Makala and Damiano's Modern White Wedding In Brisbane

Damiano and Makala

Damiano and I met through a mutual friend in early 2011. They say when you know, you know and in April 2012 we were holidaying in Lake Como, Italy when he popped the question early one morning as the mist drifted over the lake and snow fell upon the mountains in the distance. Not to be outdone by the view, he had secretly organised dinner for us that evening at the best restaurant in town, and the chef himself drove us to dinner! We enjoyed the rest of our holiday with less talk of wedding plans, and more of planning our lives together. The wedding planning began in earnest when we returned home and we were married in July 2013.

As luck (or fate) would have it, we both had similar visions for our big day. It was important to us to be married in a church, and we knew we wanted a classic white wedding, a formal reception with river views and a modern feel. It didn’t take us long to settle on beautiful St Stephen’s Cathedral in Brisbane, and Moda Events Portside. The day was captured by Broderick Photography, and to entertain our guests while we had some photos, we hired a boat and sent them down the Brisbane River as the sun set with prosecco and antipasto to arrive at Moda just in time for drinks and canapés on the terrace. We had a lone bagpiper who piped us out of the church and piped our guests down to the river with much fanfare!

I knew early on that I wanted my dress to be simple and structured, and Jennifer Gifford expertly helped bring my dress to life. I handmade my cathedral length veil (which I can’t bear to put away months after the wedding) and made the two belts for my dress – a vintage rhinestone belt for church, and a grey velvet bow belt for the reception. I also added a great estate auction find rhinestone necklace for the reception.

My beautiful bridesmaids wore White by Vera Wang gowns in charcoal with feather capes by Jigsaw, while the gents dressed up in black tie with wing tip shoes at Damiano’s request. Canary Hair and Beauty prettied us up for the day, and Kym Browne Flowers tied our bouquets and buttonholes in perfectly with our theme.

On reflection, we had both (perhaps naively) thought our favourite part of the day would be the reception – an evening shared with family and friends all dressed up with good food, wine and dancing. The ceremony itself blew us both away with how special, meaningful and emotional it was.

The styling theme for the day was soft modern metallics. I designed our monogram and all of the paper goods and we put everything together with the help of family and friends. We did the majority of sourcing and styling ourselves, with some help from vendors to pull it all together at the end. Our guests sat at tables named after places we visited on our European holiday, and Damiano’s parents made their famous limoncello for us to bottle up and give as favours, together with traditional Italian sugared almonds. I put together all of the reception flowers which stretched our styling budget further, and countless hours spent searching wholesalers, craft websites and Etsy turned up some beautiful finds for a steal, including fabulous sequin fabrics, crystal candleholders and hundreds of metres of ribbon!

BlueRobin Photography

We treated our guests to a dessert bar filled divine individual desserts by Moda, and our favourite lollies thanks to Brisbane Lolly Buffets. A family friend generously let me design and then made our wedding cake courtesy of The Cupcake Parlour.

We are very lucky to have talented friends who are professional photographers, so Michael of BlueRobin Photography and Bridget of Mirabird Photography captured all of our special reception moments – of which there were many!

Right before we entered the reception, our photographers snuck us outside to get some quick shots which were loads of fun to shoot and turned out to be our favourites! A close family friend made my gorgeous feather cape which kept me warm all night.

We danced the night away to Craig Martin and his six piece jazz band and appropriately said our goodbyes to Florence and the Machine’s “You’ve Got the Love”, the same song to which we entered.