Katja & Jeremy's Besac Fortress Wedding on Skadar Lake
Venue: Besac Fortress (Besac Tower), Virpazar, Skadar Lake
Guests: 32
Date: 08 July 2026
Couple from: California, USA
Format: Boat tour and winery the day before · symbolic ceremony on the tower · dinner on the lower terrace
Our role: full wedding planning · design, décor and florals · furniture and equipment from our own warehouses · vendor sourcing and coordination · guest logistics · day-of management
Opening
Almost everyone who gets married in Montenegro gets married on the coast. It's the first thing couples look at and usually the last — the Bay of Kotor and overall the seaside.
Katja and Jeremy flew in from California and went the other way. Forty minutes inland, to a restored Ottoman-era fortress on a hill above Skadar Lake, with the largest lake in southern Europe below them and the mountains of Crmnica behind. Thirty-two people in total, including the two of them.
They kept the coast for afterwards.
Why the lake
We'll say this plainly because it's the whole reason this wedding worked: they weren't choosing a backdrop, they were choosing a place to spend three days in.
Skadar Lake is a national park. It has water lilies and pelicans and fishing villages and an island fortress in the middle of it, and just behind it sits Crmnica, which has been making wine for a very long time. Almost none of that is visible from a hotel terrace in Budva.
So the wedding wasn't a day dropped into a country. It was the middle of a stay — the lake first, the fortress second, and the coast afterwards on their own time, once the formal part was done and they could look at it properly.
The day before — the lake and the wine
At ten in the morning on the seventh, a private boat left Virpazar with their group on it. Two hours out on the water: the birdwatching stretches, the old fortress of Lesendro sitting alone in the lake, snacks and drinks on board. Back to the village around noon.
At one, Monte Grande winery, for a couple of hours over three local wines and Montenegrin food to go with them.
The dress code we wrote on the programme for that day was casual summer, lake chic, which is roughly the tone of the whole trip.
Besac Fortress
Besac sits just above Virpazar on a hill, restored stone, solid walls, a courtyard, and a tower you climb to reach the highest point. From up there the view is a full circle, and the fortress faces west — which means the sun sets across the lake in front of you, straight into cocktail hour.
We privatised it. Five hours of exclusive use, nobody up there but their group.
It's a magnificent place to get married and an awkward place to build a wedding, which is usually the same sentence. It's a monument adapted for events, not a venue built for them. Guests came up by coach from Sutomore, leaving at quarter past four. The fortress ran its own kitchen and bar and lent its heritage white plates to the table. Almost everything else came up the hill with us.
Three zones on one hill
The whole design was about moving people through the fortress rather than sitting them in it.
The reception sat on the wooden deck below the ceremony terrace: six tall bar tables in white linen with small fresh arrangements on each, a welcome mirror at the entrance so the photographs started the moment guests walked in, and a board with the evening's timeline on it so nobody had to ask what happened next. The fortress gave every guest a glass of champagne on arrival — their own gift, not ours.
The ceremony was on the top of the tower at half past five. A retro-framed arch on the wooden decking, dressed with a waterfall of flowers spilling down onto the stone, and chairs set for all thirty. Jeremy went up first. The bride came in on her father's arm. Jeremy's brother spoke during the ceremony. At the end, the front row was handed rose petals to throw as the two of them walked back down — and no bouquet toss, by request.
The dinner moved down to the lower terrace at half past seven, under a sky that was still going orange. One continuous S-shaped table — not rounds, not a straight run — which is a shape we use when a group is small enough to be one conversation and we don't want to break it into eight. Fresh flowers and candles down the length of it, the fortress's white plates, coloured napkins layered in for contrast.
The part that doesn't photograph
Four separate allergy accommodations ran through that dinner.
One guest has an anaphylactic peanut and legume allergy severe enough that shared kitchen equipment is a risk. We worked it through with the fortress kitchen and built a verified safe zone at the table with a dedicated server assigned to it, and took peanuts off the buffet entirely. Three more guests — shellfish, gluten, and a barley and kiwi allergy — were seated and served against their own specific requirements.
None of them had to ask twice, or check, or eat beforehand. That was the point.
The same afternoon: a barber booked for the groom and his groomsmen, a make-up artist across two days and two locations, coach transport arranged with a local operator, cigars set out on trays with a lighter and cutters for the waiters to carry round, and a photo corner built into the fortress wall with white curtains falling from the stone.
The evening
Sunset cocktail hour ran at the fortress entrance from six: watermelon and feta laid out like a checkerboard, burrata with good bread, local cheese and meats. Guests recorded short video messages for the couple while the photographer and videographer alternated so that nobody was pulled away from their own party for long.
First dance at seven. Speeches and the buffet after — ribeye, gnocchi in four cheeses, Montenegrin appetisers. Dancing from half past nine against the castle wall, sparklers before ten, and the cake at ten.
At midnight the last dance ended and the coach took everyone back down to the coast.
The team
Venue & Catering: Besac Fortress, Virpazar
Photography: Nikola Pejović
Videography: Luka Đerković
Hair & make-up: Marina Kuznetcova
Music: DJ Nick Saxx
Planning, coordination, design, florals, linen, equipment, guest transport and day-of management: ESBI Weddings & Events
Closing
Skadar Lake is forty minutes from the sea and hardly anyone gets married there. Not because it isn't beautiful — because a fortress on a hill has none of the things a wedding needs, and somebody has to bring all of them up.
If you've fallen for somewhere that shouldn't work, that's usually where we do our best work.
