Did you ever see a wedding as pretty as this one?! From the paper poms, the delicate blooms, the pastel crockery and the flamingos, prepare to lose your shit just a little bit…
Monika and Mike were married in the Hazelbrook Gardens in the Blue Mountains, Australia. The bride wore a vintage dress, which she found in her friend’s attic!
“I am an artist and so wanted our wedding to reflect the style and palette of my work, said the bride. “I paint in a delicate and restricted pastel palette of translucent watercolours, and one of my main painting series’ was titled of lace and moss. It depicted delicate girls dressed in pastel silks with flowers in their hair, reclining in mansions lost in the woods, with vines and ivy creeping through abandoned windows.”
“To reflect this, I chose a strict pastel and pale floral theme, painting the invites with pressed flowers and watercolour hand-lettering. In the invite we asked all our guests to please keep to the colour-code when selecting their outfits, and avoid dark shades like navy or black. I wanted the day to be very artistic and bohemian, and selected our décor and props to suit a relaxed and romantic atmosphere.”
The couple really wanted the day to be reminiscent of a soft romantic daydream, like a scene from a Sofia Coppola film. “We had paper lanterns and garlands hanging from the trees, and turned the hills-hoist into a Moroccan-style pastel tent, with colourful rugs, throws and cushions for guests to lounge on. Tiny silk roses were tied with shreds of lace as decorative touches, and guests were given paper cups filled with pastel confetti to throw, creating the perfect confetti carpet for photos afterwards.”
“One of my favourite things was that instead of a traditional guestbook we asked guests to contribute a paragraph each to a short story imagining The Adventures of Mike and Monika”, she continued. “Needless to say reading through it was hilarious… let’s just say we have some pretty crazy adventures lined up ahead of us, including space travel!”
“I also loved my walk down the ‘aisle’. I was led down the garden path by my brother, and chose Will you still love me by Lana Del Rey to accompany us. Two of my best friends read excerpts from poems, and my brother had prepared a small speech that brought tears to my eyes that I had to fight to keep back! We stood under an arch covered in ferns and leaves, and I couldn’t have wished for anything more in those moments.”
Being a creative and artist herself, the bride wanted as much of her wedding to be handmade as possible. “In the months leading up to the big day I would host craft-nights with my friends and have them cutting tissue-paper garlands, making bunting and folding paper pom-poms for me”, she explained. “We painted glass jars mint-green that we arranged roses and sprigs of wildflowers in. I thrifted wooden frames and placed a sheet of watercolour card in each. Guests were allowed to paint and draw on the day, and we received some beautiful artworks that are all now hanging on our walls.”
“We spent less than $5000 on the wedding and our photographer was our biggest expense. We didn’t want to scrimp on this so we would always be able to remember our day in perfect detail. We had a lot of help from our dearest friends donating props and supplies though, including all of the beautiful pastel and vintage floral china. Friends brought over vintage vases and beautiful mint-green ceramic vessels on the day for us to arrange flowers in. This saved us having to hire props or scour thrift shops for them. My dress was an amazing find too: I had my heart set on a lovely dress by an Australian designer, but one evening when exploring the attic of an artist friend we found this exquisite lace dress in exactly the romantic bohemian style I had been dreaming of. It fit like a glove – it was the attic dress of my dreams!”
