Excitement! Our wedding photos finally arrived the other week. I didn’t end up sharing many on social media around the time of the wedding because to be honest we were having so much fun we forgot to take any!!
But now they’re here, and I’ve pulled together a round up of our day over three epic posts; starting with Part 1: Getting Ready!
As a bit of background, Oz proposed on my birthday in June 2014. We weren’t in a huge rush to get married, but we also knew we’d have to give people a fair bit of notice as people were coming from overseas. When we were in NZ visiting his family in January 2015 they were asking us when we were going to get married, so we knew we’d have to set a date once we got home.
We chose our venue pretty quickly and easily. We spend a lot of time on Bruny Island, which is just south of Hobart, and there is a cafe on the Northern tip of the island we go to a lot.
We knew we wanted a relaxed and casual wedding, so we went to talk to Kris and Ray at Jetty Cafe, and they were brilliant! We picked the 27 Feb because it was a year away and was the only weekend in Feb/March that wasn’t a long weekend or Easter (when the island is super busy!).
Around the same time a few people told me I should look at booking a photographer too asap as they all booked out 12-18 months in advance. I kind of didn’t believe them, but thought I’d touch base with some photographers to see what the deal was.
If i learnt one thing throughout this wedding planning process, it’s get onto your photographer people! As soon as you’ve got your date sorted, or even before you’ve got your date picked, touch base with the photographers you want to work with!
Oz and I ended up approaching four photographers we would have been happy to work with, and they were all booked out, and had been for a couple of months! I was seriously starting to panic, thinking we’d end up with a photos we didn’t like, when luckily (thank you, Universe!) the lovely Cherrie from Acoma, who had been the first photographer we’d approached, emailed us to say she’d had a cancellation on our date. Phewph!
So, with the date set, the venue confirmed and our photographer sorted a year out we patted ourselves on the back….and then promptly did nothing else wedding-related for a good six months!
You see, we’d started to renovate our house (as in, rip the insides out and start again, basically), a project we thought would take 4-5 months and ended up taking 10 months. The whole time we were working on the house I kept saying “I’ll worry about the wedding once we’re finished the house.”
So apart from sending out a Save the Date, not much more went into wedding planning until October 2015, which gave us about 4 months to plan the rest of the wedding!
Luckily it all came together pretty smoothly, and we found fantastic suppliers that really understood us and our vibe.
Our theme for the wedding was fun and relaxed. That was pretty much it. We really just wanted everyone to have a good time.
Because the wedding was on an island, everyone had to stay the night, so we wanted people to feel like they were having a mini-holiday, even if they lived locally.
Getting Ready – The Day Begins!
On the morning of the wedding I travelled into Hobart with my dad, mum and sister to get my hair and make-up done.
We decided not to have a bridal party, so it was just the three of us to get our hair and make-up done.
The lovely Ilana from The House of Hats made my love heart head piece. I struggled for ages to find something that would go with my dress, and that matched my fun theme and reflected my personality. When I saw this online I knew it would be perfect!
After hair and make up we headed back out to Bruny Island. We had (obligatory!) bubbles in the car as we were waiting for the ferry to come!!
I got dropped back at our accommodation. Oz and I stayed together the night before the wedding, got ready together and arrived at the wedding together.
I’m so glad we did this, I know we both really enjoyed the quiet time we got together on the morning of the wedding, plus getting ready together calmed our nerves.
I LOVE my dress!! When I started to think about wedding dresses I really struggled to picture myself in anything that I would feel comfortable and like myself in. So when I found a picture of this GOLD SPARKLE dress online I was immediately obsessed and knew it was the one for me.
The Bridal Atelier was the only stockist of the designer (Sarah Seven) in Melbourne, so when I was there for a trip I went into the shop to try it on. They didn’t have the exact dress but they had the same style in a different fabric. Luckily when I tried it on it suited me and I felt lovely…I was so relieved because I honestly had no idea what I was going to do if this dress hadn’t worked out.
My dancing shoes are from Seed Heritage, and my gold wings and Oz’s lightening strikes are from Cotton On.
Mrs Florist made me my awesome flower crown, which I wore when I changed into my dancing frock + shoes. The potential for me to poke someone in the eye on the dance floor with my love hearts was high! This was a much safer option, and by the end of the night I think everyone had worn the flower crown at some stage.
My Hola! clutch, which I am in LOVE with, is from Natalie Alamein – I only ordered it three days before the wedding and I was worried about it arriving in time – the lovely Isabel was SO helpful, she posted my bag express post and kept me updated the whole time until it arrived.
Our wedding invitations were done by the gorgeous, talented and SO LOVELY Alisha from Love Indigo Creative, who I came across online via the #BEBH community.
Oz and I had an idea in our head of what we wanted, but we found it hard to translate that idea onto paper/into words. But Alisha totally got us. She took elements of all the things we love – including her ridiculously cute watercolours of our fur-kids who feature on the invite. I can’t wait to get Alisha to do a custom portrait illustration of one of our wedding photos!
So, once we were all frocked up and ready to roll it was time to get this show on the road!
I’ll be back tomorrow with all the details from the ceremony + photos.
Hope you’ve enjoyed this peek into the first part of our day.
Any questions let me know in the comments below!
L xx