Hamish and Cassandra

A year and a half prior to our wedding Hamish (my now husband) officially asked me to be his girlfriend at his 21st birthday – which was blue themed. I decided that seeing as that was a pretty significant night in our lives I would use the same colour theme for our wedding. I had made a blue wrist bow for this 21st, which I wore on our wedding day as well. For my something old I wore my late Grandmother’s engagement ring. Its been a bit of a tradition that all my cousins have worn it. Its such an ornate, yet simple ring and its so special being able to wear it on such an important day. We wanted our wedding day to reflect us and for every little element to mean something.  We decided to get married at The King’s School Chapel. When I was born, my father worked at The King’s School and my Christening was conducted there. We then moved when I was a year old to Tudor House a Preparatory School under the umbrella of The King’s School. Hamish attended Tudor House for Primary School and then actually went on and attended The King’s School for Secondary School. The King’s School Chapel holds a special place for both Hamish and I. I was christened there at nine months of age and he took his confirmation there at the age of 16. It only seemed right that we returned there to make our wedding vows.

With Hamish having grown up in the country and working for RM Williams at the time of our wedding, we chose to have our Reception at the two storey RM Williams Stables in Sydney. For the Reception I organised for all the pre-dinner drinks and nibbles to take place on the stone work, down stairs between the horse stables. To accompany the nibbles and drinks I arranged with the Events Department of RM Williams for some of the RM Williams Clydesdale horses to be brought down from the Hunter Valley to be in the stables to create a unique environment/setting and photo opportunities for our guests.

Upstairs in the main Reception space the ceiling was draped with bunting and paper lanterns and the floor with hay bails. The tables were decorated with jars, jugs and tea cups of all different shapes and sizes with blooms in them. All the tea cups and teapots used for the flowers were my late grandmother’s. It was my way of having her there on the day. Likewise we used Hamish’s late Grandfather’s Naval Officers Sword to cut our wedding cake.

Our wedding cake was made by my Great Aunt and consisted of three, circular tiers featuring a pink stiletto and a replica RMW boot on top, in lieu of the ‘bride and groom’ statuettes. A fondant RM Williams belt was wrapped around the middle tier of the cake. Our table place settings were also the guest bonbonnieres – chutneys and jams – a little sweetener from our day.

 Our guests were invited to our wedding through handmade newspapers. I called the newspaper ‘Romantica Times’ and we created all the different sections of the paper, then had them relate to our Wedding. The ‘Cover Story’ was how we met and how Hamish proposed. The ‘Sport’ section was how we introduced the bridal party; we wrote Hamish’s attendants and my attendants as two different Polo teams. We wrote ‘Personal’ ads for each other. The actual invitation was headed as the ‘Society’ section. We had a bit of a gift suggestion list which we created a Find-a-Word in the ‘Entertainment’ Section. Then there was a ‘Cooking’ section with my mum’s famous choc chips cookies and we had a ‘Comic’ section with a wedding themed comic. Our RSVP was the ‘Letter to the Editor’.

We had an amazing day and night, enjoyed by all and thank you to all those who helped get us there.

 Photos By: Jonathan Dear, Vibrant Photoraphy

Ms Gingham says: Now that hay fight looks like fun!! Congratulations Hamish and Cassandra!

 Cassandra says: “My name is Cassandra. I am 22 about to turn 23. I got married just after my 21st Birthday to the man who had been my best friend since I was eight. I am the owner of Jillian Boyd Weddings & Events, based in The Hills District of Sydney, NSW”