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

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.”

The couple opted for candlelight over flowers.

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Dramatic bunches of palm leaves added to the low-lit romantic setting.

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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.”

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.

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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.