The Bride Wore an Ostrich-Feather Skirt and a Corset for Her Colorful Three-Day Wedding in Seville
The first time Alexandra Dorda and Stefan Marcu met, it was just business. In 2018, Alexandra worked at a private equity fund in Warsaw that was considering an investment into a fleet of rail cargo wagons. They invited Stefan’s firm to pitch for the commercial due diligence contract, and they shook hands in the sterile “Conference Room A.” Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t the setting for a romantic spark.
Neither was the second time Alexandra and Stefan met—when Alexandra’s fund once again contacted Stefan’s firm about an investment in his home country of Romania. Yet, the two ended up keeping in touch. A professional connection eventually turned into a personal one. “As Stefan says, he didn’t win either due diligence project, but he did get a wife,” Alexandra says, laughing.
In 2022, Stefan proposed under the stars at the Amanjena in Marrakech, Morocco. Alexandra, now the founder of Kasama Rum and C.M.O of her family’s vodka brand Chopin, admits she knew it was coming. “I meticulously plot out each of our trips, so it was difficult to take me by surprise,” she says. As a result, she didn’t even need a full second before saying yes.
The two threw a four-day wedding in Seville, Spain, in June 2023, planned as well as designed by Matthew Robbins and Luis Otoya of Robbins Otoya. The celebrations began on Thursday, with welcome drinks at Bar Garlochí, which is decorated to resemble the inside of a Catholic Church. The next day, they held a welcome dinner at Palacio de Las Dueñas, a 15th-century Renaissance-style palace with Gothic and Moorish influences. “One of the reasons I fell in love with Palacio de Las Dueñas is that it has elements that remind me of my mother’s native Philippines, like the lush tropical gardens with giant elephant ear plants,” Alexandra says, who wore an ivory Emilia Wickstead dress with red flowers for the occasion.
After a cocktail hour in the gardens that included flamenco dancers handing out carnations (the national flower of Spain), guests sat down for a Kamayan-inspired Filipino dinner served on banana leaves by Chef Jordy Navarra from Manila’s Toyo Eatery, which is officially ranked as the best restaurant in the Philippines. (“He cooks our food with modernity but also such reverence for local ingredients and traditions,” Alexandra says.) They ended their meal with mango desserts by Cédric Grolet from Le Meurice in Paris. “Mangos are my favorite fruit and are a staple in the Philippines, so it was a wonderful way to tie the dessert back to the dinner in an elevated way,” she says. To close out the evening, they held an after-party at Hotel Palacio de Villapanés.
On Saturday, Alexandra and Stefan wed at Casa De Pilatos, a 16th-century Andalusian palace. “I have always found courtyards enchanting, so I knew I wanted to hold my wedding in a series of courtyards. Robbins Otoya suggested we look for venues in Seville, which is a city full of courtyards. When we began searching for locations, one of our planners, Luis Otoya, described the aesthetic we were going for as ‘crumbly’ since we didn’t want the venue to look too perfect,” Alexandra says. “Casa de Pilatos is unassuming from the outside, but my jaw dropped when we walked in and I knew we had found what we were looking for: a stunning palace with many courtyards, lots of color, and the perfect amount of crumble.”
Alexandra wore a Monique Lhullier ostrich-feather ball skirt paired with a strapless corset, as well as a rhinestone-and-pearl veil. As an added statement, she accessorized with diamond-and-emerald drop earrings from Anmol Jewellers in Mumbai.
Her father walked her down the aisle to Pachelbel’s “Canon in D.” She met Stefan, wearing a Sarto Bespoke tuxedo, under a flower arch of bougainvilleas, peonies, and garden roses. Before their ceremony commenced, their officiant Reverend Jim Rooney asked the guests to “mingle.” “Reverend Jim opened the ceremony by asking all of our guests to move across the aisle and to introduce themselves to someone that they didn’t know,” Alexandra explains. “I had never experienced this before and was a bit skeptical at first, but I am so glad that we did it. The mingling gave me and Stefan a brief moment to ourselves, and also it added a warm and convivial atmosphere to the ceremony.”
Instead of traditional vows, the couple instead asked Reverend Jim to share the story of how they met. The ceremony reached its emotional apex when Stefan’s daughter, Lara, joined the couple at the altar. “Lara stood in between us for much of the ceremony. We shared our first kiss as husband and wife with Lara standing in between us and playing with the feathers of my skirt,” Alexandra says. “It was also important to us that she be part of the ceremony as well since this was the moment that the three of us officially became a family.”
After the ceremony, cocktail hour began in the walled garden of Casa de Pilatos. Here, a menu of creative libations took center stage: “Because of our family business, the cocktails were a particularly important part of our festivities. We created 20 signature cocktail recipes for the weekend (each event had distinct cocktails) and trucked a pallet of spirits from Poland. The recipes were created by Chopin’s in-house mixologist, Artur Wawrzyszczak, who is a true genius,” Alexandra says. As the evening grew later, guests wandered in awe into the main courtyard for dinner, where they served a watermelon gazpacho with idiazabal cheese ice cream, lobster salad, and wild sea bass.
A sweet piece de resistance? The couple’s six-foot, two-flavor cake, complete with vodka-infused strawberries by France-based bakery Made in Cake. “I didn’t want a traditional all-white wedding cake, so we added hand-made coral-colored flowers made of rice paper, and frosting squiggles for a bit of extra fun,” says Alexandra.
Then, it was time for the after-party. Alexandra and Stefan converted the former carriage house of Casa de Pilatos into what she describes as a “jungle cathedral” with large banana leaf trees and hundreds of candles. Robbins and Otoya also constructed a bar, meant to resemble the altar at the Chiesa di San Pietro Apostolo church in Bergamo, Italy. “The altar bar was so convincing that quite a few guests thought we were in an actual church,” the bride says. Outside, the couple created a carnival-like market complete with late-night snack stands serving grilled cheese, ice cream, and churros, while the magician Pete Heat played tricks on thrilled guests.
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