Daniel and Keely had lots of different influences for their October wedding. From the bride’s love of jewel tones – reflected in her dress and make up and the bridesmaid outfits, to their mutual love of travel. They even had art deco references in their stationery. It sounds like it shouldn’t work, but it totally does because it was a real reflection of them.
“The inspiration for our wedding was definitely ‘fun’”, said the bride. “We put a lot of effort into making sure that everyone had as much fun as possible. In fact, most of our decisions were made with our guests in mind. We had the ceremony and reception at the same location so that guests didn’t have to drive to another venue and could have a drink or two at the ceremony. We also did our photos beforehand so that our guests didn’t have a big boring break between ceremony and reception. This also meant we got to spend a lot more time with our guests.”
“We organised lawn games for guests”, she continued. “We had archery (which was a huge hit!), badminton, croquet, boccie and giant Jenga (we made it ourselves and painted it in the colours of the wedding). It was great fun for everyone, and we were so happy to have a venue that was really creative and accommodating. They put in so much work to make sure our ideas could be made real and we really wouldn’t have been able to have the wedding we wanted without a unique venue like The Hideaway Retreat.”
“I think really our theme was ‘us’, as obvious as it sounds. We had a mixture of different inspirations because we have a range of different interests. I would say the overall themes were colour (I wanted everything as bright and colourful as possible!), travel (we love travelling, so we decorated a big sepia map with pictures of us all over the world and used a vintage suitcase as a wishing well), games, and vintage art deco (my dress was 1920s inspired, we used a vintage style movie poster instead of paper programs and we kept all the stationary in an art deco style). Sounds like a mish mash of themes when you look at it like that, but it all came together because they’re all things that we love.”
The bride and her grandmother made her incredible wedding dress and headpiece, and her jewellery was all vintage. She had help from family members to make the bridesmaid dresses too!
This wedding was actually full of DIY. Everything from the cake to the flowers and reception décor were homemade. “As much as I possibly could was DIYed” she said. “My wedding dress was handmade by my grandmother and I hand-dyed some old lace to match and then hand beaded the dress myself. It took ages, there are a lot of beads on the back of that dress! But it made the dress so much more special when I finally got to wear it. I also beaded and made my hairpiece. My mum made the two bridesmaids dresses and I made the cravats for my bridesmen.”
“All the decorations were handmade and so were the flower arrangements. I also made a trip to the flower markets so I could make the bouquets. I made the wedding cakes as well, with help from my mum and my best man. We had nine cakes instead of one big one. It was all a lot of work, but I loved the fact that everything at the wedding was so personal.”
One of the biggest considerations for this couple was to not be wasteful. The bride concluded, “We tried to avoid any plastic packaging on things. Our favours were homemade vegan chocolate puddings in recycled glass jars for example. This was why we used a poster as a program instead of lots of bit of paper, most of which would have been left behind and thrown away. For table centrepieces we used potted herbs, which meant we got to keep them and use the herbs rather than throwing away floral centrepieces after they died.”
“We tried to be environmentally conscious where we could. By having the ceremony and reception in the one place we were able to cut down on how people having to drive between places. All the homemade wedding cakes were completely vegan, and we chose vegan foods for a most of the mains too and nobody complained!”
