Our inspiration:
During our engagement, I was working in an environment where I saw many many divorcing couples who were going through very difficult separations. It’s hard to get really girly and over the top about a wedding while seeing how many people’s weddings don’t ultimately result in lasting, happy marriages, even though the wedding world promotes the dream that they all do. This meant that I never felt particularly “romantic” (in a Hollywood sense) about being engaged and I was never emotionally invested in having a “dream wedding” – for me, the romantic part about being engaged was planning for a solid, loving committed marriage. We both really saw our engagement as a time to work on our joint values together and think about the way we would make decisions about our shared life once we were married. We really did plan the wedding together – there was nothing about which we didn’t ultimately mutually agree. (This wasn’t always easy! But it was worth it.)

First thing on our wedding day:
Alex and I spent the morning of the wedding day together doing one of our favourite things – visiting our local farmers market. It’s a five minute walk from our house, and even though it was still raining, we just grabbed umbrellas and raincoats and headed out. We ate egg and bacon rolls in turkish bread and wandered about picking up gourmet cheeses, olives and olive oil to take on our honeymoon, as well as a big bunch of creamy roses. By the time we were back at home and I’d put the flowers in a vase, it was time to start getting ready! It was wonderful to spend the morning together doing something that we know we love – it was the perfect thing to do, as we knew it would centre us and be a relaxing, fun time.

Little surprises:
One surprise was that the colony of penguins that sometimes lives behind the restaurant came out during the night – lots of our guests left the venue to go around the back and see if they could spot any penguins!

Our wedding photos:
When we received the photos after the wedding, I couldn’t quite believe it – having them photograph our wedding was a dream come true even before we received the photos that came out of it – but receiving those photos was like holding the dream in my hands. They were unobtrusive – almost invisible! – while taking the photos, and yet the end product was absolutely spectacular. They captured a million perfect candid moments. We could not love our photos more.

Resümee:
We knew what we wanted out of our wedding before we even told anyone we were engaged – to get married in our backyard with just close family and friends in a fun, relaxed party atmosphere. But we live in an apartment, and we don’t have a backyard – we spend most of our outdoors time wandering around St Kilda or riding our bikes. Thankfully (after so much searching) the perfect location presented itself: Little Blue. It is a gorgeous indoor/outdoor vintage-styled restaurant that is right over the road from our house, at the end of the St Kilda Pier. This really set the tone for the day and meant that our wedding day felt just as we had wanted it to – like we were inviting our friends and family to share an almost-normal day in our lives. We didn’t want it to feel “wedding-y” and formal – rather, we wanted it to feel like an awesome party that was also personal and reflected our day to day values and choices. It didn’t make sense to us to apply different values to our wedding than we do to any other big life decision – so we didn’t. When making budgeting decisions, we prioritised having a wonderful celebrant (who we found in Sue Hamilton), great food, drinks and atmosphere for our guests, and memorable, beautiful photography. Everything else we chose, we tried to choose with ongoing use in mind, asking ‘would we wear/love it normally?’ Other than my wedding dress, I think just about everything we bought can and will be used again. (And I am still planning to find a way to wear my dress again!)