My job is to love weddings. To pour over gorgeous details, soak in heartwarming moments and cry tears of pure happiness on a daily basis. I am so lucky… and I adore it. And on days like today? Well, I LOVE it in an all caps kind of way. Because this, my friends, is one of those weddings that just screams “awesome” with fabulous paper goods from Daisy and Jack, beautiful florals from Passionate Flowers and one crazy beautiful image after another from Hannah Millerick. See them all here.
From the Bride… Nick and I met at work – a classic office romance! We were friends before we became a couple which has worked out great. We no longer work together and we will always have that friendship as our original foundation.
For our engagement, Nick surprised me on what I thought was a non-eventful weekend trip down to Melbourne from Brisbane. Our flight down was delayed and at the time I was surprised this seemed to disturb Nick; he wouldn’t normally be overly concerned if something on the weekend was running late. Arriving late we were presented with cheeky smiles from hotel concierge and a dozen gorgeous red roses in our hotel room. Still, it did not click! Starting to unpack my things, I was puzzled why he had organised such a nice hotel for a short weekend trip, what I was going to do with a dozen red roses in Melbourne and only when Nick dropped to his knee with a sparkling ring did it all start making sense! The answer, after my initial shock, was ‘yes’ of course!
The main focus of our wedding was ensuring that all of our close friends and family had a fantastic time helping us celebrate the beginning of the next chapter in our lives. That was important to us not only because of the friendship and love they give us, but also because of the effort they took to come to our wedding, a destination wedding in the Northern Rivers hinterland of NSW. As my family is from Adelaide, South Australia, and Nick’s family is from Brisbane, Queensland and friends are scattered around the continent (and the world), everyone had to travel.
We set up a WordPress blog as our ‘save the date’, researched accommodation and holiday activities for our guests and updated details for the wedding there. It was fun to start the theming for the wedding on the blog. Ultimately our wedding invitations (which we loved) were sorted by Daisy and Jack.
A tip for the newly engaged: choose your wedding venue (ceremony and reception) and the rest will flow from there. That was the hardest decision for us, but afterwards everything fitted in so well I am glad we didn’t try to do it the other way around.
We had the wedding ceremony in a wooden church in a little town called Eureka. That phrase ‘Eureka, I have found it’, so aptly fitted how we felt for each other, so it was appropriate we also felt that way when we first saw the church when planning the wedding.
The setting of the church amongst lush green rolling hills, bushland and farmland became one of the main themes for the wedding: greenery, country, relaxed, handpicked, rustic and loved. The church was surrounded by large old trees and green, green grass. Passionate Flowers helped decorate the hall, church and reception venue reflecting those themes. Our favourite from the church and hall decorations was a large floral heart and ‘just married’ bunting handmade by Nick’s parents. Being such a small church, it only had services once a fortnight and Nick’s family minister from Brisbane made the big effort to travel to the wedding for the day to conduct the service. That meant a lot to Nick and his family who had close family ties going back many years.
A double decker bus transported guests around for the day – something we hoped would provide a little bit of entertainment for everyone. My father and I arrived in a Lincoln Continental with suicide doors. It was so nice to spend that time driving to the ceremony with my Dad – just the two of us.
Wedding dress shopping with my Mum, Nick’s mother and my gorgeous bridesmaids was one of the best parts of planning for the wedding. I wore a dress designed by Wendy Makin and I really enjoyed being able to pick different parts of dresses I liked and put them together. I opted for a cathedral length veil and a beautiful headpiece I found in Melbourne for the reception.
After the ceremony, we had an afternoon tea in the church hall, with a two-piece acoustic duo from Australian band The Lucky Wonders play for our guests. We cut the cake in the church hall, which was a beautiful creation from Panache Cakes. The bride had spotted a design while planning for the wedding that reflected our natural and green theme, that was not too bright, and Sally created a delicious rendition of that.
After mingling with guests a little bit, we were showered with dried rose petals, gathered from gardens across South Australia by my mother’s family friend. These were available for guests in green polka dot paper bags – polka dots were a side theme of the wedding as the groomsmen also wore polka dot ties! We then ran off with the bridal party for photos with Hannah Millerick. Hannah’s passion and creativity shone through for us that day and was one of the highlights. We would recommend her in a heartbeat.
The reception was at one of our favourite restaurants, Harvest. The setting, atmosphere and food matched exactly what we wanted. The staff at Harvest were fabulous and went out of their way leading up to the wedding, on the day and afterwards. Imogen at Passionate Flowers helped create the wooden table settings the bride had yearned for. We made name tags for our guests, which involved a fun session with the bride’s family hand-stamping everyone’s names with individual letter stamps and ink pads. We also collected and displayed wedding photos from our families, including pictures of our loved ones who were no longer able to share the day with us. Instead of bomboniere, we donated money for mosquito nets to Against Malaria. We had an almost full moon rise as an extra special present that evening.
After dinner, we moved down to the old bakery at Harvest for dancing to a few sets by The Lucky Wonders. We had our first official dance as husband and wife to Stevie Wonder’s ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered’. We hadn’t practiced at all, but it went fine and was lots of fun! Fun memories from the end of the night are of almost everyone up on the dance floor, my little cousins Zoe and Angus having fun on the dance floor, too, those special moments of dancing with my Dad, an intricate conga line, father of the bride and father of the groom dancing together with their matching socks and The Lucky Wonders cover of Daryl Braithwaite’s ‘The Horses’, our special request.
We caught the bus back to Byron with everyone, enjoying the disco mix.
Photographer: Hannah Millerick Photographer | Floral Design: Passion@flowers Byron Bay | Wedding Cake: Hale Koa phineas Estate | Invitations: Daisy and Jack | Reception Venue: Harvest | Shoes: Alan Pinkus | Rings: Canturi | Makeup: Costal Brides - Jo | Band: The Lucky Wonders | Groomsmen Ties: Herringbone Sydney | Groom's Attire: D Urban | Transportation: Classic Wedding Cars | Bomboniere: Against Malaria | Brides Earrings: Lannah Dunn | Bridesmaid’s Dresses: Leonard St | Double Decker Bus: The Magic Bus | Flower Girl’s Dress: Lucy Clothing | Groom's Tie: Canali | Page Boy Bow Tie: Handmade High St | Reception Headpiece: Anna Campbell | Wedding Dress and Veil: Wendy Makin