Sara and Nima

I love the feel of today’s wedding- it’s relaxed, yet beautiful and so Melbourne. Sara and Nima centred their day around family. There’s a beautiful dress and even yellow billy buttons and a stunning Melbourne venue – but there’s family and soul and that’s always my favourite part!

Sarah explains how she met her husband. “My relationship with my husband first began when he first messaged me on MySpace on July 2007. I had just come back from my visit to Tanzania and Malawi and was back home with my parents in Taiwan. It was also during that time that I was applying for universities in Australia to complete my Master’s degree in International Development.

My husband and I had many mutual friends from Vancouver, Canada on MySpace. He messaged me and asked if I knew his cousin and grandma who lived in Vancouver (which I did) and our connection began. We started messaging back and forth every day. We slowly found that we had many mutual friends and our connections grew stronger. We started messaging on MySpace and then slowly moved onto MSN instant message. From there we moved to Skype instant messaging and then went to Skype webcaming. We spoke for almost 7 months until I arrived in Melbourne, February 2008.”

Photos today are by Lizzy C Photography who has captured the relaxed feeling of the day beautifully and focused in on what was important to the couple – their family.

Nima wore a grey Satch suit with a yellow billy button flower on his lapel.

Sara wore a Collette Dinnigan gown with flowers by Kristina at Viva Flora.

Lizzy, the photographer says, “Sara and Nima had always planned to meet before the wedding ceremony to take some photos, so that the ceremony could run straight into the reception. We’d planned to meet in a local park for this “first look”, but just before the wedding Sara rang me and said that things were getting a bit logistically complicated, and that Nima was just going to come around to pick her up at the house. So that he did! Nima was greeted at the front door by the warm embrace of Sara and her family, which was followed by excited squeals. It was truly a unique, completely uncontrived moment. A unique moment for me to capture on camera. That is what weddings are all about—the unique moments.”

Sara and Nima held their ceremony and reception at Circa- The Prince. Sara says “Circa- The Prince Deck is a beautiful place to hold weddings. The Moorish screens create a spectacular display of dappled light through soaring glass windows and doors, opening out to the sun-filled terrace, against a backdrop of lush green tree tops and Circa’s vertical kitchen garden. If people are looking for a venue that’s not your typical reception hall, Circa the Prince is definitely unique. Oh, did I mention there’s a swimming pool in the venue? We had a couple of friends who are professional vibraphone players play a mix of the traditional wedding song on the vibraphone.

The ceremony was the most important aspect of the day for Sara and Nima. Sara recalls “The ceremony program was where we put more time and effort in. It was not too long but captured the spiritual connection we wanted and again as the theme was on family we invited our family and close friends to be readers for us.  Throughout the ceremony the gentle sounds of the vibraphone was in the background which created a very sweet atmosphere.”

Adding yellow billy buttons was Sara and Nima’s way of pulling together the day. Sara says “Another theme was the yellow billy buttons. We both like the colour yellow and since it was a summer wedding we decided to have yellow to be our theme colour. We wanted it to be modern, elegant, simple but quirky and fun. Our venue – Circa-The Prince was perfect for this. I saw some yellow billy buttons one day in the supermarket and decided that the billy buttons were going to be the theme of our wedding. We were able to incorporate the yellow billy buttons on our ceremony program but also tied 3 billy buttons to a bow and include them as decorations next to everyone’s napkins.

Lanterns hanging in the air was also another special detail we wanted. We were extremely lucky that the weather was gorgeous on the day. The lanterns were hung with fishing wires as well as they looked like they were in the air.”

A chocolate wedding cake was created by Cioccolata Bella. The couple decorated the reception with family photos “As our theme was on families, and as most of our families live overseas we wanted to include them in our wedding. My husband and I found OLD photos of our grandparents’/parents’ wedding day or family portraits and we blew them up to an A1 size and hung them around the swimming pool with fishing wires at our venue. It was spectacular. EVERYONE commented on it.”

The first dance was a highlight. Sara says “We didn’t want our first dance to be all soft and romantic as the typical first dance, we wanted it to be fun and lively. We decided to dance to one of our favourite songs from Q-Tip & Norah Jones: Life Is Better. It was really nice as we asked our cousins and family members to join us while we danced together. Our MC was amazing and everyone enjoyed his jokes and the fun and relaxing vibe he created. I think this was only possible as he is very close to us (my husband’s close friend and my cousin).

My father who has a beautiful voice sang an old persian love song that he had been practicing for months and my brother who’s a cinematographer made a short film in China and left a message in the end that every time I even think about it makes me teary! My husband’s sister gave a very sweet little short speech and both side of our uncles who came from long distances ( Nicaragua and Malawi) also gave us some little advice on marriage.”

 

Congratulations Sara and Nima on your wedding day! Thank you for allowing us to share it on Polka Dot Bride! Thank you also to Photos today are by Lizzy C Photography for today’s images!