Sean and Di

When Sean and I sat down and envisioned our wedding day we saw a fun, personal, handmade day to celebrate our love with friends and family. We were determined to do things our way – much to people’s horror – “You can’t have heavy metal at a wedding!”…  ‘You HAVE to carry flowers!”… “People are expecting a sit-down meal!” etc. Well… We probably annoyed all of those people but we had the most joyous, happy, emotional day and loved every single minute of it – and so many of our guests mentioned how personal they thought it was!

We had quite a limited budget and I LOVE crafts so we managed to save quite a bit of money by doing things ourselves and asking our patient friends and family to help us where possible. I ordered the infinity wrap dresses for my beautiful bridesmaids from Coralie Beatrix on Etsy and they carried pink balloons and parasols instead of bouquets.

I dragged my bridesmaids around every op-shop, every garage sale, and every school fair to find brooches to make my bouquet. My shoes were “Birthday Girl” shoes designed by the fabulous Gala Darling and my nana made my garter.The birdcage veil and hair flower were ordered through Margot Ardern  and completed my look.

My dress was made by the ridiculously patient Jody Li of Bluebow Bridal. After Sean really struggled to find anything to wear that he liked, my amazingly patient Maid of Honour HAND MADE Sean’s pants. She is super woman! I also had custom made Sepultura cufflinks (through Ties N Cuffs) made for Sean as a surprise. The girls and I stayed out an amazing B&B, Bush Sand and Sea out in Bethells Beach in West Auckland. The hosts were beyond exceptional and made us fresh bread every day – yum! Their beautiful property also made for some pretty awesome photos. The boys stayed down the road at the Iron Sand Lodge and their views were to die for! After the wonderful Amelia from Phoenix Cosmetics and Rachael from Auckland Mobile Salon had worked their magic, Sean and I had our First Look. It still gives me goose bumps thinking about it!

After a photo shoot at the always stunning Bethells Beach, we made our way back to Elevation Café in the Waitakere ranges for the ceremony. Andrew Thornburrow was our photographer, but he isn’t doing photography anymore!

I walked down the aisle to the Smashing Pumpkins “Today”, we had the registry signing song “Live in Love” by Times of Grace and then we stomped back out to “Walk” by Pantera. Our first dance was “Luna” by the Smashing Pumpkins. Sean and I love alternative music and it was so nice to be able to incorporate our love of this music into our day. Our celebrant, Rochelle Fleming, did a great job of making the ceremony heartfelt and humorous and our vows were a surprise to each other. Sean promised to always sometimes do the vacuuming and to crush all that opposed me.

Our guests threw hot pink rose petals as we walked back down the aisle. Once the ceremony was finished, after much laughter and lots of tears (from me especially!) we moved onto the canapé reception.

I love hot pink and Sean is a big fan of emerald green so we tried to incorporate these into our wedding day (and were secretly delighted that they were so opposite!). We handmade our wedding programs, we organised a lolly buffet and my dad baked a carrot cake and a fruit cake! I made a chocolate mud cake and then my gorgeously talented nana decorated it for us.

We had an ice cream truck to serve our guests and a photo booth to catch those unscripted moments.

I changed into pink chucks for the first dance and for the rest of the evening.

Then, a couple of days later we got dolled up again and got some AMAZING photos from Perspectives Photo and Cinema.

We were so incredibly moved and humbled by all the love and good wishes we had on our day.  It truly was the most wonderful day ever and being married is pretty amazing!

All images excluding the last two by The Third Frame Photography

 

Ms Gingham: It’s so lovely to see couples sticking to their guns and making sure they have their day their way! Congratulations to Sean and Di!

Di says: “I’m a New Zealand based ginger who loves crafts, cake decorating, trashy TV, biographies about rock stars and bad 80s music. I recently got married and had such a brilliant day – it was everything I had dreamed of since I was about 12 years old..”