Jennifer & Cameron

A wedding in the vineyard always calls for romance. I’m never quite sure why I love winery weddings as much as I do, but the atmosphere of romance never fails to leave me. Especially when such beautiful weddings like Jen and Cam’s hop across my desk!

Jen explains how she & Cam met. “Funnily enough we met back in 1998 at a nightclub and dated for a little while. Then a series of events made our paths cross again eight years later. Fate definitely stepped in and we’ve been making each other laugh ever since!”

Photography today is by The Follans. Clean, classic captures with a lot of personality!

Jennifer recalls “Our florist – Stacey Harrison of Wedding Flowers By Stacy who did such an amazing job with our flowers. I was fairly vague in that I just gave her a mood board of flowers that I liked. I didn’t specify any flowers, just a loose theme of romantic, rustic country. I was blown away with how perfect they all were. I think they really made the venue come to life.”

Jennifer’s makeup was styled by Tracey Dixon with hair by Milton Hair Design (02) 4455 1875  Jennifer remarks, “I turned up on the morning of the wedding an absolute nervous wreck. Of course in hindsight it was absolutely ridiculous but I had spent the night before the wedding vomiting through nerves! But the very lovely women at the hairdressers somehow made me breathe normally and calmed me down.”

Jennifer chose a strapless, sweetheart neckline gown from Karen Willis Holmes with Gary Castles Sydney and a vintage diamond solitaire pendant. She remembers “I loved the first moment my 2 year old niece saw me in my wedding dress and pointed up to me and said “princess, princess” and asked me to “spin around like a princess”.”

The couple chose the South Coast for their wedding. “We decided we wanted to get married out of Sydney and down on the South Coast. We have spent many holidays down that way, swimming, camping and riding our bikes so we wanted to find a venue and a town that allowed us to have a weekend down there with all of our friends and family.

We stayed at Bannisters in Mollymook for a couple of days prior to the wedding and afterwards. It’s such a nice spot and was a great place to get ready before the wedding.

The venue for the service and the reception was Cupitts Winery in Milton. It’s a stunning location set looking over the rolling hills of the Budawang Ranges. We knew the moment we arrived to look at it that we had to have our wedding there.”

Jennifer handmade many of the decorations for the wedding, including a look back at their history together. She explains, “I printed on cardboard a load of photos of Cam and I at various ages and our family wedding photos and hung them up with string and wooden pegs.”

As to why they chose Cupitts, Jen says, “As we weren’t getting married in a church we wanted to get married somewhere that has a bit of history and that we knew would be standing for many years to come. The premises of Cupitts is an old buttery and creamery, that has been lovingly restored, it has an old world feel and feels like it belongs in the surroundings.”

For her walk down the aisle, Jen recalls “We had a local musician Roddy Reason playing his acoustic guitar and singing Jack Johnsons ‘Angel’.”

The wedding had some very special guests, Jen explains “My elderly grandparents flew over from the UK to be at the wedding and signed our marriage certificate as our witnesses. It was the first wedding of any of their grandchildren and it meant so much for me to have them here for it.”

There was, however, one unexpected visitor. “Everything went exactly as planned! I think the crazy amount of planning we had put in and all the little details that I spent months agonizing over actually paid off. The only thing we didn’t expect was the thunder & lightning show we got as we were saying our vows! It was very dramatic and made it even more memorable.”

Of their photographers, Jen remarks, “From the first conversation I had with Andrew who was completely relaxed on the phone, to meeting up with both of them. They just seems to ‘get us’, they  weren’t pushy or over the top. We wanted an extremely relaxed wedding, and it was important to us that our photographers aligned with that vibe.

Because of my career, I knew I had potential to be a pretty horrendous client as I had a pretty clear idea about pretty much everything about the wedding. I had mood boards for every single detail – I’m a bit of a perfectionist. But The Follans have always been so patient with me, and I honestly couldn’t be happier with the photos. They have captured every moment so perfectly.”

Jen’s handmade touches continued to the ceremony with her handmade photobooth, tissue paper pom poms, invitations & stationery- even down to draping the marquee! Jen’s old high school teacher made the couple’s beautifully decorated wedding cake. Jen recalls “She was so worried about getting it to be exactly what I wanted, I think she was worried I had really high expectations. It was absolutely beautiful and exactly as I had pictured.”

Jennifer loved, “Watching all of our guests dancing all day and night! Music was such an important part in planning our wedding and more than anything we wanted to throw a big, fun party. Celebrating with all of our friends and family. It was exactly as we had envisaged, the best party we have been to!” The Baker Boys provided the music for the reception.

There were plenty more musical moments that Jen loved too. She explains, “We asked a dear friend of ours to sing ‘When I see you smile’ by Bic Runga at the reception. It was a very beautiful and personal moment.We weren’t particularly keen on a ‘first dance’ but we had a favourite song, which our brilliant band learned – Ray LaMontagne’s ‘You’re the best thing’. I think we only had about 2 seconds to ourselves on the dance floor before all of our guests were dancing along with us – it was perfect.”

Congratulations Jennifer & Cameron! Thank you for sharing your wedding day with us! Thank you also to The Follans for sharing today’s images!