There is a moment at every wedding the couple later cannot describe, because they never saw it. It is the drinks reception before dinner - the part that gets planned the longest and experienced the least. Spanish designer Laura Corsini, founder of the fashion brand Bimani, four years on names it as the one thing she would change.

A dress from 1958 and a hundred hours of work to bring it back

She married on 30 July 2022 in Comillas, Cantabria - the place where they met and where he proposed in October 2021. The ceremony was held at the church of San Adrian in Ruiseñada.

She walked into the church in her grandmother Carmina's wedding dress, sewn in 1958. Cream, round neckline, French sleeves, A-line cut. Designer Fatima Gonzalez put over a hundred hours of work into restoring it. Corsini says it is timeless and that it brought her grandmother close to her that evening.

A hundred hours of restoration is not sentimentality. It is a decision to spend more effort on something old than something new would have cost - which is the opposite of everything the wedding industry sells.

A second dress for dinner, a third for dancing

For the reception she wore a dress of natural silk and French tulle with more than twelve layers, into which an old family mantilla was woven. She describes it as a cut she felt very comfortable in. For dancing - a dress from her own brand, with sequins and a large organza bow on the bodice.

The jewellery came from her other grandmother - earrings and a brooch. The ring, an emerald surrounded by diamonds, was designed by her husband and his mother.

The bouquet her father-in-law gathered that same morning

The loveliest detail in the whole story costs nothing. The bouquet was made by her father-in-law Jesus Ibañez, a landscape architect, on the morning of the wedding - he went out into a field and cut every branch of fern and eucalyptus with his own hands. Corsini says she would put everything in those hands again.

The same man arranged the marquee for the reception. The music was covered by the family: her brother Nicolas played piano as she entered the church, and her husband Javier performed with his band at the reception.

The advice worth more than everything else

Asked what she would do differently, she answers concretely: she did not enjoy the aperitif as much as she wanted to. Every detail had been prepared with care, and she did not even get to see how it all turned out. Between the photographs and greeting the guests, dinner arrived without her having tasted a bite. Since then she recommends this to every young couple: write it down and genuinely enjoy that last half hour.

For a wedding, that is everything worth learning from somebody else's experience. The rest - the marquee, the flowers, the guests, the catering - will be kept by the photographs. Those thirty minutes are in no photograph at all, and they are precisely the ones nobody remembers.