The canopy at the centre of Six Senses Southern Dunes is held in place by about 13,000 ropes, 92.5 kilometres of them in all, according to the Foster + Partners team that designed it. The resort stands among the dunes near Umluj, a short distance inland from Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast, and its wedding information names that canopy, the Oasis, as the first of four ceremony settings. A couple choosing it is choosing a structure whose shade was modelled before the first guest arrived.
A canopy designed around its shadow
The Oasis is the welcoming area and central garden of the resort, planted with local species. In a paper for the 2024 symposium of the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures, four Foster + Partners authors describe it as four types of petal, each made of vertical steel columns and curved ring beams joined by steel cables and ropes. The architects set a target of 70 percent shade, which they judged enough for guests and for the plants beneath, and that target fixed the density and thickness of the ropes, laid in two layers on every petal.
Each rope has a steel core 4 centimetres across and is tensioned to 4 kilonewtons, and each petal carries 28 structural cables between ring beam and column. The paper treats the shadow the ropes cast, which shifts with the time of day and the year, as part of the design in its own right.
The same paper traces this kind of form to the string models that the French mathematicians Gaspard Monge and Théodore Olivier built in the nineteenth century to teach geometry, and to the stringed sculptures of Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Naum Gabo. The resort gives the cultural reference differently: Foster + Partners, it says, drew on the Nabataean civilisation of the Incense Route, giving the villas roofs that echo Bedouin tents and dunes. The paper dates the completion to 2023 and says the structures were planned and sited to minimise environmental impact. The lightweight petals shelter the welcoming area and many of the resort’s other amenities, with panoramic views of the mountains and the desert beyond.
The settings, and how guests move between them
Two scales of wedding are described for the resort. A small ceremony takes place in the courtyard of a pool villa, followed by a private dinner at the chef’s table or under the stars. A larger celebration takes the whole resort: a full buyout of all 76 keys and every dining venue for up to 350 guests, with the Oasis as the ceremony setting and Al Sarab, the restaurant at the highest point of the resort, for a reception at sunset. The open desert is the fourth setting. In the venue’s account the reception at Al Sarab is timed for the hour when the mountains turn gold, and the Hijaz Mountains are visible from every villa and from the Oasis.
The layout makes the sequence easy to read. The Oasis sits at the centre, with the Wadi rooms around it, and the 40 pool villas lie along the dune ridgeline beyond. Merkaz, the brew bar, is at the heart of the Oasis, and Al Sarab is higher up. A wedding that begins under the canopy can therefore move up to Al Sarab for dinner while guests in the Wadi rooms, which are steps from the Oasis pool, Al Sarab and the spa, stay close to both. Villa guests are further out along the ridgeline, and how the resort moves them between settings is a question for the events team.
The season shapes the day. High season runs from October to March, when temperatures are mild; from April to September the resort offers indoor and evening activities. National and religious holidays are celebrated at the resort, which a couple choosing a date should weigh.
Dinner without alcohol
The resort is entirely alcohol-free. Al Sarab serves a degustation of Saudi and Middle Eastern dishes with non-alcoholic versions of classic cocktails, Merkaz offers Arabic tapas by day and themed dinners in the evening, and the cooking school doubles as a chef’s table where the executive chef or sous chef hosts private dinners.
A loom at the resort
Craft belongs to the stay as well. The resort works with women weavers from the village of Al Harra, who show and sell sadu weaving in its Artisan Pods, and sadu weaving is among the workshops offered to guests, alongside oud music and Arabic drumming, with the Earth Lab as the workshop space. UNESCO inscribed the traditional weaving of Al Sadu on its list of intangible cultural heritage in December 2020, on a joint nomination from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. It names older Bedouin women as the main bearers of the skill, passed on mostly within the household.
Staying around the Oasis
The 76 keys include 40 pool villas, each with a plunge pool. The Wadi rooms measure 60 square metres, the Wadi Suite 90 with a separate living room and dining area, and the Sunset Reserve, a four-bedroom villa, sleeps eight; The Retreat, of three bedrooms and 250 square metres, is described for families and wedding groups. Guests walk to the spa along a path shaded by woven canopies, and the guest programme includes Cinema Under the Stars, firepit gatherings, bird watching and stargazing. The resort has surveyed the valley it stands in, Wadi Khuff, and has adopted the Arabian red fox, a native of the surrounding mountains, as its symbol of conservation.
Umluj, on the coast, is described by the resort as a place of coral reefs where snorkellers find turtles and dugongs, and the wider Red Sea region has volcanic craters, mountains and archaeological sites. Guests who arrive for a wedding can add days to see them.
Planning a Red Sea wedding
No wedding price and no seated capacity for any single setting has been made public, so ask for both in writing, along with the basis of the 350 figure. The only capacities given belong to the three meeting rooms beside the Oasis, which take 10, 16 and 20 people, or up to 40 guests when joined. Six Senses describes the room beside reception as a space that turns to drinks receptions and intimate private dinners as the sun sinks, and the largest as a low-seated drinks reception by day followed by a sit-down dinner at night. Legal marriages in Saudi Arabia go through official government channels, Six Senses says, and its events team advises overseas couples on the process and on symbolic ceremonies; many couples register at home.
Red Sea International Airport is 45 to 60 minutes away by road, and private transfers from there or from Yanbu Airport must be booked in advance for an extra charge. The resort has a prayer room.
The resort suits couples who want a ceremony beneath a structure with a documented design story, in an alcohol-free Saudi setting. The questions to settle first are capacity, price and the legal marriage. See the Six Senses Southern Dunes profile for the rooms and the gallery, browse weddings in Saudi Arabia, or read the Edits on Six Senses Laamu and Six Senses Kaplankaya.
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