Joanne and Janik’s Elegant Sri Lanka Wedding

Joanne & Janik

I love to see weddings around the world – the cultural differences are fascinating to me and when captured as beautifully as the wedding of Joanne and Janik in Sri Lanka, it’s hard to resist sharing! Captured by Xiss Photography , Joanne and Janik married in Melbourne and held another wedding in Sri Lanka – so as many of their family and friends could celebrate with them.

Joanne tells how they met. “We’re both engineers and happened to work on the same project back in 2006.”

Of their photographer, Joanne tells, “I stumbled across James’ work online whilst trying to find a venue for our Australian wedding. Both Janik and I loved the candid nature of his work; his photos really seemed to tell a story. When we met James we both felt very comfortable with him and knew that we wanted him to capture our wedding, I think the fact that he likes whisky helped too (Janik’s a bit of a whisky connoisseur!)”

The saris were all white with gold detailing – the bride, Joanne and the bridesmaid’s were all made by Purnima Abeyratne.

Joanne and Janik met before the ceremony for photographs.

The ceremony and reception were held at Gale Face Hotel, Colombo. Joanne tells, “We love some of the beautiful colonial style architecture in Sri Lanka so the Galle Face hotel in Colombo was an obvious choice. Janik’s parents were also married there so that was another motivator for us.”

For the processional, Joanne chose, “A traditional Rwandan bridal song named Araje sung by a local Sri Lankan choir “.

Joanne loved, “The look on Janik’s grandmother’s face throughout the night, she was just so happy and really enjoyed herself and honouring our parents by blending important customs from both our cultures.”

Joanne describes the day as, “A relaxed and elegant cross cultural day with an atmosphere of old world charm in the tropics!”

The wedding was planned by Yasmin Cader, Joanne noting, “Because we live in Australia, a lot of the wedding planning was done via numerous emails between myself and our wedding planner, Yasmin Cader. It was really special to see everything come together on the day.”

Joanne remarks, “We loved having friends and family travel from all over the world to help us celebrate, we had friends and family from Australia, New Zealand, Rwandan, the US, Poland, the UK and of course Sri Lanka.”

For their first dance, Joanne remembers, “We performed a choreographed routine to Ray Charles’ Hallelujah then broke into a Michael Jackson dance to ‘The way you make me feel’.”  The couple took lessons in Melbourne with Sanushka Ranasinghe of The Secret Garden Of Dance.

Congratulations on your wedding Joanne and Janik! Thank you for sharing your wedding with us! Thank you also to Xiss Photography for sharing the wedding with us!