WHERE: Montrose Berry Farm, Sutton Forest, Southern Highlands. One of Tom’s and my most favourite places in the world is the Southern Highlands so we always knew we wanted to get married down there. We always thought a garden wedding would be nice, maybe in a vineyard or a beautiful property but we also wanted it to be different from any wedding we’d ever been to, so when my mum found Montrose Berry Farm on the internet we knew it would be perfect! It had beautiful gardens and berry vines and best of all the guests would be able to go berry picking in between the ceremony and the reception. Bruce and Fiona, the owners of Montrose Berry Farm are some of the loveliest people I have ever met! They were so helpful! They made all my ideas come to life and they spent the whole day before the wedding helping set up. Nothing was a problem or too difficult for this amazing couple. Bruce’s comment was always “of course we can do that”. It was even their idea that we use their label with our own twist on it on our vinegar and jam bonbonierre.
THEME/STYLE: We wanted our wedding to scream “Tom and Allie”, and for it to be fun for all of our guests. Our wedding theme was “a vintage, rustic, garden wedding”. It was set outside, we both also love everything vintage so of course our wedding was going to have a vintage twist. Rustic seemed to flow with gardens and vintage. We didn’t really have any colours in mind when we started planning so we left that until we found a dress that suited all our bridesmaids, which we decided on dusty pink.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Ben Adams with assistant Justin Spaull. Ben took the most amazing photos of our wedding! We are so happy with every single one of the photos…he managed to capture everything, including every single one of our guests and the mood.. He went above and beyond his job as wedding photographer. Ben arrived the day before and had a look around the property to get ideas for the photos the next day. He went as far as going off the property to look for other spots for photos and even asked a man who was mowing his lawns if we could come the next day. One of the things we love most of all about Ben’s photos are how unique and natural looking they are!
BRIDE’S DRESS: San Patrick “Cobalto” – From Marry Me Bridal Studio in Mosman. Ever since I was 16 I had a dream wedding dress in mind. I never thought I’d be able to find it though. So when I started looking for dresses everyone told me to keep an open mind and try on all different styles and I did. When I came out of the dressing room in the last dress I tried on my mum and I both burst into tears and in that moment I knew this was my dress. I later realised that it was the dress I'd dreamt of…everything was exactly as I imagined my dress would be. It was a vintage, ivory lace, mermaid style dress with cap sleeves, a sweetheart neckline and a lovely long train. What I also loved about the dress was that it made my tiny boobs look huge (for me anyway), it made my fairly rectangular-shaped body look feminine and curvy, it made me look tall with long legs and it made me feel elegant but best of all it was so comfortable!
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BRIDE’S SHOES: Wittner “Bay”. I actually found the shoes before I was even engaged! I saw them in the window and fell in love. I knew that when we did get engaged they would be the shoes I would look for and wouldn’t be able to find so I bought them! Thankfully they were the perfect colour and style to match my dress!
BRIDESMAIDS DRESSES: Stella McCartney for Target – We saw the dresses in the Sunday Magazine so on the day that the Stella McCartney range was released in Target, two of my bridesmaids were waiting at the doors at Bondi Junction. My mum and my brother were at Chatswood, I stopped at Macquarie on my way home from a night shift and somehow between us we managed to get all 5 dresses and even better they actually fit and suited all the girls!
BRIDESMAID’S SHOES: I had to find shoes fitting five girls ranging from size 5 to size 11…Impossible! We managed to find some at Zu shoes that fitted them all, matched the dresses, were comfortable and were half price!
FLOWERGIRLS/PAGEBOYS: We had two flower girls and three page boys, all family. Three of them are my siblings and two are Tom’s cousins. I searched everywhere for the girls skirts. I wanted them to wear skirts but I couldn’t find them anywhere, in the end we found some tu-tu’s and turned them upside down to create the super cute poofy skirts. The boys rented their suits from Spurling in Dee Why.
JEWELLERY/ACCESSORIES: I wore my mum’s pearl earrings and a pearl bracelet with a Tiffany clasp that was a wedding gift from my mum.
WEDDING RINGS: Tom bought my engagement ring from Coopers of Epping and the one he chose is perfect beyond anything I could imagined. We decided to get both the wedding rings made at the same place. Mine was made to fit perfectly around my engagement ring.
GROOM/GROOMSMEN: Tom and the boys wore “Wayward Heir” suits by Rembrandt.
HAIR: Mark Cole, Highlands Mobile Elite Hair and Beauty. I must have been the most annoying bride for poor Mark, I knew exactly what I wanted but just couldn’t explain it. After a trial that wasn’t quite right, I finally got my words out and Mark did my hair even better than I had explained. I loved it!
STATIONERY/INVITATIONS: We wanted to give our wedding that personal touch so what better way than to hand-make our invitations, orders of service, place cards, bunting, table setting signs, menus, bonbonniere labels, table themes (moustaches, lips, masks and glasses), signs and thankyou’s. But we bought most of the supplies from Pulp and Eckersley’s.
WEDDING FAVORS/BONBONNIERE: To keep with the theme of the wedding and let our guests try the absolutely amazing jams and vinegars that are homemade at Montrose, Bruce and Fiona gave us some of their labels to copy and make our own. We gave each of the guests jar of jam or vinegar to take home as a memoir of the place we fell in love with!
FLOWERS: Kate and Michael Powell, Absolutely Flowers. I wanted the flowers to look like we’d picked them up in a field and to fit the theme of the wedding. Kate was so helpful! She knew exactly what I wanted and made them look absolutely perfect!! They helped set everything up on the day too! I couldn’t recommend them more highly.
VIDEOGRAPHER: We decided against having a professional videographer and instead asked my aunty and cousin to do some filming of the day. It was so nice having our family involved in such an important day and we are so happy with what they did!
CEREMONY DÉCOR DETAILS: We had the ceremony in the Rose Garden and Montrose. We set up some tiffany chairs that we had rented for the guests and layed out a carpet for the aisle (we mostly put it there so our heels wouldn’t sink in the grass and trip us over when there were 160 people watching us walk down the aisle). We also set up some bunting to line the walk the girls and I would have to make to the Rose Garden. We then had Kate lay some rose petals down along the aisle and hang bouquets off some of the chairs. It looked absolutely perfect on the day…much more beautiful than I had imagined.
RECEPTION DÉCOR DETAILS: These details were a bit hard because we really wanted to have our reception outside but knew that we had to keep a wet weather plan in mind. In the end we decided to have a theme at each table for a bit of fun and something a bit different, we handmade moustaches, lips, glasses and masks and each table was given one each of this. To keep with the vintage rustic garden theme we decided to also have flowers on the table with mismatched vintage style crystal vases. We also needed some light (because the reception was hopefully going to be outside) and we also wanted the area to have a wow factor so we set up a marquee of fairy lights… It was rather hard to set up and couldn’t have happened without the help of Bruce from Montrose, our families, our Bridal party and my aunties and uncles but it was totally worth it! The night before the wedding it rained all night and the morning of our wedding it was still pretty wet and the weather forecast was not great. But after the ceremony was over we made the final decision to have the reception outside and the weather was perfect! It cleared up and it warmed up! In fact we were actually in a little dry bubble, it was raining 5 minutes away in every direction all the way up to the Hunter Valley and further down south, but we were in the most perfect warm, dry bubble!
WEDDING PLANNER: My mum, Tom and I did all the planning in only four months! I can’t thank her enough for all she did for us to help with our big day, it really would not have been possible without her!
CAKE: Elissa Thompson, Sugar Daddy’s Cake Design. I found the cake to be one of the hardest things to decide on...there are so many options!! But Elissa was so patient with me and in the end made the most beautiful and delicious cake with so many hand made sugar flowers and even two very cute hand made sugar people who she made look just like us (well close enough anyway considering they were sugar). She is a true artist.
WEDDING SONGS: PROCESSIONAL: No Fear of Heights, Katie Melua - Played by our band (Tom chose this song which I thought was quite special). SIGNING REGISTER: We are Man and Wife, Michelle Featherstone - Played by our band. RECESSIONAL: Hey, Leeland – Played by our band. ENTERING RECEPTION: The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts, Sufjan Stevens. FIRST DANCE: Fly me to the moon, Frank Sinatra (We actually had a routine made up for us that we learnt in about two weeks – we wanted something fun and slightly different to the normal swaying together). FAREWELL: Big Jet Plane, Angus and Julia Stone
ENTERTAINMENT: At the ceremony we had some friends of ours play - Amy Buckle, Brooke Dillon, Colin Jones and Ben Jagger. At the beginning of the reception we had another of my cousin’s play – Zoe Elliot. The DJ was another of my cousins – Ben Carlisle.
TRANSPORT: Chellowdeen Wedding Cars - We had a 1938 Cadillac Limousine and two matching vintage Buick Sedans, all over 70 years old and they were beautiful!
HONEYMOON: 2 nights at Milton Park Spa and Resort, Bowral - Bliss! 5 Nights at Merlin Beach Resort, Phuket – The perfect honeymoon destination with a swim up bar and cheap massages. 10 day Intrepid Tour through Vietnam – The holiday that followed – We LOVED Vietnam! It was absolutely amazing!
EXTRA DETAILS:
SOURCES OF INSPIRATION: The Lane (of course), many wedding magazines...and my (now) husband.
A MEMORABLE MOMENT: The moment that Tom decided that we were definitely going to have an outside wedding (just because he knew it was what I had been dreaming about) after my Uncle interrupted the photo taking and congratulations post-ceremony, to get a final decision out of Tom.
IF I COULD RE-DO ANY WEDDING-RELATED PLANS IT WOULD BE: Absolutely nothing! It was more perfect than I pictured…although a little more time would have been nice and I definitely would have chosen my (now) sister-in-law to be one of my bridesmaids…I regret not having her there with us girls for the day.
BEST ADVICE FOR PLANNING A WEDDING/TO BRIDES: Don’t get stuck in the ‘norm’ when planning your wedding. Personalise it in every way possible, make it as much to do with the two of you as possible. DIY! It is so rewarding to see all your creations when they are all in place creating your perfect wedding. It is definitely worth all the effort and time…and we can’t forget all the money you can save!
Don’t get so caught up in the wedding that you forget about who you’re marrying and the importance of the marriage itself. On the day, make sure that you and your new husband have some time alone to enjoy each other’s company. Make sure you have a wet weather plan. If you have one, chances are you won’t need it but if you don’t have one you’ll need it.
CONTACTS:
PHOTOGRAPHY: Ben Adams and assistant Justin Spaull
BRIDE'S DRESS: Marry Me Bridal Studio in Mosman
BRIDE’S SHOES: Wittner
BRIDESMAIDS SHOES: Zu Shoes
FLOWERGIRLS/PAGEBOYS: Blochworld, Spurling
WEDDING RINGS: Coopers of Epping
HAIR: Highlands Mobile Elite Hair and Beauty - hme@hinet.net.au
MAKEUP: Heaven Sent, Southern Highlands
STATIONERY/INVITATIONS: Pulp and Eckersley’s
FLORIST: Absolutely Flowers, Mittagong
CAKE: Sugar Daddy’s Cake Design, Moss Vale
CATERING: Food, Poss, PB Catering - Drinks, Tony @ Moss Vale Hotel tposter@accent.au
WEDDING VENUE: Montrose Berry Farm – Ormond Street, Sutton Forest, NSW
HONEYMOON DESTINATION: Milton Park Spa and Resort, Bowral - Merlin Beach Resort, Phuket, Thailand
TRANSPORT: Chellowdeen Wedding Cars
GIFT REGISTRY: David Jones
OTHER: Bride’s family and Bridesmaid’s stayed at Kirkham Manor – accom@kirkhammanor.com.au; Groom’s family and Groomsmen stayed at Royalla Farm Stay
