St Kilda Backyard Wedding - Polka Dot Bride

Virginia & Troy

There is a beautiful feel to Virginia and Troy’s charming St Kilda backyard wedding. The couple wanted a wedding that wasn’t too formal and felt very much like them. They were offered Virginia’s uncle house for the reception and a friend offered her front garden down the road for the ceremony. They married on the front verandah, they ate delicious food in the backyard as the sun set and they held the speeches in the front room, all captured beautifully by It’s Beautiful Here.

Virginia wore a knee length dress from Collette Dinnigan, remarking, “I found my dress at Collette Dinnigan. I knew I wanted a frock and not a gown, and ran into a friend who works at one of the stores. She told me about an ivory dress with a double hem to the knee made of the most beautiful flower-patterned fabric. My mum and I raced to the Armadale store and snapped it up. It was the second dress I tried on.”

Virginia accessorised her look with a short veil and blue shoes from Zimmermann, explaining, “Because it had a sort of 1960’s look, we bought a short veil to top it off and blue strappy shoes from Zimmerman for my “something blue”. They were exactly the same colour as my two bridesmaids’ dresses, worn by my sisters, also from Zimmerman.”

Virginia loved the morning spent getting ready. “My dad cooked us all breakfast on the morning of the wedding as we were getting ready, it was really special to spend that time together as we prepared for the day.”

The ceremony was held in a neighbour’s front yard on Acland Street, the bride remembering, “I loved walking down Acland Street with my dad and two sisters and hearing Elvis in the distance as we made our way to the ceremony.”

For the processional, the bride remembers, “We chose the song Can’t Help Falling in Love With You by Elvis and used some of the lyrics from that song on our wedding invitations.”

The wedding ceremony was held in a St Kilda front yard, Virginia noting, “We had been engaged for more than a year when we decided it was time to get hitched. But finding a venue for 80 guests that looked and felt right and was within our budget was harder than we thought it would be.

Luckily my uncle offered us his house in St Kilda for the day. Although it’s quite big, we couldn’t envisage where we could comfortably fit all 80 guests for the ceremony. A very generous friend of my uncle’s, who happens to live a block down from him, suggested her front yard. Once we had the venues sorted, everything else fell into place.”

“We planned our wedding in less than three months, which meant everything stayed pretty low-key. We found having that tight time limit great, because we didn’t want to make the planning too stressful or all-encompassing.”

Of their photographers, Virginia notes, “As soon as I saw photos by Scout and Kat from It’s Beautiful Here I knew I wanted them to photograph our day. Because our venue was a house we had flexibility with the dates, so we picked a weekend in March the girls had free. And it turned out to be a weekend in March when the weather was perfect.”

“We were so lucky to have so much help from friends and family. One friend designed and printed our invitations, her sister did our make-up on the day, my sister’s friends manned the bar throughout the night and another friend not only MC’ed at the wedding, she also did my bouquet and my sisters’ flowers. Troy, my family and I spent a few days before the wedding setting everything up.”

Cookes Food was chosen to cater the wedding, the bride remembering, “We used Cookes Food as our caterers. We weren’t keen on a sit-down and Cookes devised a delicious and hearty roaming menu. They also set up a grazing table piled with cheeses, fruit and ham. The guests loved it.”

Sticky Fingers Bakery created a decadent three tier wedding cake. “We ordered a three-tired cake from Sticky Fingers in two flavours: choc-orange caramel and strawberry shortcake.”

“The day of the wedding was so exciting. We wanted to have a beautiful ceremony followed by a big party and that’s exactly what happened. The sun shone all day and we felt so blessed to be surrounded by such special people on such an incredible day. Because the wedding was at my uncle’s house we had to work out how much alcohol to buy. We thought we had more than enough champagne, but we ran out of it before the speeches! So my dad and sister and friend had to hotfoot it to the nearest bottle-o for supplies. Everyone cheered when they returned.”