Julie & Kees met for the very first time in the spring of 2014 in Leiden, a city in the Netherlands where they were both students at the time.

As fate would have it, their paths cross on a night out with friends.
Kees falls instantly in love with Julie – it’s love at first sight.
Julie, on the other hand, takes longer to be sure of her feelings.
After a few months, they meet again, and have been together for ten years.

Together they share many passions, such as travel, cooking, good wine, nature, sport… and their two cats!

As they told me from the outset, they form a complementary couple, in which naturalness and spontaneity prevail: Julie is a little more anxious and indecisive by nature, while Kees brings serenity and perspective.
They are the driving force behind their respective projects, and I was particularly touched to see that they don’t hesitate to express mutual pride in each other’s achievements and successes.

They feel as though they’ve grown up together, moving from student life to working life, achieving many milestones together.
In particular, they backpacked across Asia for three months right after graduating!

They then decided to move to Luxembourg, where Kees, of Dutch origin, found his first job.
Uprooting, loneliness, doubts, the COVID-19 pandemic: this first year in Luxembourg was not all plain sailing for the couple, who emerged stronger and more solid than ever.

So they recently decided to buy their first apartment, and will be moving in right after their wedding.

We can’t end this article without mentioning Kees’s superb proposal during an Italian getaway on the Amalfi coast… A surprise proposal for Julie, who only learns of their destination once they arrive at the airport.
She’s convinced that Kees has planned a weekend for her birthday.
On the rooftop terrace of the hotel where the two were staying, with the ocean as far as the eye could see, Kees had printed out a hundred snapshots of them, got down on one knee, and asked his lifelong partner to become his wife.
The following day, they had the chance to sail along the coast before a final dinner in a restaurant nestled in the hollow of a rock to bring this exceptional moment to a fitting close.

I had the privilege of accompanying Julie & Kees on August 3, 2024 for their secular wedding celebrated in the Château d’Art-sur-Meurthe in Lorraine, an intimate wedding in a very small group (surrounded by around forty of their closest friends and family), placed under the sign of multiculturalism and sharing…