The Wedding

The Hubby and I were married on Friday the 13^th. Ominous perhaps? Well we don’t tend to buy too much into superstitions and for us it became one of the luckiest and happiest days of our lives. It was the only day that the venue of our dreams had available in all of summer 2012 so we were quick to take it.

A little background on The Hubby and me. We had already been dating for 7 years before we got engaged and are high school sweet hearts. However because we are both quite traditional, we had decided to wait to live together until we got married. In our early twenties some thought us too young for marriage – but for us we knew it was the right time to make that next great step forward into our future. The Hubby popped the question (completely out of the blue) in early April 2011 and we were suddenly transported into this new and exciting chapter of our lives.

The inspiration for our wedding was simple: I wanted a classic and traditional wedding (lots of white and roses) with a slightly modern twist. It was to be a summer wedding (my favourite season) with lots of fun, laughter and hopefully lasting memories.

In the months after The Hubby and I were engaged I began trawling the internet, magazine and blogs for inspiration. We already had our colour palette in mind: white and smokey purple – but I loved looking through images of wedding to gather new ideas.

Soon after settling on our colours The Hubby felt it may be too wintery for a summer  wedding and suggested the inclusion of lemon to freshen things up a bit. I immediately loved it as it was a way to keep things traditional with touch of something cool.

The next big item – the venue. We only had 9 months to put the wedding together so we knew we needed a venue fast. We spent a day scouting some venues around Melbourne but when we walked into Carousel both our faces lit up. It has the most amazing sweeping views of the Melbourne city, with a huge deck area and a modern reception room.  We had found it and were so overjoyed with our choice (and even secretly love our quirkily horrific wedding date of Friday the 13^th).

Carousel

One of the first things I did was build my inspiration boards – one for the colours and one for the mood. Yes these took me hours but they gave me so much joy and really helped me shape the feel for the overall day.

Colour Board

Inspiration Board

And then the planning really began. You may have noticed the slight obsessive compulsive disorder I have hiding behind many of my posts, and the wedding bought this out in me.  I made a spread sheet outlining every potential aspect of the wedding and built up a very detailed budget (I can thank my work skills for that one).

I won’t bore you with all the details / trials / stresses / joys / hysteria / happiness / effort that it took me to find my amazing group of suppliers but with a bit of hard work I was able to find the best suppliers that really did turn our wedding into everything we dreamed. I truly do need to mention them here for anyone out there needing some wedding help as they were fantastic to me…

• The Venue: Carousel – this has to be one of the most amazing venues Melbourne has to offer. The views of Melbourne over Albert Park Lake are breathtaking and the balcony is striking. The reception room is simple and modern, leaving it as a perfect blank canvas for any wedding. Sarah Polce, my even manager, was a gem. She helped me with so many tricky parts of the wedding and constantly put me at ease regarding the events of the day. She was attentive to all our details (there was a lot), listen to us and translated all of our ideas into the venue. We were lucky to have her creating and running our day…

• Flowers and Decorations: Flower Jar– the ladies at Flower Jar listened closely to our vision for the day and spent a lot of time looking through our photos and ideas. What they created for the wedding day surpassed everything we discussed with them and it truly was a pleasure to work with them. They were always happy to discuss concerns and worked really hard to make everything we wanted to fit into our budget. I cannot thank them enough for the amazing floral decorations their hands created for our wedding and the magical touch they added to our venue! Our wedding would not have been the same without them.

The Centerpieces

• Stationary: Deciduous Press– Andrea was my personal saviour. I struggled with our wedding invitations to no end, but when I found out about her letterpress studio in Tasmania I relaxed. From the moment I called her she was patient, understanding and amazingly innovative. She created for us the most wonderful stationary suite for our wedding which was both classic and elegant while being fresh and modern. She truly worked so hard to make the stationary all that it could be (countless proofs and revisions to design) and conducts her business in such a personalised way. I cannot thank her enough!

The Stationary Delivery (look how amazing Andrea wrapped it all up)

Our Invitations

Place Cards

• Cake: Alicia’s Cakes– it is truly hard to find a wedding cake that tastes as good as it looks. So many bakers focus on the design and not enough on the flavour. Not Alicia. Her cakes tasted amazing! She created sample cakes for us which she delivered to our home and the minute we tried them we knew we had found a gem. The cake was so fresh and fluffy and the icing deliciously velvety, and not sickly sweet. We spent lots of time discussing flavours and she made for us the tastiest coconut, raspberry and white chocolate cake with a lemon cream cheese icing. We wanted a simple design (ribbon, beads and fresh flowers) and she made the cake also look lovely!