Image by Two Birds Photography

I’m a pretty relaxed person so I swore I wouldn’t get too caught up in the whole idea of planning a wedding; then I bought my first wedding magazine and everything changed. My poor fiancé Jamie had to put up with me talking about weddings non stop for weeks, so much that he put a one night-a-week ban on wedding talk. Which I promptly laughed off, talked about weddings and smiled my way out of getting in trouble.Then one day as my beautiful man sat patiently through another conversation about why I thought it was a necessity that we have fireworks at our wedding (a battle I didn’t win) it dawned on me that what I really wanted our wedding to be about was two people in love, wanting to make a life-time commitment to each other and celebrate it with the people they love. From then my perspective on things changed.

Through the process of planning my wedding, I’ve been fortunate enough to find some wonderful people to work with. I wanted to share my experience in the hopes that it would help others to get an idea of what to look for when booking your vendors for your day.

Photographer

I’m fortunate enough to have a friend in the photography business who promptly blurted out she knew an amazing woman who would be perfect to shoot my wedding; and this is how I met Nicole from Two Birds Photography. From our first meeting I felt instantly comfortable, her personality, her demeanor and most of all her amazing photographs is why we booked her. But what really sealed the deal for us were the albums she had put together; they were stunning!

Image via The Candy Buffet Company

Candy Buffet

From the very beginning my fiancé and I knew we wanted something fun and quirky as our wedding favors and spent what felt like forever looking for the perfect gift for our guests. I honestly thought we wouldn’t find anything, and then we met Claire from The Candy Buffet Company. After initially thinking we could put a candy buffet together ourselves as we started to look into it we realised that we would need to pay for jars, vases, lolly bags, tongs, tags, lollies and not to mention giving someone the job of setting it up on the day. My head hurt just thinking about it! After my initial phone call with Claire I was completely sold, she was so passionate and enthusiastic it was hard not to be excited – not to mention she manages the set up, design, installation and clean up of these gorgeous buffets. One less thing for me to think about!

Ms Gingham says: Thanks so much to Gemma for this “behind the scenes” look at her wedding planning. Finding the right people for you, who share your ideas and understand your needs is such an important part to achieving your wedding the way you envisioned it. If they’re not feeling you, move on to a person who does! Good luck with the rest of your organizing Gemma!

Gemma says: “I’m a 25 year old girl who made the big move from Melbourne to Sydney in 2006 for love. While unfortunately that romance didn’t work out I met the love of my life, quite unromantically, at a bar one night. 1 year and 1 month later my beautiful man dropped to one knee and presented me with the biggest cardboard cut out of my dream ring! The last 11 months of my life have been spent scouring the internet looking for quirky and interesting ways to make mine and my groom to be’s day not only amazing but unique. I’ve met some amazing people who genuinely love what they do, have been happy to help and indulge my inner control freak and have made what should be a stressful process relatively simple. I have to thank your amazing website for helping me on my (relatively) stress free wedding planning way.”