Photo by Kerry Jeanne

I Come From a Family of Designers

And somehow, I became the one who designs things that last for only a few days

“Kristine was calm, gentle, and effervescent throughout our year of planning - she made the entire journey fun, even from across the world.”
- Nikki & Tarig, Temple House

Design was there long before weddings were

I am the daughter of two architects. people who think in proportion, light and space as naturally as breathing

My grandmother won competitions in traditional Latvian weaving when she was young; we still have her beautiful woollen throws in my mum's house. Later in life she grew flowers. Her arrangements were always the prettiest on the street and her winter wreaths unlike anyone else’s. I helped her from a young age, thoroughly against my will, and I suspect that is where the work ethic comes from.

My uncle worked with ceramics. His sculptures and pottery are still treasured family heirlooms.

My eye comes from all of them: colour and pattern from the textiles and ceramics, a feeling for proportion and space from the architects, and from Latvia itself a taste that runs muted and layered. The love of brave colour is entirely my own - and took me years to trust.

I trained as an interior designer as a mature student in my late twenties. Four years, finished with distinction. I graduated straight into a recession, when design jobs simply did not exist. So in 2013 I started a wedding business instead, with flowers.

It was meant to be a stopgap. It turned out to be the point.

Everything the degree had taught me about reading a room - proportion, light, material, colour, sightlines, how people move through space and why one arrangement feels generous while another feels confused - found its real home in weddings.

Flowers came first

Then styling, because the flowers deserved better tables

Then full design, after one wedding too many where I had built something beautiful and watched a single object from outside the concept undo it.

And finally planning - because I kept standing in gorgeous rooms watching gorgeous weddings be quietly undermined by everything happening between the beautiful moments.

Guests waiting an hour with nothing to do. A band assembling on stage in the middle of dinner. Tables being moved while people sat at them.

Nobody else seemed to mind.

I minded enormously.

So I took on the whole wedding.

My first full planning commission began in 2019 and, after two postponements, was finally celebrated at Gloster House in 2021. The couple trusted me completely with the design. Deep autumn colour ran through the rooms; I dyed linens myself when I couldn't find exactly the shade I wanted; and a colourful gypsophila installation filled the air above the tables.

For the first time, I held everything at once: the design, the space, the suppliers, the logistics and the experience of the day.

It remains one of the most satisfying weddings I have ever created, and it set the standard for everything that followed.

And then the room became a weekend

Designing the spaces wasn't enough for me

I cared about what happened before guests entered them and after they left. I cared that the reveal happened before anyone saw the room being built. That a beautiful dinner wasn’t followed by forty minutes of waiting while a band assembled. That a guest arriving from another country never had to wonder where they were supposed to be.

Eventually I understood that I was applying the same design thinking to the wedding itself.

A wedding has proportion and rhythm too.

It has moments of abundance and moments that need restraint. It needs focal points and breathing space. It needs to guide people instinctively rather than constantly instruct them. And over a destination weekend, it needs an arc.

That is why planning and design became one practice for me.

Thirteen years on, I don't think of a wedding as a collection of beautiful moments. I think about the relationship between them - the arrival, the gathering, the anticipation, the celebration and finally the exhale at the end of the weekend.

My family designs things that last: buildings, textiles, gardens.

I design something that exists for three days and lives in memory for the rest of your life.