Following on from my previous post, our engagement story, see here, is obviously the next step in our story - our wedding!
We were engaged for 18 months before we got married, which should be plenty of time to organise a wedding - right? It still felt like a last minute rush and I wish I could say it went off without a hitch. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case, we chose the 17 of December 2011 which just so happened to be the worst Summer New Zealand had in 100 years. So, basically it poured down the whole month and our wedding day was no exception!
Because we are both country people we really wanted to get married somewhere that we both loved and what better place to get married on Tom's family farm, it's such a beautiful place with a beautiful outlook and a place that we both are privileged enough to call home. The aim was to get married in the garden but luckily we had a back up in the form of an old wool shed which was converted into a makeshift ceremony space. With the help of both of our families, it was cleaned out, de-cobwebbed and decorated - and transformed!
Our photographer is the same one who has done all our shoots, Dan Mason Photography, he's amazing! If you're getting married, I would highly recommend him.
The details...
Our photographer is the same one who has done all our shoots, Dan Mason Photography, he's amazing! If you're getting married, I would highly recommend him.
The details...
The colour palette was a mix of pastel colours and cream.
The Reception was held in a hay barn with a marquee lining, bunting decorated the top and cake tables. Lanterns were used as centrepieces, jars filled with roses in varying shades and burlap as table runners. The favours were jars of homemade lemon curd and strawberry jam painstakingly made by hubby's Mum.
My dress was an Essence design satin, fitted fishtail gown with buttons down the back and bling front and back, from Alma J Bridal Boutique. I also wore a long full length veil and sparkly champagne coloured heels from Chinese Laundry.
The cake unfortunately didn't quite survive it's trip and broke in a few places but was luckily salvaged by the amazing catering team.
The Bridesmaids consisted of my little sister and two really close friends. They wore a pale pink, knee length dress belted at the waist.
The night before the wedding my whole family and bridesmaids stayed at a boutique hotel in Warkworth.
Tom and his groomsmen wore charcoal grey suits, from a suit hire company that I won't mention on here as I don't want to promote them, with a white vest, for Tom, and silver vests for the boys and ties in matching colours - they looked so smart!
The morning of the wedding brought torrential downpours and by the time I walked down to the garden my dress was a muddied mess, but my favourite part of the whole day had to be our ceremony. It was so personal to us, my Grandmother was the celebrant who officiated the ceremony which I wrote by hand. Both Tom and I wrote our own vows and not an eye in the place remained dry.
Because of the rain it affected how easily we negotiated our way around for bridal party photo's, the farm tracks were so bogged down with made it made things bit difficult. The rain also prevented us from spending the time getting photo's and it started to rain about and hour or so after we started. We still got some awesome pictures, our photographer was so created and managed to make the most of the location and the weather.
I've always been big into horses, I've been riding for 17 years, I even worked with them for several years as well so I knew I wanted to incorporate them somehow. I didn't have my own horse at the time so a good friend of mine graciously provided her gorgeous steed for the photo's. Ridge was a star with model good looks!
Even though the weather was crappy, we still had an amazing time! We made the most of it and at the end of the day it was just a minor detail in an otherwise incredible day to remember.
I think I may have gone a bit overboard with the pics in this post but it was so hard to choose and was great to look back and think about what and amazing day we had.
I can't believe it's been over three years since we got married, time flies so quickly! So, the next post coming up is our first anniversary shoot!
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