If you are anything like me (and I’m guessing you are if you’re on a wedding blog), then I bet you love paying attention to detail, right? There is just something great about when a couple makes a conscious effort to express their personality through their wedding, making sure that everything reflects a side of them either individually or as a duo. And lets face it, once you start to look, there are just so many great ideas around and so many ways to get your point across … I mean there’s invites, photos, suits, table settings, and the list goes on.

First, some background. Amy and I met 6 years ago when I moved back to Sydney to study songwriting after 5 years in Brisbane. Amy was just finishing the same course I was about to start. She had just released her debut EP and it was the talk of college, all our lecturers would keep referencing her songs as examples of all the writing techniques we should be using … her face was even on the brochure for the college. Of course I was curious about this mysterious poster-child …

Anyway, about 50 mutual friends (real ones that is … facebook wasn’t cool then) and dozens of college parties later we became pretty good friends. We both dated other people and had crushes on each other between those relationships (none that were ever discussed or even considered to be close to mutual). I even played at a wedding with Amy’s dad about three years ago. He was asked to play violin (he plays a mean fiddle) and would call every other day to organise rehearsals and make sure he had all the right music charts etc. Well I must have done something right in all of that because he kept trying to convince Amy that I would make a good partner … but to no avail.

It wasn’t until a year or so later when I had offered my help to Amy to record some tracks she was writing, that we started to really work our own feelings out.  We were spending lots of long days and late nights in my studio working on song arrangements, lyrics and harmonies. It took us a good couple months of everyone asking what was going on between us before we realised for ourselves that we had fallen for each other. An awkward kiss and an awkward conversation later we finally admitted to each other how we felt … much to the relief of our friends and the delight of Amy’s parents!

Amy and I recently had our engagement party and being big believers in detail, naturally we went all out … a good friend hand-painted our invitations, we bought endless amounts of paper lanterns and flowers and we even collected vintage chairs from the side of the road and from the tip. The food was meticulously thought through down to whether or not brown bread would work with our colour scheme (it did) and I insisted that the beer not only taste good but also have a good-looking label. We spent hours setting up and making sure that guests got the best view of all our effort, but I remember standing back once all the set up was done and thinking “hmm, this still looks empty”. Then the guests arrived and suddenly, the place filled up.

Every bit of food was done by the bridesmaids (all 6 of them) and then a few other friends made desserts. They were given very specific instructions by Alana our Maid of Honour along with boxes of ingredients. We wanted everything to taste amazing and not be stock standard cocktail food … and it had to look the part. We spent a good 5 hours hand making cones for french fries out of coloured cardboard and baking paper!

The two people in the photo frame are my fiance Amy’s parents on their wedding day. Being that they were only together for three months before they married they were totally opposite to us with their organisation skills. They just had photos taken by friends, borrowed cars and even forgot to organise any music at all for their reception.

We had a great afternoon catching up with friends and family and it wasn’t until we got our photos back that it really hit home; the greatest detail that day was our guests … I don’t mean to sound cheesy but it’s true. Somewhere between the photos of the striped napkins and our vintage bikes was my wake-up call. The thing I loved the most about the day was having all our friends and family come together, watching my two brothers become mates with my fiancé’s two sisters and seeing Nanna Pat tear it up on the dance floor. Now don’t get me wrong, our wedding will have even more DIY, blog-happy madness then you could poke a stick at but I will definitely be approaching it with a different perspective and the thing I’m looking forward to the most, more than all the detail, is celebrating with all our friends and family again … and of course, getting Nanna Pat back on the dance floor!

Words by Groomzilla (A.K.A Julian)

Photography by Stacie Petra.

Julian describes himself as: “Groomzilla – stylist, Meticulous planner and creative eye.”

Ms Gingham says: “I guess this proves that all weddings are unique. Not so much for the visual aspects that we spend so much time getting right but for the people that we hand pick to be witness to our big commitment, not just to each other, but also to our colour scheme! I can’t wait to hear more about Groomzilla’s journey through the land of wedding blogs!”