“I have always dreamt of getting married here one day; it truly was a dream come true;” Michaela Wissén on her Swedish wedding to Andreas Berglind

With a tapestry as a wedding theme, you know there is nothing ordinary about the couple.

“About 30 years ago, when my mother completely restored the house, she found pieces of an old tapestry,” says travel and lifestyle photographer Michaela Wissén. “With the help of an artist, she was magically able to replicate this tapestry in one of the rooms. I have always been very drawn to those walls, so we decided to use the tapestry as a theme for our wedding.” Michaela married Andreas Berglind, CMO at Swedish property management company, Nabo, in June 2022; the couple recently celebrated their one-year anniversary and the birth of their son, Otto.

The tapestry, depicting swallows and flowers on a green background, was used in the invitations, as a backdrop during the wedding dinner, and on menus. “I loved how personal this became, those who knew, knew,” says Wissén. Swallows, however, did not lead the way regarding the proposal. Instead, Wissén followed rose petals. “Andreas brought me out to the archipelago in Stockholm for the weekend, a place close to his heart. When we arrived at the island, he stepped aside to “check on something” – I had no idea what he was doing,” says Wissén. “A few minutes later, he called me down to the ocean to meet him.

As I started making my way down, I saw that there were rose petals sporadically spread out on the path. When I heard the music, especially the choice of song, I knew right away. It was the most beautiful moment. We spent the rest of the day on the cliff in the sun, skinny dipping and drinking champagne.”

Alongside the tapestry, the couple wanted to portray their lives throughout their wedding as best they could. Wissén grew up in the Swedish countryside and outside of New York, her beau spent his most recent years in Stockholm and Berlin, and together they spent a lot of time in Mallorca. “In order to portray all of these different lifestyles, we used the different elements of the night, the dinner, the dancing portion of the night, and the food,” says Wissén. “The dinner was spent in a huge glass tent. As it was the beginning of June, the brightest day of the year in Sweden, it really felt like you were sitting in the middle of nature. Everywhere you looked, there were flowers and greenery. In the middle of the glass tent, we had a small round stage with a piano on top; this would be where our friends Charlie and Camilla would perform throughout the dinner.”

Later in the night, the nightclub scene in the estate’s large barn (and rehearsal dinner location) took over, and it was decorated like a New York speak-easy with paella, a nod to the couple’s love of Mallorca, as a late-night snack.

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When deciding on a wedding location, it was a no-brainer – Sweden. “We got married in the one place I have always considered home; our family estate in the countryside in Sweden,” says Wissén. “The property has been in the family for hundreds of years, and because I have lived most my life outside of Sweden, this really has been the one place I have always been able to call home.” The couple exchanged vows in a white church about 500 metres from the home. “It’s the most perfect little church to get married in. I have always dreamt of getting married here one day; it truly was a dream come true,” she says. Wissén’s father passed away when she was 19 (her two uncles gave a touching speech about him at the wedding dinner), so her brother walked her down the aisle and said it was one of the day’s highlights.

“Andreas and I had also written personal vows to one another, and I had rehearsed them about a thousand times,” she says. “In Sweden, reading your own vows during the ceremony isn’t traditional. However, we really wanted the ceremony to feel as personal as we could. I think our vows set the tone for the whole wedding day – they came from the bottom of our hearts, filled with laughs, tears, and so much love. We also had a ton of music during our ceremony, including singing from my talented cousin, Julia, which also lightened up the mood and created a space of joy right from the start.”

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Once the wedding ceremony was over, the guests walked among the bright yellow canola fields to the estate. “We were so lucky with the weather; the sun was shining bright, which is always a gamble in Sweden,” she says.

One thing Wissén wasn’t gambling on were her wedding outfits, and she managed to squeeze in a trip to Paris with her mother and bridesmaids to try on dresses. She found her perfect pre-dinner dress at Lanvin. “I wore a white mini dress with a beautiful cape-effect and voluminous ruffled hem – it’s very special. I paired the dress with a white leather cape-style coat, also from Lanvin, and I wore my favourite shoe brand, Sania D’mina, at the dinner and throughout the weekend.” For accessories, Wissén paired her Lanvin with a white Hermes Maximors bag with gold details and vintage Celine pearl earrings; alongside her engagement ring, she wore her mother’s wedding band. The groom wore a dark blue suit which he paired with his grandfather’s leather watch and a colourful handkerchief passed down from his father.

The bride’s wedding gown, in cream-white silk, was made by Swedish designer Fadi El Khoury. “I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect outcome; he created the dress of my dreams,” she says. “I wanted my dress to be simple yet sophisticated, elegant yet careless. The top part of the dress was held up by a corset with incredible ruffled detailing. I loved the slight off-the-shoulder look that we went for,” she says. Her veil, also made by Fadi, had embroidered flowers resembling lilies, which were also the flowers Wissén walked down the aisle carrying. She wore a pair of her mother’s dainty pearl earrings and ivory pearl sling-backs by Sania D’mina.

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“When it was time to change outfits for the nightclub portion of the night, I threw on a feather mini dress by Cult Gaia. For this dress, Sania had custom-made the most insane white pearl boots for me to wear. I paired this outfit with a chunky chain necklace from Nootka and my favourite Nootka hoops and rings.”

The groom wore a black-tie suit with a green (to match the tapestry) lining and added the couple’s monogram to the inside of the suit. “He showed me after we had said our I do’s, and I thought it was such a sweet touch,” says Wissén.

The wedding menu (vegetarian or pescatarian) consisted of local-only ingredients. “We chose to have four smaller dishes instead of three, and as the area is known for potatoes, we had a potato dish. To top it all off, we had a little chocolate truffle filled with a tjinuskisås sauce, a Finnish caramel sauce, representing my Finish background,” says Wissén. Throughout the dinner, the couple’s friends, Camilla and Charlie, performed, and the newlyweds’ first dance was At Last which Camilla sang, closing the dinner with I’ve Had the Time of My Life where all the guests stood up and danced.

While Wissén and Berglind could perhaps have the only wedding in history where “everything went super smoothly,” their night ended on a little unexpected detail, which is a family tradition. “When we eventually decided to go to bed at about 5.30am, we got to our bedroom to a perfectly made bed, says Wissén. “When we lifted the covers up, there were five small mice in our bed – I was terrified as I thought they were real, but they turned out to be stuffed mice that my mother had placed there as a little prank! We’ll definitely be keeping those for the next generation of newlyweds!”

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