I could tell you about the details of today’s stunning romantic wedding. I could harp on about beautiful invitations, the stunning natural colour palette, the coordinating pink car. I could  – but for me, that isn’t what I fell in love with. Kate, who owns wedding floristry & styling company  Two Wild Hands and her beloved Trenton, carefully planned their day their way. They threw out the traditions they didn’t want, and curated those they did. From inviting a friend to marry them, to keeping their guest list to just thirty people, to kicking off the first dance and getting the party going as soon as they said their I-do’s, to capturing their wedding portraits the day after to not miss out on any time with their guests. Every story is told beautifully, to reflect their love for not just each other, but their guests. Along with the beautiful photography by Jordan Knight, this day is an absolute honour to share.

It was a long time coming for the pair, who have been together nine years and were engaged for six, the groom popping the question in the most romantic of ways. In Kate’s words “Trenton sent me out for lunch one Friday. While I was out he laid out a dress and an envelope on our bed, he then snuck off to meet me under a tree we climbed on our first date. When I finally got home from my long (too long – oops!!) lunch I found the dress and envelope, the front of the envelope instructed me to get dressed then open the envelope. Which I did, inside was the next set of instructions written on a smaller envelope, get the car keys, then open the next envelope etc. After several envelopes of sweet instructions, I was led to him at the tree, where he had hung up lanterns with candles in them and was waiting patiently for me (by this time it was almost sunset and the park was closing up!). I opened the final envelope, and inside was a very romantic and beautiful letter. Once I had finished reading he got down on one knee and proposed with the most beautiful diamond. We had always talked about designing my engagement ring together so he had carefully chosen a stone that would inspire the design. Of course, I said yes! (then cried a whole bunch) We had to pack up quickly before they locked the gates and then drove home in our separate cars – which I thought was hilarious. It was the sweetest most intimate proposal.”

In keeping with the neutral colour palette, Trenton chose linen pieces from Trenery.

Kate was lucky enough to have her mother and grandmother craft her wedding gown, the beautiful lace chosen from Tessuti Fabrics. She tells “My Mum and my 90-year-old Nan had designed and sewn my sister’s wedding dress (in 2017) and I always knew that as long as Nan was able and willing I would love to have her help with mine. My nan started to draft up the pattern from scratch in January, and from that mum created a mock-up using old sheets. By late February we had moved on to the final dress structure – my mum spent hours and hours sewing, both machine and by hand, and then once the dress structure was mostly complete it was my turn to step in and start hand-beading.

In total my mum and I together spent close to 80 hours beading sections of the dress, including the fully beaded belt. All in all, it was an incredible bonding time spent with my beautiful Mum and wonderful Nan.”

You might be as gobsmacked as us to learn that Kate and Trenton’s venue is actually a hair salon! The White Room provided a blank canvas for the couple’s ceremony and reception. Kate explains “We didn’t want to get married somewhere I’d worked before, so we wanted to find a hidden gem that we could use as a single space for both ceremony and reception. After scouring Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane for studio spaces, we actually stumbled across The White Room – normally a hair salon, believe it or not – right here in Newcastle! The owner had just renovated and relaunched the space available to hire for small events in the evenings. The white walls, white timber floor and black ceiling were the perfect blank canvas to put our own stamp on.”

The bride and groom chose “Clair De Lune” for the processional, mixed by the groom, a music producer. “I walked down the aisle to an original piano composition of Clair De Lune – my favourite piano piece – which Trenton recorded and mixed himself, with the help of a friend to perform the harder parts of a (very) difficult song!” remembers the bride. “A couple of years ago he came home from a U.S tour a few days early to surprise me. Having spent many hours backstage learning the first few stanzas of Clair De Lune on the piano while touring (he is a normally a vocalist), that day I came home to him sitting in the corner of our living room, playing it as I walked in the door. It’s always been our special song. To know that I was walking down the aisle, in the dress my mum and nan made, on the arm of my dad, to a recording of Trenton playing the piano, was an incredibly special moment for me.”

There was a lot Kate and Trenton did differently, and choosing to marry the day before their actual wedding in the courthouse was one. The decision meant that the couple could have their close friend “marry” them in front of their family and friends. “We always wanted to have a very intimate day – full of thoughtful touches and meaningful moments focused on each other and those closest to us.  With such a small number of guests, we didn’t want to have any strangers in the room. He spoke about us as a couple and he spoke from the heart, knowing us as long as we had known each other. We then said our vows, and it felt like no one else was in the room, it was perfect.”

Kate, of course, styled the flowers herself with her Two Wild Hands team, the focus of which was the dried fern ceremony backdrop. “I have always had a very strong connection to Autumn, as a season, so it was important to us that the flowers reflected my own style, as a floral designer as well as the palette of Autumnal tones. We created a backdrop of dried bracken fern which had the perfect brown tone, the flowers were all some of our favourites, roses, flannel, chocolate cosmos, Japanese anemone, dahlias, bunny tail grass and Lunaria, to name a few.”

Being in the wedding industry meant Kate and Trenton were able to select suppliers that they not only loved the work of but were also good friends. “Everyone was fantastic and even though we are lucky to call them all friends, no-one brought anything less than their best, from Soda Jazz Band, who kept the vibes coming with incredible jazz-inspired covers of everything from Amy Winehouse to Childish Gambino to Queen, to Tess and James from Fennel and Co delivering a delicious seasonal spread of canapés and mains, our dear friend and photographer Jordan Knight for blowing us away with her work both behind the camera and at the editing suite, Renae at The White Room for welcoming us into their space countless times to measure, remeasure, photograph, bump in and bump out, Ash from Film + Foliage for helping with the bump-in, and our jeweller, Rhys Turner Jewellery, who designed and crafted the most perfect and personal rings for us to wear the rest of our lives.”

Once they were pronounced married, the newlyweds celebrated with their first dance performed by Soda Jazz Band, Kate explaining “We decided to flip our day around a little bit wanting to kick things off straight after our ceremony with the live jazz band we had booked for the few hours between ceremony and sitting down to dinner. We stepped into our first dance within half an hour of the ceremony finishing, and we danced to Duermete by As Tall As Lions, a beautiful, romantic and airy piece that was played over the speakers, which bled into the band starting up with their jazzed version of Childish Gambino’s Redbone. We have very varied musical tastes, but marrying a musician means that we couldn’t let our guests down on the music side of things!”

“We wanted a beautifully composed and considered atmosphere, against a neutral palette with autumn colours and tones carried through the florals and installations. The whole day was designed for intimacy – between the two of us as a couple and between our guests” remembers Kate.

Everything about the day was chosen to create an intimate atmosphere. “We loved that we had the perfect level of input on the areas that were most important to us, and we loved that we stuck to our guns and kept it small, intimate and very meaningful” remarks the bride. “Everyone who was there, from the caterers to the photographers to the guy officiating were our friends. Being in the industry and doing many weddings over the years we knew exactly what we wanted out of our day, we knew how important it was to us as a couple to spend quality time together, as well as with our nearest and dearest over the course of the evening. ”

The dinner party celebration began after dark, by which time the guests were already friends, a carefully considered orchestration of the bride and groom. Kate explains “By focusing the social celebrations into the time between ceremony and dinner, we avoided the uncomfortable divide between those guests kicking on and those guests going home after dinner – not to mention the awkward lull usually created by the bridal party leaving to take photos for a couple of hours. By the time we sat down to eat, all of our guests had already familiarised with each other and we actually had a special moment during the meal, looking around the table to see so many lively and passionate conversations between people that had only met hours earlier. ”

Opting for more time with their guests, Kate and Trenton chose to have their wedding portraits taken the day after their wedding. “It was one of the best decisions we have ever made” tells Kate. “It took the pressure off “the day”, we were able to stay at our venue the whole time so we could enjoy that time with our guests. Then the next day after a relaxed morning our photographer came back and we got dressed again, took some really special shots at our amazing Airbnb then headed up to catch the sunset on the sand dunes about an hour north.”

“Jordan was a friend of ours, she had shot Trenton’s band live at many shows and we knew her through our music circles” tells the bride of their photographer Jordan Knight. “She’s an amazing photographer that excels at capturing magical fleeting moments, the best lighting and being quick to turn around the edits (all skills she’s honed after many years of live music photography), so we knew we could trust her to capture our day.”

And the icing on the (wedding) cake? A stunning film of the day(s) as they unfolded.

Congratulations Kate and Trenton! Thank you for sharing your beautiful stories with us today. Thank you also to Jordan Knight for sharing today’s imagery.