Catering to their Desires

For 31-year-old Eulalia Velez and 38-year-old Nils Kuenz, the road to last year’s August 1st “I do’s” started with a horse.

“I started to work for his family’s company [Great Events Group], and we had a horse show to do,” remembers Velez. “He had a horse, and he invited me to ride it, and the rest is history.”

Nine months later, Kuenz and Velez were engaged.

“It was beautifully simple,” Velez says, softly. “We were together, and he told me, ‘You should check your purse.’ That’s when I saw the little bag, and pulled the box out. I knew what it was. He told me to open it and he said, ‘See, that’s so you can’t run anymore.’”

With ring firmly on finger, planning for the wedding started nearly immediately and quickly became a family affair — Velez’s soon-to-be sister-in-law, Michelle, and mother-in-law, Monica, pulled de facto wedding planner duty for the next 15 months.

“I never knew weddings had so many details,” laughs Velez. “If it wasn’t for [Michelle and Monica], there wouldn’t have been a wedding.”

One of the biggest hurdles came via the search for the bride’s dress.

“I looked and looked and looked, and couldn’t find anything,” says Velez. “I didn’t want a traditional white dress, so we finally found someone who had enough patience with me to custom make my dress.”

The result was a one-of-a-kind, couture-inspired, bejeweled peach silk charmeuse gown fit for the pages of a fashion magazine. “I always wanted an open-backed dress, and lots of crystals. Something that said ‘wow,’ and that’s what
I got,” Velez says.

With the bride’s dress setting the scene, a humdrum and sparkle-free wedding was simply not an option. The order of the day? The F word — fun.

“The only rule was everyone was going to have to enjoy themselves,” Kuenz says about their celebration philosophy. “Because [at Great Events] we’re caterers, we do about 100 weddings a year. Some of them are quite boring because they choose to focus on more serious elements, rather than the fun ones.

“I said, no way are we going to have a boring wedding.”

In keeping with an inspired and anti-tedious agenda, the couple kept the ceremony to a breezy 25 minutes. It was held at St. James Chapel, a charmingly intimate church just outside the city, and was performed by a friend of the groom’s family.

“I remember the bride was almost bursting with excitement during the ceremony waiting to hear the words of finally being husband and wife, and waiting for her first married kiss,” says the couple’s photographer, Brian Buchsdruecker. “You always see happiness and love on wedding days, but bursting with excitement is not always as common.”

The elation carried over into the tented ranch reception, where crystal-encrusted chandeliers lit up the opulent purple-and-gold party-lounge atmosphere.

“We had little couches, small bistro tables and stand-up bar tables so people could just sit and hang out wherever,” says Kuenz.

And eat wherever and whatever, too. The 130 guests were treated to a lively reception that was not only a celebration of the couple, but also of the family business. Guests munched on hors d’oeuvres and miniature entrees prepared on-site by chefs at several action stations.

“We really wanted to showcase that you can have fun with food,” says Kuenz. “And with three or four bites per plate, guests could just go and try something new every few bites.”

The more-is-more concept spilled over into the cake cutting, which included four miniature wedding cakes, as well as a full-service dessert station.

The dance followed and unfolded as part of what Kuenz calls a sly “shock and awe” operation.

“In the beginning, it was a pianist, playing some light music,” says Kuenz. “And we draped off half the stage, so people thought it was just going to be the pianist. We didn’t want people to know there was a band. As our first dance was coming to a close, he started playing faster and faster, incorporating more instruments, and then we dropped the curtains and the rest of the band was revealed. It was like an, ‘It’s party time now’ announcement.”

The 11-piece swing band played well past midnight, and kept the dance floor filled by playing continuous Latin-American favourites — catering to the bride’s Colombian roots, and the wishes of the many South American guests.

“We left at 1:30 a.m., and they were still playing,” remembers Kuenz. “People were having such a great time; they didn’t want to stop.”

And that included the bride. “For me, it was like a dream,” says Velez, admitting she, too, danced the night away. “It was simply amazing because everyone had fun and, for me, that is what a wedding is supposed to be about — being happy and celebrating with us.

“I couldn’t have imagined a more perfect day.”