Jaime and Carla could not decide where to wed in 2015. Their family friends were coming from six counties and the chosen month was November. The decision was for a Moroccan wedding. ‘Why a Morocco wedding?’, Jamie’s father wanted to know, as he had never been there before. Indeed he had never been to North Africa.
‘Weddings in Morocco somehow gather a romance to them’ said Jaime. ‘Whatever the time of year, whatever the day of the week a wedding in Morocco has spice, glamour, style as well as romance. Carla agreed and persuaded her slightly doubting parents to come with her on a scouting trip in February 2015.
They were all enchanted with Marrakech, the souks, the riads, the vitality of Jemma el Fna. They took a trip up into the Atlas and visited the start of the Toukbal trekking area. They lunched beside mountain streams and picked fruit from the trees. Just two hours from their home in Central Spain, they were in a new world of waterfalls, green mountainsides and a welcoming mountain population.
The family returned that afternoon to Marrakech and started to search for venues in the area. All were convinced that this was the place for a memorable wedding event.
First they tied various different hotels in the Marrakech area. There were 5 star, even 6 or more star establishments. But it was a little too big and impersonal for their wants. Their ideal was to have a Moroccan wedding in a place that they could take over as if it were their own home, but away from home. They want to greet the guests as if they were greeting them in their own garden in Toledo.
They visited many different public and private venues all over the enchanting city of Marrakech, its Medina and the surrounding countryside.
The problem that they came up against in choosing a place in the Medina itself was the possibility of noise as Jaime and Carla imagined their guests dancing throughout the night to get the very best out of a wedding in Morocco. Within the Medina there were many fine riads with central courtyards capable of being the venue for such a Moroccan wedding but there would have been noise restrictions as they could not expect the neighbours to stay up to listen to their dance music.
The family were beginning to wonder if what had so quickly become the dream of all of them would be realised at all. Then they met Arne Larsson in the Medina, whose family own a truly wonderful dar in the Palmeraie. The Palmeraie is the green palmed area mainly to the north of the Medina, where so many great houses have been built. It is also where they have laid out many of Morocco’s famous golf courses using the water the comes off the High Atlas after the snows.
In the glorious Palmeraie the buildings are much more widespread, the dars (Moroccan manor houses) much more secluded and the atmosphere more relaxed.
Arne Larsson showed them something that could have been created in their most extravagant dreams; the 5 hectare Dar JL estate. No outsider would know what lies behind the terra cotta walls of Dar JL. They entered through the great sliding gates into an orange grove or many orange, clementine, lemon and other citrus groves, the trees weighed down with fruit.
There was no sign for a while of any building. It was a driveway through the citrus; then from above the tees a high wall was visible with a deep narrow opening and narrow wooden doors fully 10 metre (33ft high). They climbed the steps to the door; their eyes now level with the op branches of the citrus. On the right a sunken grove of more exotic trees, on the left 15 metre swaying palms.
They crossed threshold to the inner Dar JL walking over stepping stones through a lotus flower covered bath and out into the open court yard. In front was a vista of water and shrubbery as far as they could see. The first sight is a 30 metre (100 ft.) narrow blue lake. Is it a swimming pool, a water feature, a river, they wonder? The answer is the first two certainly and the third almost.
In front there is an olive garden stretching into the distance; on the right Moroccan lounge retreats from the sun and further to the right what seems to be a theatrical stage.
On the left the fine features of Dar Jennat, the biggest of the three accommodation dars in the Dar JL domain. It has a master suite with its own swimming pool, sauna room, his and hers resting niches and private garden, three more ensuite double bedrooms, each with its own style created by owner Lisen from Sweden, with the help of her Norwegian and Moroccan architects.
The only sign of other dars is a grand looking tower visible over the top of more olive trees and a sunburst of bougainvillea. Peeking over the top is La Tour, which has two more ensuite bedrooms, a sitting room and a mirador from which to lie back and view the grand High Atlas in their shining snow to the East.
The dar that completes the complex that is Dar JL the weddings in Morocco venue is Dar Limoon, hidden temporarily behind its own high palms. The grand 4-bedroom dar surrounds its own 20-metre keyhole of cupola shaped pool and looks out over more glorious garden to a Bedouin tent.
Having found all his, they had only found a small part of this domain. There are 3 more hectares covered with secret gardens, paths, organic vegetable plantations, retreats, prayer houses, tennis court, donkey sanctuary, even a small golf green and practice area. They could walk the orchards and groves and lose themselves. And then without warning come upon the morocco wedding party place. This is yet another pool, this time 15 x 20 metres with fountains and palms, overseen by a minstrel’s balcony. Jaime and Carla knew immediately that this could be the site of a magnificent banquet and /or dance.
They knew that their wedding in Morocco would be here at Dar JL. This was the place that had been created for their own Morocco wedding, the one that they would remember all their lives. Carla could already see herself escorted the ceremony on the arm of her father walking along a carpet through the orange and olive groves to where the waiting guests were seated shaded from the hot Moroccan sun by the foliage around them. The colours of the bougainvillea, the hibiscus, the cyclamen climbing the 100-year-old pines and ancient protected palms provide a brilliant contrast to the white wedding gown and her father’s pastel suit. The music of the Moroccan wedding band starts slowly and rises to greet the wedding couple. The guests wonder if they have seen a more romantic setting.
And within just 8 months that is exactly what happened. They invited their guests. Some wondered at first whether they could travel far for a Morocco wedding. Some rushed at the chance. Very few refused and none were disappointed.
It was as Jaime and Clara had hoped.
They arrived on a Thursday in November. Their families with them and all were housed in the three Dar JL dars. Other guests found raids and hotels nearby and in the Medina (only 10 minutes by car).
On Friday they had a family dinner overlooking the long pool and then took drinks n the bower pavilion in the orange grove, which was also Clara’s choice for the ceremony itself.
On Saturday all the guests arrived for the ceremony. And it was even finer than they had expected as the whole Dar JL was decorated with hundreds of lanterns and as the sun went down the light seemed actually to increase as these lanterns twinkled best wishes to the newly married couple who led their guests to an open air wedding feast that combined the flavours of Morocco with the traditions of Spanish cuisine, the special request of Carla’s mother, herself a renowned Spanish gastronome.
The dinner took three hours and it was close to midnight before the guests started to rise in response to the band that played the bridal song and led the dancers into the next day in a grandeur of candlelight, bells, strings and drums. The music floated out into the Palmeraie moonlight and up to the dark blue bowl of the Marrakech night. No one really remembered well when they had left or whether they had just laid themselves in the downy and dewy grass to soak up the scents of Dar JL while sleeping.
The next day there were all back at Dar JL for the brunch, the relaxed celebration at which so many new friendships were made and so many memories indelibly created. For some this was the highlight of the weekend. Even Clara herself was heard to say that the day after was the best as she had been so nerves on the wedding day itself. No the nerves were gone and the relaxation began. Some groups played children’s games in the olive groves, some explored their glorious surroundings, some even played some tennis; many were swimming in the two pools.
As the morning became afternoon, they moved to the magnificent brunch buffet, created by the Dar JL chef and his team. Foods were lain on palms, on rocks, on branches. They were fanned by muslin waving in the breeze and the guests rested on ornate Moroccan cushions with the feeling that they would never be able to rise again after such a surfeit and accompanied by some of the Moroccan wine that were new to many of the Spanish and other guests.
Jaime and Clara slipped away together and remembered that day 8 months before when they had arrived in Marrakech with no real idea of what they would find and wondered whether they had been foolish to dream of weddings in Morocco. They knew now that they had not; that instead they had created with the help of Dar JL and its wonderful team an event, a weekend, a party, a memory that was really the very highlight , the pinnancle of both their lives up till then.
Together they thought that if they can do this so well, then they can do more and other things and go further as a married couple. The Dar JL wedding in Morocco became that moment the foundation of their marriage.
They were delighted that they had agreed to stay in the country for their honeymoon. They left the next day across the famous Tiz n Test pass to Taroudant , explored the edge of the great Sahara desert at Ouzazarte. They took a two-day Land Rover excursion, in the care of a local guide and cook, into the desert itself and slept under he stars, remembering the nights at Dar JL. They read the books of Paul Bowles and Isabelle Eberhardt and imagined themselves as early 20th Century desert explorers reaching out into the desert to places that may not even yet have been drawn or photographed.
They returned for a week on the sea at Essouria, where the seagulls welcome relaxed visitors and the whole town is a market place.
Wedding buffet at Dar JL in Morocco
Wedding in Morocco
