This isn’t your ordinary love story. In fact, it’s extraordinary. Thanks to grandparent’s playing matchmaker, and then the couple’s mothers following suite, the tale continues with this classic wedding by Milk & Honey Photography. I love the timeless Jodie McGregor Flowers and overall flawless taste of this event. There is so much more to see in the full gallery here.
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From the Bride… Our grandparents, and therefore mothers, became friends back in Hungary after the war and stayed in close contact after immigrating to Australia, despite moving to separate cities. Ben’s grandmother set up my parents, and the mothers, having remained close, were bridesmaids to each other. So we officially met as babies. We were family friends as children and then during high school became best friends – speaking on the phone three times a week. We remained best friends through university, but there was never any physical attraction for either of us. Then something changed in 2005, and we realised we had feelings for each other. We finally got together in 2006 and haven’t looked back. Our wedding was a family affair – simple, classic and fun.
It took place at my family synagogue, and we were married by my family Rabbi who had performed my bat mitzvah and married my brother – so there was a strong sense of history. We chose Sergeants Mess for the reception because we wanted somewhere with a view, and we needed somewhere that could fit all our guests! We loved the chandeliers and the and different spaces in the venue (the red room in particular), plus we’d been to a wedding at the Tea Room Gunners Barracks and had loved the food too. We dug up old photos of our grandparents spending time together, our mums hanging out as teenagers and of us playing together as kids and put them in frames just inside the front entrance of the reception to show our journey. The table names were all Hungarian dishes we’ve enjoyed growing up as kids with Hungarian mothers.
Despite months of practice with our twin nieces of getting them to slowly walk down the aisle carrying flowers, on the day one of them was a bit frightened by all the people and she ended up bolting down the aisle – and being twins, the other one ran straight down after her. We also had a total of seven speeches to get through on the night, so we had given everyone strict time limits (knowing full well they’d probably run over). However, the one person we forgot to give a time limit to ended up speaking for 25 minutes — the groom! There was a strong sense of connection throughout the whole wedding – we later discovered that Ben’s relatives who had come out from the US for the wedding ran into the couple whose wedding they had met at 25 years ago. Knowing how much I like playing board games, our emcees put together a game for our guests to play during the evening – Trivial Pursuit: The Suzy & Ben Wedding Edition. Throughout the evening they asked questions about Ben and me; a correct answer yielded “a piece of the pie,” which when all put together formed a picture of Ben and me. Our band was amazing! They picked the mood of what we wanted the night to be perfectly – and ensured we had lots of dancing. The best example of how amazing they were was that when we had met up with the band the week before the wedding to finalise music we happened to mention that we had contemplated us walking in to the reception to the theme music from Star Wars, but that we disregarded it for various reasons. We’d forgotten all about it on the day but when the first hora was in full swing, the band surprised us by playing the theme music in the hora!
Wedding Photography: Milk & Honey Photography / Ceremony: Emanuel Synagogue in Woollahra, New South Wales / Reception: Sergeants Mess in Mosman, New South Wales / Wedding Planning: The Bride & Groom / Floral Design: Jodie McGregor Flowers / Wedding Stationery: Wills Quills / Music: The Next Best Thing / Transportation: Classic Bridal Cars / Wedding Dress: Pallas “Gai” / Bride’s Shoes: Panache / Bride’s Earrings: A Gift from the Groom / Bridesmaids’ Dresses: Sami & Sita / Men’s Suits: Hugo Boss / Grooms Shoes: Aquila