A Villa Nikčević Wedding in the Bay of Kotor — Yeva & Myhajlo's Two Ceremonies

Venue: Villa Nikčević, Dobrota, Bay of Kotor, Montenegro

Guests: 19, including the couple

Date: 18 July 2026

Couple from: Ukraine

Format: symbolic ceremony on the pier · Orthodox ceremony in Kotor Old Town · dinner over the water · party by the pool

Our role: full wedding planning · design, décor and florals · furniture, lighting and equipment from our own warehouses · vendor sourcing and coordination · on-the-day management

Opening

Two ceremonies, in two places, on one afternoon.

Yeva and Myhajlo wanted a symbolic ceremony at the villa and an Orthodox ceremony in Kotor's Old Town, which meant the day had to work around a priest's calendar rather than ours. Everything else — the transport, the boat, the hour we set the flowers — was built around moving nineteen people between those two rooms without anybody feeling rushed.

The couple

They came to us in December 2025, seven months out, with the picture already formed: a romantic, colourful summer wedding. Hydrangeas, warm light, candles, round tables under white linen, natural wooden chairs, a rustic bar with a cocktail bartender. Not a pared-back coastal palette. Colour.

They were also deciding between two villas, and they wanted to stand in both before signing anything. That's the right instinct and we never argue with it — but 18 July is the epicentre of the Montenegrin season, and the photographers, musicians and makeup artists worth having are booked long before a couple has finished deliberating. So we split the sequence: the venue decision stayed on their timeline, and the vendors were locked in parallel, so nothing good disappeared while they thought.

The villa, and the winter problem

Villa Nikčević sits on the water in the Bay of Kotor, with a private pier running out from the property and a beach below it.

Yeva asked to view it in December. The honest answer was that the owners winter in Serbia and wouldn't be back until mid-January — and that they would open the house early if the couple insisted.

She chose to wait. That decision shaped the whole build. It meant we couldn't measure until February, which meant the dinner layout stayed provisional far longer than we normally allow. We walked the property, filmed every room and every station, and rebuilt the plan twice: once when the villa suggested dinner by the stairs and the round tables simply would not sit there, and again when the pier turned out to be the better room.

Where the day could and couldn't go

Yeva's reason for choosing this villa was the sea, so she wanted as much of the day on the pier as possible — including the party.

The party was the one thing we had to move. Sound carries a very long way over flat water, and there are neighbours around that bay; amplified music on the pier would have travelled across the whole inlet. So we said no to that and rebuilt around it: ceremony and dinner out on the water, cocktail hour under the covered terrace, DJ and dancing back by the pool, first dance in the courtyard where the columns wouldn't be in the way.

Four zones, one property, and a sequence that let people move rather than sit.

What we designed and built

The pier has three existing support poles standing along it. Those became the ceremony.

Rather than bring in an arch and let the dock's own structure fight it, we wrapped the existing poles in dense floral columns and set a square floral arch at the end of the pier, framing nothing but water and the mountains on the far shore. The palette ran hot — coral, apricot, orange, magenta, soft lilac — roses, gerberas, lisianthus, packed tight enough to read as solid colour from the back row. The volume was large enough that the flowers were brought in on a special import order and we put a larger florist team on the build.

Because the poles carried the ceremony, the lighting pillars we'd planned for that area were freed up and moved to the dinner setting instead — the kind of reallocation that's only possible when the décor, the flowers and the inventory all belong to the same team.

For dinner on the pier: round tables, white floor-length linen, wooden chairs, charger plates with personalised menus, and a small bottle of rakija tied with an olive branch at every setting. Three crystal chandeliers hung above the tables, with two tables deliberately left clear so the effect stayed uneven rather than symmetrical. Fairy lights ran overhead in two runs, one over the dining area and one over the courtyard.

Every candle on the property that night was electric. That was Yeva's decision, and a good one: long dresses, a narrow pier, and a lot of movement after dark.

When dinner ended, the chandeliers came down and went back up beside the pool for the after-party. Our team was on site the entire day, moving arrangements as the celebration moved.

The day

Hair and makeup started at half past six in the morning.

The symbolic ceremony ran at two on the pier, with prosecco and congratulations straight afterwards. At half past three a bus took everyone to Kotor Old Town for the Orthodox ceremony at St Nicholas Church at four, with a violinist playing.

From the church, the two of them left by speedboat for their photographs — out along the bay, past Perast, champagne on the deck — while the guests were driven back for cocktail hour under the covered terrace.

At six they came back in by water, in front of everyone.

Dinner on the pier, speeches, live music. First dance at eight in the courtyard.

Then we held the fireworks. Sunset that night was 20:20, and firing on schedule would have wasted them into a bright sky, so we moved the giant tiramisu show and the fireworks to 21:20 and fired them from a boat positioned in front of the pier, into full dark.

Outdoor music stopped at midnight, in line with local noise limits. The party carried on inside until three.

The next day was the villa's private beach, the pool, and a long buffet lunch — the part of a three-day wedding guests remember as fondly as the wedding itself, and the reason we push couples toward places they can hold for more than one night.

The team

Venue: Villa Nikčević, Bay of Kotor

Photography & film: Studio M Weddings

Bride's hair & makeup: Marina Kuznetcova

Officiant & DJ: Vadim Magilevskii

Planning, design, décor, florals, inventory and production: ESBI Weddings & Events