Alison and Jeremy’s wedding took place in Melbourne, They had a non-denominational ceremony in a church and their reception was held at Shebeen, a super cool bar on Manchester Lane. Their day was super colourful and nearly all the décor was DIYed by the couple themselves. “We didn’t really have a conscious theme,” explained the bride. “We just put together a wedding that represented us. Throughout the planning process we questioned a lot of the usual traditions and culled elements of a traditional wedding that didn’t have meaning for us.”
“It never occurred to us that we were doing things differently to the norm, but we probably haven’t been to many traditional weddings. Some things that raised a few eyebrows when we were trying to explain our ideas were: not adopting colour scheme, giving the bridesmaids free range regarding their attire (the girls opted for a theme and to wear dresses) and having mixed gender bridal parties. We had a a non denominational ceremony in a christian chapel and our song choices included Nick Cave and Bliss’n’ Eso. We also took on the task of catering the canapés after the ceremony ourselves and had the bridal party serve the drinks and canapés afterwards.”
“One of the conscious deviations we made from a traditional wedding was to hold our reception at Shebeen, a Melbourne bar that is a social enterprise”, she continued. “For us, our wedding was a very large purchase and we wanted to have that purchase support an ethical business and all of Shebeen’s profits go to charities in developing countries.”
“When we first started planning I starting crafting which was really fun. I began by following online tutorials but we ended up with décor that I eventually made up myself. The personalised bunting was hand cut (out of paper doilies). We already had a big jar collection at home and jars underpinned most of our décor. The flowers in the chapel were hung on the pews with string attached to jars, and the table flowers sat in jar vases.”
“The décor at Shebeen has a jungle/ tropical theme which reflects the food and beer served as well as the charities the bars profits go to. The table centrepieces we made tied into this theme and were jars with safari/jungle/ocean animals inside them with led lights attached. The ocean themed ones were filled with water. For cards we had a treasure chest and it was decorated with chocolate coins (that the guests could take home), gold chains, and jewels.”
“Whilst we undertook a number of DIY projects we prioritised our budget to ensure we could afford to pay professionals to undertake details we couldn’t do ourselves”, Alison concluded. “For example, the photographer Lilli from I Got You Babe Photography was the first professional we booked once we set our wedding date as we had seen her work previously and fell in love with her photographs. Also the bouquet, corsages, hair flowers and boutonnières were commissioned by Petra at Pomp and Splendour and they were absolutely stunning!”
