Amy and Justin

I know polka dots seem to be showing up regularly lately on Polka Dot Bride, but let’s be honest- you all know I can’t resist them and you ply me with beautiful images full of brides who love them as much as I do!

Today’s wedding is such a beautiful one! Full of summer, Amy and Justin created so many unique handmade touches to make their wedding day personal to them.

Photos today are by Angela Higgins. I love that Angela always takes beautiful, graceful photos.

Amy wore a tea length polka dot gown made by Justin’s mother.

The buttonholes, hair flowers and Amy’s bouquet of yellow blooms were styled by Hazel’s Bridal Design.

Amy and Justin met before the ceremony. Amy says “Justin& I opted to do a ‘first look’ prior to the ceremony. Our main reason for this decision was so that we could spend as much time with our guests as possible. I had been itching to see Justin all morning so getting to have that first moment together where it was just the two of us was amazing.”

Amy’s bridesmaids wore blue and white gowns from Myer.

Amy and Justin filled their ceremony with handmade details “We needed to create an aisle for the ceremony but didn’t want to go with the standard red carpet. We decided to line our aisle with pinwheels, which also had the added benefit of adding a bit of decoration and fun to the ceremony! Justin, my parents and I spent half a day putting them all together a couple of days before the wedding. They looked fantastic!

We also wanted to have bubbles at our ceremony for people to blow at us as we walked back up the aisle. I bought the bubbles a few months prior to the wedding off Ebay with grand plans of decorating them. At some point I realised that I just wasn’t going to have time and asked my bridesmaid, Justin’s sister, if she would be able to help out. She transformed them into little masterpieces with ribbon, butterfly cut outs and labels. To top it off she decorated up a box to have them in for the ceremony that doubled as a box that can now keep our wedding keepsakes in!”

Amy and Justin were married in a beautiful garden ceremony. Amy says “Amanda’s Garden was our perfect ceremony location. The main drawcard for us, other than the garden’s beauty, was the privacy and where our ceremony fee was going. Amanda’s Garden is the private garden of Barry & Lorraine Young, who established the Amanda Young Foundation after their daughter died of meningococcal meningitis. They hire out their lovely gardens for wedding ceremonies for a small fee, with the wedding hire fee going straight to their foundation! They only ever book one wedding on a day so you can have your ceremony whenever you wish without having to worry about bumping into other wedding parties.”

Having family and friends involved made Amy and Justin’s day extra special says Amy “We had a lot of friends and family involved in our wedding which made it that extra bit special to us – Justin’s Mum made my wedding dress, Rahul, Justin’s best man MC’ed at the reception, our Dad’s drove us around for the day, our good friend Frances made finger food for after the ceremony, Justin’s sister did a reading at the ceremony (as well as helping out with a lot of setting up on the day) and lots of other friends helped us out with setting up and packing up.”

Upbeat music featured heavily in the ceremony “I walked down the aisle to the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra’s version of ‘All You Need Is Love’. All of the music that we chose for our ceremony was fairly upbeat, which suited the ‘let’s celebrate’ vibe that we were going for with the wedding. We signed the register to The Mouldy Peaches ‘Anyone Else But You’ and Jack Johnson’s ‘Better Together’.” Amy recalls.

The newlyweds walked back down the aisle to Barry Polisar’s ‘All I Want Is You’  Amy says “it made it very hard not to just dance the whole way back up the aisle!”

Drinks and afternoon tea were  served in the garden to toast Amy and Justin.

The location for the reception was equally as stunning- Roley’s On the Ridge. “We had our reception at Roley’s on the Ridge, a small restaurant overlooking a valley. The food is always magnificent there and the setting is lovely. Roley’s has gorgeous wooden floorboards (perfect for dancing) and high ceilings. We were sold on Roley’s as our reception venue as soon as we sat down and had a chat with Melanie (the owner along with her husband who is the head chef) to discuss it. She was so accommodating, meaning that we could have our reception exactly as we wanted it.”

Amy and Justin’s handmade touches filled the reception. Amy says “We DIY’ed our table numbers and bonbonniere. The table numbers were simple to make – involving just a couple of pieces of card, a craft knife and some double sided sticky tape. For the bonbonnieres we had a mixture of lolly bags and herb seedlings. The seedlings and lolly bags were wrapped up in pieces of the polka dot tulle that had been used to make my wedding dress!” The reception flowers were done by Jess from A Pocketful of Posies.

The first dance was a memorable moment for Amy and Justin “Neither Justin & I can dance. Many a time our attempts at dancing together have resulted in someone getting stood on. We knew from the word go that we would have to get dance lessons to have any hope of pulling off a first dance. We did briefly consider learning a waltz but decided it wasn’t really us. We ended up taking kick step rock ‘n’ roll classes in the hope that we would continue dancing post-wedding. As the wedding loomed closer we let the dancing lessons slide and by our wedding day it had been over a month since we had last practised. We decided to wing it.

“We did our first dance to The Romantics ‘What I Like About You’. It was fun, it was upbeat and, considering how long it had been since we had last practised, we think we managed to pull it off…. just!”

The couple chose a three tier cake from Krackers Cakes along with a custom cake topper. “Our cake topper was purchased off Etsy seller Enchanted Belles. Sarah makes custom clothespin dolls and cake toppers. She even let me send her some of the polka dot tulle from my wedding dress so that the cake toppers dress could be made from the same fabric.

Congratulations Amy & Justin! Thank you for allowing us to share your wedding day on Polka Dot Bride! Thank you also Angela Higgins for today’s photographs!

Photos by Angela Higgins.