UK trip: wedding Jamie and Mila.

On Saturday the 25th of July I went to Great Britain, for the wedding of Jamie and Mila. Mila de Wit has been a model of MAX Models since she was 15 years old. Her father Peer is a photographer in Breda and her mother Lilian had sent us holiday pictures of Mila and her younger sister Thalia. We both signed them in, but finally it was Mila who had a fulltime modeling career. Her first trip was to Capri with photographer Marc de Groot, at age 16. I remember that it was the first time she was traveling alone. We had to arrange all things like a driver from the airport to the location and kept in contact every day. After her first three years working in Holland for Elle magazine and many other great jobs, IMG signed her in worldwide. With her colleague and friend Stef van der Laan (at that time also a MAX Models girl) she travelled from Athens to Sydney to Paris and finally started living and fulltime modeling in New York.

Mila and Stef together on the first Dutch ELLE cover with two girls

For us Mila was very special. First of all MAX Models stayed being her Mother Agent, even after all those years in New York and just a few jobs per year in Holland. And she is so sweet, honest and has a positive character.

And … she likes drinking lots of beers at carnaval. So a few times I sent her pictures through WhatsApp of her favorite bar in Breda during carnaval and she replied: “”I am soooooo jealous, wish I was there right now!”

When I asked her booker at IMG New York: “Why do New York clients keep on booking Mila?” he answered: “Because Mila is a cool kid. She comes in the studio and is relaxed right away, talks about everything and not only about all the jobs she did (like a lot of models do) and when she is in front of the camera she is like a chameleon. A day working with Mila is fun, so they book her back!”

Seven years ago Mila fell in love with Jamie Burke, at that time a rockstar who had done a Calvin Klein-campaign for which he wrote and sang “We are one”. We were a bit worried, because he was the ex-boyfriend of Kate Moss, Sienna Miller and Lindsay Lohan. Would Mila be his next victory? But from Mila, who is a bit wild too, we only heard great stories.

After three years their great chemistry was seen by the French clothes brand The Kooples and they did a campaign together. In the video I saw Mila singing for the first time:

And they were booked again two years later for The Kooples. Hear what Jaimy and Mila say about the love for each other:

So a marriage was the logical next step. We (my former-business partner Inger Vendelmans and head booker Veerle Gorter and I) went to Great Britain for the wedding, because Jaimie’s family lives there and the newly weds want to move to the UK in the near future. Inger booked a nice Bed & Breakfast in the county of Surrey. We flew at 9 AM from Rotterdam Airport with VLM Airlines and had to go with the metro and train to Godalming, arriving around 12.30 PM.

Our Bed & Breakfast, a lovely cottage in Surrey

The Living

Fire place at the living

Veerle’s bedroom

Our bathroom

My room

My romantic bed

After we arrived we went for an English tea at the little village and back to our rooms we had to dress up, because we were expected at 3 PM and the ceremony would start at 4 PM. In Holland I had a shave at “Schorem” and I had decided to only keep my moustache. The dress code was “Wild and Wonderful” so I wore my Floris van Bommel croco-shoes, a newly bought suit and shirt of the brand Sand and pink socks from HEMA and a pink flower corsage from H&M.

And what to give to the newly weds? Inger and I decided that we would make a lot of pictures during the wedding and that we would choose one where I would do my artwork on. So we gave the frame with an example of how it was going to look.

Mirror mirror …

Dresscode Wild and Wonderful

We decided to give the newly weds a picture of the wedding with my artwork

When we arrived at the wedding location, Hambledon House, Mila’s mother Lilian introduced us to a few people. It was great to see her sister Thalia again, what a beautiful woman. And for the first time I met Mila’s brother Olaf and his new boyfriend. Good to see our ex-colleagues Nicolas from IMG Paris and Luiz from IMG New York.

Hambledon House

Heineken beer, tulips and hagelslag at the entrance

Beautiful garden of Hambledon House

We met our IMG colleagues

Around 4 PM we had to move to the lake, which was a walk through the beautiful gardens.

Jaimie was nervously waiting in his pink suit with his best man Sam Branson in blue. Mila arrived with her father Peer in a boat. So romantic! Jamie’s sister Lucy read from The Prophet. They were married by a friend, so the speech was very personal. And what I liked most were the wedding vowels in which Jamie promised to grow old with Mila and that she would be the mother of his kids and Mila said that Jamie was her great love but also her biggest friend. And she ended with: “Ik hou van jou” in Dutch, which made me cry right away.

And then there was of course champagne and time to congratulate the newly weds!

The dinner was located in a big garden tent. We ate couscous, a lovely curry, and salads of red beet and mango. The desert was made by Jamie’s mother: chocolate cookie cake with thick whipped cream and strawberry saus. During the dinner we got an emotional speech by Peer, Mila’s father and by Sam Branson, Jamie’s best man and friend since they were 4 years old.

The dinner was followed by a great party in a Moroccan style tent with performance of Bruno Wizard from the punk-new wave band “The Homosexuals” and a DJ. Of course Jamie sang along with Bruno.

In the early hours of the morning Mila appeared in a glitter-dress which she had borrowed from a gogo dancer at DC10 Ibiza and Jaimy was wearing a leopard legging.

And my perfect weekend had to end the next morning with … an English breakfast!