Adina & Daniel’s Modern Dunbar House Wedding

Adina & Daniel

I love the modern, yet relaxed atmosphere to Adina and Daniel’s modern Dunbar House wedding. The bride, a jewellery designer chose a stunning gold and white gown and the couple incorporated both of their own cultural history into one day, with a special moment together with their children to mark this new chapter for their family. They chose David Campbell Imagery to capture their day.

Adina tells the story of how they met. “It was a Saturday morning late July 2010, I was supposed to go and set up my weekly jewellery stall at the Paddington markets in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs. I decided not to head to the markets, as I had a large event to go to in the evening and wasn’t able to do both. Daniel was house sitting for a friend in the complex where I live and his sitting days had come to an end, so, that morning Daniel with his daughter Hine (7) and son Luca (5) were returning the keys to a mutual friend at the coffee shop in the complex. I went down stairs with my dog Benson to get a coffee and bumped into our mutual friend who introduced us, we became friends on Facebook and started chatting, we had our first date in September.”

The bride, who owns her own jewellery label Adina Jozsef crafted the jewels for the day. “I made my own engagement ring, wedding bands, cufflinks for Daniel and earrings for the bridesmaids and myself. Creating my jewellery for my own special day was so much fun, seeing this is what I do for a living for other people, it was so exciting to create my own.”

Adina walked down the aisle to String Quartet Musical Functions playing U2’s “With Or Without You. She remembers, “As my parents passed away, my aunt bought my brother and I up. So I naturally wanted Aunt and my brother to walk me down the aisle.”

Tami Sussman officiated the ceremony, the bride remembering, “We wanted a light, cheeky, genuine and loving ceremony. I am Jewish, Daniel is not, we wanted a few Jewish traditions. We had a chuppah to stand under, I walked around Daniel, but we also had Daniel walking around me and then walking in a circle together.”

“Luca my stepson (10 years old) was Daniel’s best man, we didn’t have matching numbers of bridesmaids to groomsmen. Daniel only had Luca. I had my two sisters, my now stepdaughter, my best friend and my niece as my flower girl.”

“We also included a Kiddush – blessing over the wine/ drinking from 1 cup; we had a civil wine ceremony with the quote “One should always be drunk. That’s all that matters…But with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you chose. But get drunk.” Charles Baudelaire.

We had the hand binding read by a girlfriend, and the seven blessings read by two girlfriends.”

“As we were a family coming together we wanted the children to be involved. So we had the children all up under the chuppah, Tammi said the vows and all of us said “I promise”.”

Adina chose a gown created by Daniel Learmont Couture, noting “I had off the shoulder, off white with gold flashes. it looked like someone came along with gold paint and splashed the material. The front was shorter, so I made sure I had amazing shoes (gold and silver Jimmy Choo).

I tried to get a dress off the rack but with my taste and figure, it didn’t really work out. Don’t get me wrong, some of the dresses out there are superb, but they weren’t right for my body shape and height (I’m short). It would have required getting an off the rack dress altered, and I probably would not have gotten exactly what I wanted anyway! I tried SO many dresses on. So I approached Daniel Learmont. I told him exactly what I wanted, he did a few sketches then walked me through Saigon Fabrics to chose my material.”

Of their photographer, Adina tells, “David was great, he blended in and captured all the emotion in the room and at the right time.”

Adina and Daniel chose the one venue – Dunbar House for their ceremony and reception, noting, “We used Dunbar House which was amazing. Bree Murray the Sales Manager was so helpful. Bree and her team were amazing, any questions I had was answered straight away or as soon as they could. I cannot recommend them enough!”

“Instead of name cards on the table, I had a picture of that guest sometime in the past with either Daniel or I. The guests knew what table they were sitting at, but they needed to find their photo. This took months, I had to go through so many family albums! We wanted to evoke memories and create conversation between the guests.”

Of the first dance, Adina remembers, “We wanted an informal dance. We didn’t do classes, I just let Daniel lead me. ‘Kind and Generous’ by Natalie Merchant was our chosen song.”