caovilla
Earrings: Vivienne Westwood
Jan's attire and accessories: All Hugo Boss
Florist: Heike Hayward, Fleur le Cordeur
Hair and makeup: Ines Borgonjon
Catering and Cake Kruijd
Entertainment: Jason ward @jasonwardpercussionist
DJs: Fran Osorio, Keilamanjaro and N8N
Custom Linen Dressing Gowns: Amara Bespoke

Alexandra Wore Eva Lendel to Marry Jan at a Quietly Radical Wedding in the Cape Winelands

It is that sense of considered inevitability that runs through every decision behind their wedding, held at Kruijd, an unconventional property tucked into the Cape Winelands at Wellington. Both raised in Antwerp, where fashion is woven into the civic fabric rather than treated as an accessory to it, Alexandra and Jan share a foundation rooted in style, intellect and a refusal to follow form for its own sake. They both began their careers as lawyers, Jan in commercial law, Alexandra in criminal law, before stepping away from the profession entirely. Jan founded a tech company in Cape Town. Alexandra built a production company there alongside work in modelling and ventures in pharmaceuticals and mining. The contrast between them, his extroverted lightness against her reflective intuition, is the structural logic of their relationship and, by extension, of the day they planned.

From the outset, the brief was emotional rather than aesthetic. The couple wanted the wedding to feel deeply theirs, intimate enough that connection could exist not only between them but among every guest who had travelled to be there. They were uninterested in tradition for tradition's sake. There was no opening dance, no bouquet toss, no scaffolding of obligation. What they kept, they kept with intention. A Belgian ritual in which a ribbon of lace is tied around the couple's hands, performed by Jan's mother. A candle lit for Alexandra's mother, who has passed, so that she would be present in the room. "It carried a depth of emotion that is difficult to put into words," Alexandra says. "It was the most important thing we did that day."

THE LOCATION

Cape Town was a foregone conclusion. It is where the relationship began in earnest, and where the couple's adult life is anchored. But the predominance of wine estates as wedding venues there left them cold. Beautiful as those properties are, there is a sameness to them that did not align with how Alexandra and Jan wanted to marry. Kruijd was different on first sight: not an estate but a canvas. Raw, rustic, set against the Winelands mountains, with red earth underfoot, old trees, whitewashed walls and a willow tree beside the dinner table. As the sun set, the mountains turned pink. Nothing about the venue had been pre-styled into a fixed identity, which was precisely the point.

THE AESTHETIC

The aesthetic was built from the ground up in natural materials. The dinner table was set directly on red earth, dressed in raw linen left to pool and gather rather than smoothed flat. Cascading raffia, tied to each chair, swept to the ground. Centrepieces formed organic sculptural shapes from dried raffia, threaded with bleached branches and amber orchids, the only true colour in a palette of white and natural fibre. Chrome plates caught the light beside simple ceramic ones. The bar was constructed that day from clay, mud and sand, and as the sun warmed it, natural cracks began to form across its surface. The reception arrangement followed the same logic: earthy ceramic vessels, stacked flatbreads, olives and charcuterie, arranged on white linen with small linen lampshades on brass stands glowing softly among the food. Abundant, but considered.

THE FASHION

For the ceremony, Alexandra wore Eva Lendel. She had walked into the first bridal store in Cape Town, tried on a single dress, and stopped looking. She continued the search anyway, travelling as far as Johannesburg, before returning to the same gown. "It felt less like a choice," she says, "and more like a confirmation." The dress was clean, classical, devoid of lace or ornament. Her brief to herself had been simple from the beginning: not to look like a version of a bride, but like herself, on the most significant day of her life.

As light fell, the property began to transform. Linen sheets and surfaces across the grounds carried black-and-white projections, footage of Alexandra and Jan layered with footage of Alexandra's mother, creating a visual narrative that moved through the space in real time. Music shifted across the night, with different DJs ushering the day from the grounded calm of dinner into something more expressive and alive. And then the mirror box, which had sat covered in the field all day, reflecting the trees and mountains around it, was revealed. A structure built entirely of mirrors, open to the sky, filled with disco balls. When it opened, the atmosphere changed completely. The night had become what it was always meant to be.