Perth wedding photographer Natasja Kremers

Today’s wedding will have you wanting to celebrate – a sunshine filled celebration at a zoo! There’s pretty spring blooms, a gorgeous dress, a carousel and oh, there is love – that I made sure of! Lindsay and Tim’s Perth wedding is filled with love.

Our bride today, Lindsay, explains how she met Tim. “Tim and I met properly on Christmas Day 2008. He is the older brother of one of my good friends Megan. Megs had organised a Christmas Day party at her house, so of course Tim, who was over from Brisbane where he was living at the time, was invited. I remember thinking he was quite handsome, but that he had a terrible fashion sense. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt at the time. Obviously I managed to get past that, as we started seeing each other in February the following year – but it was a long distance romance with me having recently relocated to  Melbourne and Tim in Brisbane. Tim moved back to Perth in 2009 and I moved back home to Perth soon after that too. And the rest is history – and at least we know that if we can make it through Hawaiian shirt-wearing periods and living at opposite ends of the country, we can get through anything!”

Photos today are by Natasja Kremers Photography. Nastasja captures images with such a grace and integrity, today’s wedding is beautifully captured with a beautiful sense of style.

Lindsay assembled the bouquets herself, with a little help! She says “I held a ‘bouquet making sweatshop’ the morning before the wedding. Tara (my Matron of Honour), good friend Sally, Aunty Wendy, Mum and I stripped all the flowers I bought from the local flower market that morning, and put together my and the bridesmaids bouquets. My Aunty Wendy also put together all the boutonnieres for the groomsmen and my Dad.”

Lindsay’s elegant gown was created by Zansis Couture. “‘ I wore the Bow Dress. I saw it in a magazine, and knew it was the one for me. I wore a vintage art deco rhinestone brooch in my hair, and a pair of pearl and diamond earrings Tim gave me on my 30th birthday.”

Her bridesmaids? They wore polka dots of course! Lindsay recalls “I got the bridesmaids outfits from Review. Who can go past polka-dots for cute ‘50s flair?”

Lindsay’ friends helped her create the stationery for the day. “The invites were designed by me and my good friend Megan (who is now also my sister-in-law!). I knew I wanted to incorporate photos from our engagement shoot with Tasj, which I had purposely styled in a vintage fashion for this purpose. I briefed Megs, who is a graphic designer, in the style I wanted, and sent her through a lot of pictures and examples for inspiration and she laid them out for us. We couldn’t have been happier with the end product.”

The church books were designed by Dan Agostino, one of the designers at my work (I work in an advertising agency), and printed on the same stock as the invites. Tara very kindly tied all the booklets together for me.”

Lindsay and Tim were married at  St Columba’s Church in South Perth “We got married at St Columba Church in South Perth. Tim’s family has a strong connection with the school. He and his sister went to school there, and his Aunty Pat taught at the school for many, many years. Many of his family were baptised there, and it was also where they had the funeral of Tim’s Dad who died a few years ago. My family’s Parish Priest, Fr Phillip Fleay, performed the ceremony, so we had a nice mix of things important to both our families.” Tim wore a custom made suit by a tailor he uses in Singapore for his work suits.

Music during the ceremony was important for the couple, Lindsay recalls. “My very talented sister sang at the ceremony for us. As well as singing a bunch of great old jazz and blues songs while the guests arrived at church, she also sang the Etta James song, ‘At Last’,  as my Dad and I walked down the aisle. It was a very special moment – my dear old, normally gruff Dad got very emotional walking his baby daughter down the aisle to the sound of his eldest daughter singing, and started crying. It was definitely a moment I won’t forget.

My sister also sang ‘This Old Love’ by Lior during the signing of the registry, and ‘The Best is Yet to Come’ by Frank Sinatra as we left the church happily married.”

The couple left the ceremony in Lindsay’s Archie. “Tim bought me a 1952 baby blue Morris Minor – which I promptly christened Archie – for my birthday last year that we decided to use as our wedding car. I’m not sure if you’ve been in a Morris Minor, but they aren’t big, so we were a bit flummoxed as to how we were going to fit my Dad, Tara and Nairah (the bridesmaids extraordinaire) and I, in Archie.

Tim and I were driving down our street in January when we spied a white 1950s Morris Minor in the garage of a house about 20 doors down for us. What luck! Luckier still that Sue, the owner of the white Morris – christened Molly – was as lovely as she was, and not only let us borrow her car for the day, but offered to be Chauffeur too. So that’s how we had Molly and Archie the Morris Minors as our very special wedding cars.”

The couple had photographs taken with their bridal party at their Perth home.

The Perth Zoo was the location for the celebrations. Lindsay recalls “The reception was held over two locations at the Perth Zoo, which is an amazing venue. Straight after the ceremony, we organised Champagne and a ‘Shucker’, and the Howie Morgan Jazz Trio at the Palm Terrace of the zoo, to keep guests happy and occupied while we were having our photos back at our house. This is where we also had the bonbonniere (Chinese parasols for the ladies, and straw trilby’s for the gents with Hawaiian shirt material sewn into the hatband) and the guests name tags – most with a personalised little caption about the guest, which served as a great ice-breaker.”

Although Lindsay styled her bouquet herself, she hired a professional for the church and reception flowers. “Rebecca Grace from Natural Art Flowers supplied the church and reception flowers. I wanted ‘English Country Garden’ flowers, such as Peonies, Dahlia’s and Narcissus – but we’re a bit limited for choice in February in Perth (too hot for such delicate flowers!), so instead we chose flowers for their unusual form and texture.”

A three tiered cake complimented a cake buffet. Lindsay explains, “The amazing cake was made and decorated by one of my oldest friends, Paula Fitzgerald. Paula and I were next-door neighbours pretty much since we were born. Lucky for us, Paula grew up to be a pastry chef! She now runs her own cakes and cupcakes catering company Caterpillar Bites and made our delicious Chocolate Mud wedding cake. I gave her a pretty loose brief around the decoration – the old-fashioned garden party theme we were going for, the bows on my dress, and she knows I love pink – and she concocted this amazing design.

The darling keepsake topper was made by MilkTea by bthanari, a seller I found on etsy. Not only are Tim and I on the topper in replica wedding outfits (down to the bows on my dress), but it features our dear pets too; Atticus Finch our Labrador, and Britney Spears (yes, that’s her name) our very spoilt cat. We were really happy we were able to include our pets in the wedding in some way, without (hopefully) looking like crazy cat/dog people.

As well as serving the wedding cake and macaroons for dessert, all made by my friend Paula, my Dad also made a Eurasian almond cake, and my mum, a coconut cake for the dessert table too.”

The start of the ceremony had a surprise touch from Lindsay’s colleagues. “One of my friends James Wills, a copy-writer at my work, wrote a funny story about how we met (including the Hawaiian shirt) which we included in the invite, so that our guests would feel even more part of the wedding. As a surprise all my boy cousins and my uncles formed a Hawaiian shirt wearing guard-of-honour for Tim and me as we entered the reception. It was fabulous – one of the highlights of the day.

As we were having a cocktail party, instead of a traditional sit-down reception, we wanted to make sure everyone mingled, met new people and made new friends, so I made name tags for all guests out of shipping tags and old books. As well as their name, the tag also included a funny tid-bit about each person as a conversation starter, which was a hit with everyone.”

The feel of the day was really important to Lindsay. “The main reception was held on the Oak Lawn at the Zoo. We hired a big marquee and had the area decked out with big round white and small coloured Chinese lanterns strung between the marquee and the trees. We also hired couches, low tables and oriental rugs which were placed around the outside area surrounding the marquee. We also had some traditional round tables inside the marquee, so the oldies could sit down.

I had a very definite idea of the type of wedding I wanted. Tim just wanted to make sure everyone had a great party, so he – thankfully – left the details of the styling to me. I wanted the wedding to feel like an old-fashioned garden party. I set the theme by making the Save the Date cards out of shipping tags and vintage findings I sourced on Etsy.  I also spent the months leading up to the big day trawling local swap-meets purchasing old teacups, teapots and unusual shaped jars which we used as vases at the reception. My Matron-of-Honour also kept her eye out for jars me.  I sewed metres and metres of bunting to hang in the marquee and made all the little signs for the wedding cake, present and dessert table. My new Aunty Pat helped out and made cushions out of vintage fabric, which we scattered on the couches to add colour. My new cousin Emma, also helped out, and sewed hatbands out of Hawaiian shirt material, for the straw trilby’s we gave away as the men’s bonbonnierre.”

One of Lindsay’s favourite memories was the speeches. She recalls “The speeches were brilliant, our Mum’s spoke on behalf of our respective families. They were both so nervous beforehand, but both did so well. The Matron of Honour and best man’s speech were superb – best on ground for sure. Each speech was hilarious and touching at the same time… They’re both quite competitive, so I think they might have been secretly trying to outdo the other.

There were a lot of little funny stories that happened on the day – starting with Ross, one of our dear friends who was in charge of driving the bridesmaids to the church in Archie. There was a big traffic jam in both directions of the freeway, so Ross was running very late to pick them up, which caused a few palpitations. In fact so many of the guests were stuck in the traffic, I had to sit in the bridal car at the church waiting for them to arrive – my Dad and I were waving at all the late-comers dashing in for a good fifteen minutes before we could enter. At the reception we had a guest who transformed himself into a poet by request for the evening and performed poems on demand (with mixed results), and another guest who split his pants from all the dancing he was doing.”

The first dance was also a highlight for the bride. “We danced to “Everything” by Michael Buble…it was great fun but also a bit nerve-wracking – we had learnt a routine  which involved lots of lifting and twirling, and could have gone horribly wrong in lots of places…luckily it all went fine and we’re pretty sure we heard lots of ‘ooohs’ & ‘ahhhs’ from our family and friends…”

Congratulations Lindsay and Tim! Thank you for sharing your wedding day with us today on Polka Dot Bride! Thank you also to  Natasja Kremers Photography for sharing today’s photographs!

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