Reid and Grace

Despite having worked in the industry with my business Bride Body, and shared in so many brides special days, nothing prepared me for my own wedding day and just how incredibly special it was. It really was the best day of my life-clichéd but true.

I was a very excited bride. I must confess despite always telling everyone about the importance of beauty sleep, I didn’t sleep a wink the night before my own wedding because I was that excited! On the day of the wedding I felt completely relaxed and lots of people have commented to us afterwards how incredibly calm we were. I put our calm state down to the fact that we had 100% confidence in all our suppliers and so could relax knowing they were doing an outstanding job.

I took to heart the advice that your wedding day should be a reflection of you and you should prioritise those things that matter to you. The flip side of this was I didn’t spend time on those things which didn’t matter to us. My fiance and I have never been big rev-heads so we didn’t have a fancy wedding car. Instead my younger sister Olivia who was also my bridesmaid was our driver and drove us around in her Volvo, complete with her red P-plates on it. My fiance had helped teach her to drive, so it made it extra special having her as our ‘driver’ and it added a nice sense of cheekiness to the day.

We got married in a gorgeous sandstone church on the Central Coast which was over 150 years old. It was the perfect setting and our priest was so incredibly engaging and had a wonderful sense of humor and passion for life. Lots of guests confessed to falling a little bit in love with our priest! He spoke about love so beautifully and eloquently and we felt so blessed to have had him marry us.

It was a warm day, so we’d arranged for drinks and ice-blocks to be given to guests after the mass. Everyone was so appreciative of this very small gesture. Reminder for any brides planning their wedding: do think how you can make your guest’s day more enjoyable. A little effort by you will be appreciated in a big way by them.

We then headed off for some photos. I had resisted the idea of going off for photos as I hadn’t wanted to miss any of the party, but I’m so glad we did. Our photographer Lisa Lent was so wonderful at making it feel like we were all just hanging out and having fun… which is exactly what we were doing. Nothing felt posed or forced. It was also really nice to actually have some time just with the special people in the bridal party- because once we arrived at the reception, time went waaaayyy too fast.

The reception was held at my parent’s property in a marquee. I feel so lucky to have had my wedding at my childhood home. It also meant we had a blank canvas which we could play with to create the exact kind of wedding we wanted. We had adorned trees with festive paper lanterns. We made our own photo booth in my parent’s shed -with a props box filled with funny wigs and hats- which has provided us lots of giggles when we got those photos back.

I’ve told you that the wedding car wasn’t important to us, so here is what we decided was important to us: Good food and plenty of it. We’d been to too many weddings where we went home hungry. Good music was also top on our list of priorities.

First up the food. Cateraid took care of everything for us and we actually became really good friends with the owner Greg over the course of planning our wedding. We had definite ideas about the layout of the marquee and he was wonderful at helping our wedding dreams come true. It was very important to us to have long tables (instead of round tables). We feel that round tables can inhibit the flow of conversation at a wedding because you only really can talk to the person on either side of you, but a long table is much more conducive to talking to lots of people at your table, which is what we wanted our guests to be able to do. We also asked for the food to be brought to the table on platters and guests to help themselves to the food that way, instead of the usual ‘chicken and meat’ alternate drop. This made it feel much more like friends gathering for a meal and sharing food, instead of just been at a ‘function’. The food was plentiful and delicious.

Our cake was made by Jasmine at Project Cake. As someone whose day job is helping brides lose weight I’ve always advised brides, ‘If you are going to indulge in dessert, don’t do it often but when you do, choose quality’. Project Cake only makes cakes of the highest quality. They understand that a wedding cake has to look good and taste good. Our’s was one of those cakes that looked too good to eat… but we did eat it. Every last crumb. I have had every guest tell me it was the best wedding cake they’ve ever eaten. Choosing the wedding cake flavour was probably the hardest decision to make out of all the wedding planning. I was spoiled for choice- chocolate mud, white chocolate mud, white chocolate and raspberry mud, peppermint mud cake, red velvet cake, orange and poppyseed cake. I finally settled on the white chocolate mud with passion fruit syrup. It was heaven on a plate.

Music is really important to us both and we’d spent a lot of time listening to a lot of wedding bands play in our quest to find the best. We both love having a go on the dance floor and our band Soul Arte did an incredible job at playing a great mix of everyone’s favourite songs and the dance floor was pumping all night long!

Photography by Lisa Lent

Ms Gingham says: Oh that cake just hops off my screen and begs to be eaten!!! Divine!

Grace says: “We were in a room of people who loved us and only wished us well so it wasn’t as if we felt under scrutiny by them and finally we genuinely both were so excited to be getting married. As I explained to someone on the day who wanted to know why I was so calm, “I have never felt so sure about anything in my life than I do about marrying Reid”