Destination Wedding Dani & Koce

Wedding in Bulgaria

Our first destination wedding was a trip to Bulgaria to film our good friends Dani & Koce. Because they wanted both Film and Photographs I had to ask fellow photographer, colleague and friend Helder Silva from Portugal to join me in this endeavour. I for sure had never been to Bulgaria and neither did Helder, so this was really an adventure on it’s own. To add to the that I decided to go minimal on the gear and only took my 35mm lens with me alongside the Canon 5D Mark III… We arrived in Sofia and it’s really an amazing city to see because of the huge mountain next to it, it was like we had arrived in a movie scene. Koce (the groom) picked us up with a friend and we still had to travel 3 hours to Haskovo, the city Dani and Koce are from. During our trip we really did get a sense of Bulgaria, what a beautiful country, and we hadn’t seen nothing yet. It’s always fun travelling with a friend because we laughed our heads off seeing all the cultural differences that we came across, for example what programs there were on tv, hilarious stuff. After a briefing from Dani (the bride) on how the traditions worked over there we were pretty confident we would do a good job but it wouldn’t come easy. First of all most people didn’t know us and also the language barrier wasn’t going to help either. I must say I was very intrigued by all the traditional rituals going on and was trying my best to capture everything. Luckily I had some help from one of the guys who drove us around so we could make it in time to every moment. There was dancing on the streets (lots and lots of dancing) lots of drinking and food off course. I must say I had never seen so many rituals in a wedding in one day and I’ve seen a lot of weddings in my life. Koce had to break in the house of the bride, after that he had to find her shoe and finally for the shoe to fit he had to keep giving money to his beautiful bride, Dani… I can’t describe all the details but you can get an idea from the pics below… Let me say this was a full day and that at the end both Helder and I were pretty tired. Also Martina, Dani and Koce’s daughter, was sick at the time so it must have been hard for them to let go and enjoy the day but she was being well taken care of and luckily all turned out well. The next day our friends took us on a tour to visit Greece and other amazing places in Bulgaria and it was magnificent, what a beautiful country. I would love to go back some time and explore those beautiful mountains but till then I will cherish the memory of this beautiful wedding and the newly weds ! Thanks Dani & Koce for inviting us to your beautiful day!