James and Lisa-Renee

James and I met while we were both on a working holiday living in London. James is from New Zealand and I’m Australian and after our adventures ended in the UK we decided to move back to my hometown of Adelaide together. Some years later, on a holiday back to New Zealand to visit family and friends, James popped the question at the scenic location of Lake Tekapo. We married on 5th November 2011 at Longview Vineyard located in the Adelaide Hills. We decided to use our meeting place of London as the basis of our vintage rustic wedding theme which was captured beautifully by our photographer Edwin Niczynski.

My dress was made by Red Pearl Couture. It was scary designing the dress from scratch, what if I didn’t like the end result? Fortunately, the staff were wonderful and the dress was everything I had envisioned for the day. The hair piece was from ETSY and the earrings and bracelet from Miss Martini. I wore an antique emerald ring given to me by my great aunt as my something old, a charm given to my mum by my father on her 21st birthday as my something borrowed and I attached an opal brooch from my late grandmother to my bouquet as my something blue.

I wanted my bridesmaids to be cohesive but different so they each chose there own dresses from The Dressy Shop all in the same colour and length.

We purchased charcoal suits from Myer for all the boys, James wore a soft lavender tie and the groomsmen wore sage green ties. I also got cuff-links made which had tiny maps of where James and I grew up.

I guess I’m at that age where so many people we know are getting married, it was important to me that I had aspects of our day that were unique to us and not one of the countless things we had seen at weddings before. I ruled out roses and tiger lilies for this very reason and went instead with malacal balm, lisianthus, sweet peas, berries and dodda vine. My florist, In Style Blooms by Mary-Ann, was wonderful she even enlisted the help of her own family to assist with the collection of the 100 odd jars we would need for our table settings.

I walked down the aisle to Adele ‘One and Only’ and we chose ‘Dream a little Dream’ by the Mamas and the Papas as our first dance (neither James nor I are gifted in the fancy footwork department so we needed something easy to shuffle along to). The most personal of all touches was our entrance song, James’ father passed away many years ago but we gave a special nod to him by having one of his quirky favourite songs as our introduction song to the reception, Running Bear by Johnny Preston – the guests went wild laughing and clapping, it really was a brilliant choice.

I’m a big fan of food and a big fan of wine which was a big deciding factor for our choice of wedding venue. We could not fault Longview. Canapes were served by the wonderful staff while the bridal party had photos taken and we also had a musician (Steve Gower) to entertain the guests with a collection of blues, jazz and 50‘s rock n roll music while they waited.

 

I spent countless hours researching ideas and ways to personalise our day incorporating the whimsical London theme; such as the seating chart I made using iconic London landmarks, the paddle fans which doubled as wedding programs and the poem plates I got as gifts for people who had a special role in our wedding that had an extract from our wedding reading, Oh’ The Places You’ll Go by Dr Seuss. There are so many special details to our day but my favourite was the letter box for our wedding cards with our awesome wedding invitations which were designed by PIIPOD painted on it – it now has pride of place in our home.

For the reception we served beetroot and goats cheese tart followed by salmon or lamb (clearly a Kiwi favourite). Dessert was our wedding cake which was a delectable chocolate and caramel marble mud.

Huge thanks goes to our parents for all they did and it truly was so wonderful how many friends and family came from interstate, America, UK, Asia and of course New Zealand. Wanting to stretch out the festivities even further, we decided to arrange a very informal BBQ the following day at The Maccclesfield Pub for all the guests. Although it was a slow start to the lunch, with most guests feeling pretty average from the previous night’s shenanigans, merriment soon prevailed! Ding, ding – round two!

Photography by Edwin Niczynski

Ms Gingham says: There are so many things I like about this wedding. The colour palette, the beautiful invitations, the flowers, Lisa-Renee’s stunning gown… but most of all I LOVE the shot of the girls where the little flower girl is scratching her ankle! So gorgeous!

Lisa-Renee says: “My name is Lisa-Renee and I married my husband James on 5th November 2011 at Longview Vineyard in the beautiful Adelaide Hills. James is from New Zealand and I’m Australian, we met while we were on a working holiday in London; this meeting place was the basis of our vintage rustic wedding theme. The day was perfect in every way “