Sarah and Brett’s Relaxed Garden Cafe Wedding

Sarah & Brett

There is something very easy to love about Sarah and Brett’s relaxed garden cafe wedding. The newlyweds wanted a day that was casual, relaxed and vintage style and chose one of their favourite cafes as the one venue for the festivities to unfold. Mark Condon of Gold Hat Photography was there to capture it all.

Sarah recalls the story of how she met Brett. “We met in High School in year 8 science class and immediately hit it off. Although we never “officially” dated in high school, our relationship was much like one out of those terrible romantic films with the usual ‘high school dramas.’ It wasn’t until later on in University when we finally got together, and then nearly a decade later we finally decided to get married!”

Sarah and Brett chose The Atrium at the Grounds of Alexandria for their wedding, noting, “The Grounds of Alexandria. Coolest. Place. Ever. The Atrium speaks for itself – it’s just beautiful, so much so that you barely need to decorate it yourself.”

“We tried to do as much ourselves as possible – this was my favourite part of organising the wedding – all of the arts and crafts! We made the invites ourselves on kraft paper to get the vintagey style look, which took ages, but it was worth it. Then we made the placecards in photoshop, which had photos of us and our guests on a photobooth style strip.”

Sarah walked down the aisle to The Lumineers – Hey Ho!

Behroze Bilimoria performed the marriage ceremony.

Sarah wore a lace gown – Genevieve, by Karen Willis Holmes.

Of their photographer, Sarah recalls, “I randomly found Mark online after googling “natural candid photography” or something to that effect. After looking at his website I thought he had a lovely style and would do a great job – and he absolutely did. His style is very natural and non-intrusive, so you don’t feel like you always have to be posing for a shot. He is also just generally a lovely, relaxed and funny guy to be around – a lot of our guests commented on how personable he was, so that’s always a good sign! The end result was a beautiful set of photos that we will appreciate for the rest of our lives!”

“It being the day after Halloween, there were pumpkins everywhere lining the lane ways at the Grounds! It was so unexpected, but it kinda added this quirky little element to the wedding and the photos look great!”

Sarah did the floral arrangements with her mum and best friend, explaining, “We (my mum and my best friend) got up early the day before the wedding and went to the flower markets and bought a stack of flowers and arranged all the flowers. It was SO MUCH cheaper to buy the flowers at the market and arrange them ourselves – and it was stacks of fun for all of us. I also made the bouquet and the flower hair piece the day before using the flowers from the flower markets!”

Each place setting had a favour arranged by the couple. “We did the ‘thank you’ bags as well – just bought the little white bags, stamped them with a cute heart stamp (that matched the one on the invites), filled them with lollies and closed them with a little wooden peg.”

Food was of great importance to the newlyweds, who tell, “The food and wine was one of the most important aspects of our wedding for us – we wanted all of our guests to eat and drink amazing food and wine. All of the food we chose from the Grounds was sharing and grazing style, really hearty good food. The grazing platter in particular was awesome (even though I didn’t even see it on the day, the photos suggest it was amazing haha) and our guests absolutely loved being able to snack on cheese and cured meats.”

Congratulations on your marriage Sarah and Brett! Thank you for sharing your day with us! Thank you also to Mark Condon of Gold Hat Photography for sharing today’s wedding!