Elegant Opera House Wedding - Polka Dot Wedding

Ali & Dom

After more than a decade of being together, Ali and Dom chose a traditional Sydney wedding to celebrate their marriage. With a love of all things fine food and plenty of guests flying in from all over the world to celebrate their wedding day, Ali and Dom chose Guillaume at Bennelong, right inside Sydney’s Opera House for their elegant celebration captured by dear friend Tealilyphotography.

Ali tells the story of how they came to be so long ago. “We met in our final year of high school in Sydney through a mutual high school friend when we were both 17 years old. We attended each other’s year 12 formals as friends but we clearly saw something more than that in each other, given we’ve now been together for almost 12 years before getting married since meeting in high school. The rest is as they say, history!”

Ali and Dom worked with wedding planners Bells N Whistles Events to plan and coordinate their wedding day.

Ali wore four different gowns on her wedding day, kicking off with a strapless number from Monique L’huillier.

Susan Avery Flowers created bouquets of roses for the floral arrangements.

Ali and Dom chose St Mary Magdalene Church Rose Bay for their wedding ceremony.

Ali walked down the aisle to Pachelbel’s Canon in D.

Of their photographers, Ali remarks, “Tealily Photography are decade long friends of ours! We couldn’t have asked for better photographers at our wedding and they know what we are looking for in the photos. They are the most talented and fun people we know. They both really know how to capture the most beautiful, touching, and natural moments at any wedding.”

For the tea ceremony, Ali changed into a red lace gown.

Guillaume at Bennelong was chosen for the couple’s reception. Ali remembers, “Our reception was held at Guillaume at Bennelong at the iconic Sydney Opera House. Being a huge foodie myself, it was important for us to have our reception where the food was guaranteed to be delicious and amazing!

In addition, many of our guests travelled from overseas who had not been to Australia so we felt that having our venue at one of Australia’s most well-known restaurants in the Sydney Opera House was the best place, which would offer spectacular views of the harbour, the city skyline and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.”

The first dance was a grand highlight of the evening, Ali remembering “We wanted to dance to a song which was not your classic or predictable first dance. We finally decided to dance to “More than a Woman” by the Bee Gees and “Night Fever” by the Bee Gees because we loved Saturday Night Fever, the movie, so much. We had a dance teacher in Hong Kong choreograph some moves for us (moves that were much simpler than the ones used in the move by John Travolta). When we initially started the dance lessons, we thought we were probably too ambitious trying to customise our own wedding dance considering both of us have two left feet. After taking lessons for two months once a week, we managed to pull it off in the nick of time before the wedding!”