Andy and Sandra

Andy and I met in Sydney, unexpectedly at a time when I had already made plans to move overseas to Hong Kong so we were the last people we thought we would end up with. I left for Hong Kong as planned and against all odds, we decided that a long distance relationship was better than no relationship so we decided to give each other a chance. The first year and half of our relationship was spent jet setting between Hong Kong and Sydney to see one another but not long after, Andy moved to Hong Kong, we moved in together and the rest is history.

Andy and I knew from the onset that we wanted a fun and personalised affair for our big day. We both love the outdoors and being by the water so got married at the Royal Botanic Gardens and held our reception at the Opera Point Marquee.

Our wedding was a labour of love in that I really did love almost every little moment of planning, organising and hand crafting it together – so much so that I left my career in the legal world and am now knee deep in weddings on a daily basis with Simply Peachy!

We tried to include as many personalised details as possible and included various DIY elements to not only save money but to make our wedding reflect us as a couple. Our wedding was inspired by our favourite things as individuals and as a couple and was filled to the brim with everything that we love – fun vibrant colours, scrabble fun, magnetic collectibles, delicious foods and cakes, KFC and much more.

Andy and I love playing scrabble and we’re obsessed with the game ‘Words with Friends’ so we got scrabble cufflinks made from Cufflinks as gifts for our groomsmen.

As our besties were actually of the opposite sex, we had a Best Matron and a Man of Honour rather than the traditional Best Man and Maid of Honour.

We wanted to make sure that a lot of the items we bought for our wedding wouldn’t go to waste, so we bought a customised ring bearer bowl and a something new and blue ‘Always and Forever’ bouquet tile from Palomas Nest, which are now displayed in our home, making memorable keepsakes of our special day.

One of my most favourite items from our wedding was most definitely my wedding gown from Mark Holt Bridal. There was just something so romantic about the layers of chantilly lace that I knew it was the one the moment I put it on. My mom even cried when I first tried it on! I added more ruffle detail to my custom made shoes with shoe clips from bpoetic.

We went with a Spring colour palette of peaches, creams, corals and spring greens and our florist, Maria from Maria Lush Florist was amazing in creating the floral arrangements that we wanted. They were absolutely perfect and I could tell that they meant as much to her as they did to us.

I really wanted a rose petal aisle rather than the traditional flower arch and Maria did a wonderful job in creating the ‘S’ for S&NDY (aka San & Andy).

The weather in the week leading up to our wedding was actually quite terrible and we even had our wedding rehearsal in the rain so when we woke up to a perfectly gorgeous Spring day, we knew we had lucked out.

My veil was my mom’s and was my something borrowed and old. I hope to give it to my daughter some day!

Robyn Pattison was our wonderful celebrant and the day wouldn’t have been the same without her wonderfully personalised ceremony which our guests raved on about. A lot of our friends have used Robyn as their celebrant since too!

We were always hoping the weather Gods would be kind to us so we made program fans with our stationer Seesawsed Personalised Luxury to keep our guests cool and they definitely came in handy with shading everyone from the hot scorching sun!

No wedding of ours would be the same without a silly shot.

I loved my bridesmaid dresses from Vera Wang. I managed to get them just before Vera Wang discontinued her Maids Collection. Lucky!

We wanted our reception to be simple, fun and cozy so we kept the decorations to a minimal using lanterns hung from the marquee, peach ribbons to decorate some of our tables, mismatched favour bags which I hand sewed myself and incorporated our favourite things theme throughout.

I loved our wedding cake by Cakes by Lorinda. Many of our guests commented it was the yummiest wedding cake they’d ever tasted and my friend even stole my piece of cake off my hand because he wanted more!

We love collecting magnets from our travels so we customised button magnets via Button Machine with meaningful images as our boutonnieres. I sourced fabric from Hong Kong and hand sewed them into little favour bags to hold our magnets and tied cute little thank you tags to each of them which were stamped using customised stamps we had made from Hong Kong.

We mixed our magnets with some scrabble magnets to display our engagement photos by Tealily Photography and wedding invitation at the reception entrance.

Our table numbers were a blast. We used the favourite things icons from our wedding invitations as table numbers and had guests sitting at the KFC (my husband’s second love) table! Guests loved the idea.

We wanted our guests to have fun so booked a photobooth from Flashback Photobooths which proved to be a huge hit. We love looking back at our photobooth guestbook album!

We shared our first dance to “Can’t take my eyes off you” by Lauren Hill which was the song playing in the background when Andy proposed. Our choreographed dance began with Andy doing a solo hip hop routine and he was amazing!

Our wedding was everything we wanted it to be and we couldn’t have had more fun with our family and friends. It was the perfect start to a lifetime together.

Another favourite of ours from the wedding was our video by Paper Cranes Production. They told our wedding day story so well, we (or I actually) watch it all the time!

Photography by Infinity Photography

Ms Gingham says: The cake, the flowers, the dresses… I love it all! Especially the gorgeous colour scheme!!! Thanks for sharing today Sandra!

Sandra says: “I am a self confessed overly organized recent bride with a hint of OCD, a passionate baker of all things sweet and yummy, a lover of all things colourful and a recent discoverer of my love for the creative planning process.”