Jared and Thea

Just shy of our 6 year dating anniversary, Jared and I exchanged beautiful (and a little funny) vows with a very picturesque back drop of Mt Mee.

We met back in 2007, after I convinced my parents that I needed to go and watch my older brother’s soccer games each week, in case he got hurt. Everyone worked out very quickly that wasn’t the real reason. That was April 2007, by June that year we were dating. On June 16th 2012 Jared surprised me with a date night out to a beautiful, romantic restaurant down by the Brisbane river for our 5 year dating anniversary. We went for a walk up to the stunning botanical gardens (the dinner and walk that Jared says he remembers not much of at all!) where Jared dropped to one knee held out a gorgeous ring and proposed we spend the rest of our lives together!! Between the tears and smiles I of course said yes! We decided to get married the following April, but opted to just enjoy being engaged for the first couple of months, which was a great idea!! It all goes so fast, I’m so glad we stopped to enjoy it!

After a couple months of quiet we picked the date, April 26th 2013 and then the fun really began! We knew we didn’t want to spend a fortune, so we opted for as much DIY as we could, however we knew the reception venue would be the biggest killer. We discovered Ocean View Estate at Mt Mee, it was beautiful, the food was delicious, the hosts were lovely and very accommodating, and the price amazing!! So we locked it in! We opted to have our ceremony at the beautiful Henzell Chapel at Mt Pleasant, literally on the other side of the mountain to the winery! Just perfect!

Our photographer was a friend of ours from my church. He normally does just Real Estate photography but agreed to do our wedding. I was so pleased because he did a fantastic job!! We also had my cousin do a photoshoot with the boys while they were gettting ready and also at a football field on their way to the ceremony…why not?! We’re really glad we did this too, Dominika’s a great photographer and the boys really enjoyed the kick around! (until one of the groomsmen broke his shoe and had to have some emergency super gluing done to it, plus a hair tie put around the shoe!!).

Our hair and make up was done by the very talented Leigh-Anne Johnsen. I could not have been more pleased! The bridesmaids all looked so radiant and my make up was just beautiful, natural and soft. So stunning!!

I walked down the aisle to a simple piano version ‘Just The Way You Are’ by The Piano Guys. It was beautiful and slow and had great meaning. Jared and I spent about a year apart when I moved overseas with my highschool girlfriends, it was a long year, but definitely cemented for both of us that this was very right. When I came home, Jared collected me from the airport with flowers, milo, tim tams and Bruno Mars’ first album with the song on it saying, ‘this is my song for you, just written by somone else!’

We were married by the Pastor at Jared’s Baptist Church. Stewart did such a great job and allowed us to do whatever we wanted with the ceremony and vows. After I got down the aisle, he asked if we wanted to take a moment to have a look around and see who was here, take it all in. I said no (for fear of the tears coming on) but we did get to have a look around at one point during the ceremony which was great as we got to see everyone that was there!

We did a candle lighting ceremony, where both Mums lit a candle each to represent their families (this is when I took my look around the chapel!) and then after we were married, we lit our own candle to symbolise us starting our own family together. Jared and I wrote our own vows, memorised them, and read them to each other for the first time on our wedding day. It was a really beautiful part of the ceremony for us, and made it just that little bit more personalised. After we’d done basically everything in the chapel, we walked outside to the grass area, sat at a sweet little set of table and 2 chairs to sign our registry. It was great because it got the 100 people crammed into the chapel (it sits about 70 comfortably!) outside into the beautiful Autumn sunshine! We were so blessed with perfect weather on the day, the sun was shining, there were some clouds in the sky which added to beautiful photos and the temperature was perfect! Not too hot during the day or cold in the evening. While we signed, one of my brothers and one of my sisters-in-law sang two songs for us. They did such a great job we had people commenting that they thought it was an iPod playing until they looked over!

Once we were introduced as husband and wife (YaY!!), we got to do a quick walk around through the crowd (while having bubbles blown at us!), say hi to as many people as we could before being whisked off to the other side of the chapel for some family photos. Meanwhile our guests enjoyed a delicious afternoon tea put on by so many people! This was another real blessing. Our caterer for the afternoon tea fell through the week of the wedding, so I was madly calling around friends to see who could help and it all just come together beautifully on the day. There was the perfect amount of food, people carrying it all around (especially to Jared and I to make sure we ate), bartenders for the drinks, it was just all so perfect!!

We decided to cut our cake at the afternoon tea because my Nanna (100 years old I might add) wouldn’t be able to make it to the reception so she got to enjoy some, all the extra mouths at the ceremony meant more people to enjoy it (& less for us to take home and have to eat through!). My very talented sister-in-law Emily Lynam made our wedding cake as a gift to us for the day. She did (as always) an absolutely amazing job! It was a 3 tiered cake with the top being traditional fruit cake, the bottom a marble mud cake and the middle was a surprise until the day, Rocky Road mud cake! It was all amazing! The cake itself was stunning, with the flowers that Emily made out of the icing, wrapped in a little navy blue to tie in with the bridesmaids. It would have cost us an arm and a leg to get a cake that amazing, so we were so happy when Em said she’d make it!

Oh! My bridesmaids!! They were amazing! From the get go, always offering to help, do things, get things, anything that I or Jared needed, they’d do! I only had 3, my sister and two best friends. Jared and I decided to not choose a best man or maid of honour and it worked out quite well in the end we think. The entire bridal party worked well together and in their own groups. Two of Jared’s three groomsmen were the husbands to my two girlfriends, and my sister is a natural at fitting in with any group, being the life of the party so she and her groomsman had an awesome day/night too. They were sudo husband and wife for the day! My bridesmaids wore a beautiful navy blue one shouldered floor length gown. It had a chiffon overlay so breathed really well (great for the 2 pregnant bridesmaids!!) and just looked beautiful in the breeze. We cut the flower that was on the strap off and swapped it for an ivory flower I found in a cheap little jewellery store. The girls carried bouquets that I had made for them (a great little DIY project which I started about 5 months before the wedding). All up their flowers only cost about $50! Well worth the late nights, burned and stabbed fingers. They looked pretty good and now they’ve got a sweet little keepsake for as long as they want! My flowers were just a simple bouquet of Baby’s Breath that was put together by our family florist, who unfortunately doesn’t do weddings anymore, but did our’s as a favour. The boys had little button holes of baby’s breath too and Jared had sourced through eBay individual badges to pin on to each guy’s flowers. Jared had a football, one of the boys a storm trooper helmet, another the x-file symbol and the last one was a set of drumsticks. It was a very cool individual thing for each of the boys and just added a little extra fun to it for them!

I wore a dress from a store in Brisbane City. I didn’t have the greatest experience with my dress not arriving on time, but the dress itself I loved and suited the setting of the wedding perfectly! I didn’t want to wear a sleeveless dress and I actually found it hard to find a dress already with sleeves. But I found one! And it was a stunning lace dress, with half cap sleeves. It was a sheer lace on top until the ivory bodice started underneath. It had a little train with scallop edging running all along the bottom of it. It had a little belt through the middle with beads/jewels sewn onto it. It was a gorgeous dress and I paired it with a pair of blue heels. Because of the style of the top of the dress I didn’t want to wear a long veil and I knew that Jared wasn’t overly fond of them, so I made my own. I even put some jewels in the middle of the flower that was in it that were from one of Nanna’s dresses that she had made (she used to be a seamstress). It was my something old! I wore a gold and green ring as my something borrowed that was Jared’s Grandma’s ring. About a month out from the wedding she came down with leukemia and wasn’t able to make it to the wedding which she was devastated about, so I asked her if I could borrow something for her so it would feel like she was still with us on the day. She was very touched by the offer and brought tears to all our eyes!!

It was such a beautiful day! It didn’t go as quickly as everyone says it does, but I would do it all over again in a heart beat!!! It was such a fun morning, day and night! We got to spend so much of it with our closest friends, which was just amazing and an honour to have them all standing by our sides supporting and cheering us on through it all!

And to have such amazingly talented, loving families that helped with everything from the wedding cake, to entertainment during the registry, to the bonbonnieres (Jared’s sister made 3 different flavours of macaroons for our 78 guests!), to the beautifully (not really!) decorated car as we left! It was an amazing blessing and so reassuring of the love and support that we have surrounding us!

Images by friend of the couple

Ms Gingham says: What a talented sister in law you have Thea!! A gorgeous cake! Congratulations to Thea and Jared and thankyou for sharing your wedding with us!

Thea says: “I am the youngest of 5 children. All of which have been married over the course of the past 9 years. My parents have been married for 40years.”