Mel & Matt's Rustic Eco Studio Fellini Wedding

Mel & Matt

You can truly feel the love when you see best friends and lovers, Melinda and Matt’s Ecostudio Fellini wedding! From the importance of family and friends to getting loose on the dance floor, the jungle-like surrounds perfectly complemented the mood. Better yet, great friend and wedding photographer Jon Gazzignato was there from Hobart to celebrate and capture all of the memorable moments. Mel tells the story of how they met…

Matt and I met on NYE at a party in Sydney of a mutual friend. Matt was living in London at the time, and I was living on the Sunshine Coast. We dated long distance between London and Australia for 2.5 years before I finally moved to London for a further 2 years (we now live back in Australia)!

I had two brooches pinned to my bouquet on the day – one from my grandma on my dad’s side and one from my nana on my mum’s side. I also wore my mum’s veil!

My dress was incredible. It was a halter, white sequin Karen Willis Holmes dress (Cindy) with an open back. It was the first one I tried on (originally at Angelica Bridal in London) and I fell in love with it. I then had a second try on back in Australia at KWH in Brisbane with my family. I felt it suited my body shape perfectly and the sparkle of the sequins made it unique and interesting. It was beautiful mix of elegance, uniqueness, sparkle and style and it made me feel so incredible. The experience was amazing with KWH, I loved the trying on and fitting processes and feel so lucky to have found it.

Matt wore a grey 3 piece suit from Hawes & Curtis in London. The grey suited well with our surroundings and the waistcoat added a touch of London formality to his attire.

Our wedding was on November 3rd at Ecostudio Fellini in Mudgeeraba on the Gold Coast.

We were after a relaxed affair, which fitted in well with the rustic surroundings of our venue. There was lots of greenery and wood features. Our wedding was a perfect blend of laughter, happiness, love, family and friends and couldn’t have been a better day to represent us as a couple.

I am always 20 minutes early to everything and ended up being 15 minutes late to the ceremony – I had joked to Matt if I wasn’t there at 3.01pm that I wasn’t coming so he was stressing that I wasn’t there on time!

My sister Amanda and 3 friends – Carli, Susie and Rebecca. Matt had 4 friends – Chris, Brad, Andrew, Anthony, plus his best female friend Claire!

We had a string quartet for the ceremony and time before the reception, and they played Canon in D for me walking down the aisle. The string quartet filled the breezy air of the outdoor venue so well and were a nice touch to add to the atmosphere.

Matt and I aren’t the most openly affectionate couple so we wanted our ceremony to be about our story of us getting to our wedding day. Our celebrant kept the ceremony fun and relaxed and included a special part for each of our parents as well. Matt’s cousin Laura did a reading of a poem called ‘These Hands’. Matt and I had joked that we would ‘seal the deal’ with a handshake instead of a kiss and on a whim we did this just before the kiss which was hilarious and really lightened the mood!

We had our ceremony and reception at Ecostudio Fellini. This venue was perfect for us because it had so much natural beauty and promoted a relaxed atmosphere for our guests. The staff and venue could not have been more perfect for our day.

I had seen an inspiration photo of a white flower bouquet with two open pink peonies and based the flowers around this. Our florist matched these flowers to an arbour arrangement, and we had greenery with scattered white flowers to compliment the tables inside the venue. We didn’t want to go overboard with flowers as the venue has a lot of natural greenery and beauty, and I feel the pink peonies accentuated this with a beautiful pop of colour.

We DIY’d the welcome and seating chart signs (with a lot of help from my dad!). He also made our table numbers.

However, it’s so hard to single out the special details! We had tried to merge together the perfect blend of a relaxed and fun day, a good party, some traditional elements but most of all for our family and friends to enjoy themselves. Each individual detail was special in its own way and all added to the relaxed feel of the wedding.

Our photographer is a family friend (who also happens to be an incredible wedding photographer!) from Hobart who we flew up to capture our day. It was so nice to work with Jon as we felt comfortable in his presence and he caught the perfect shots to document our day.

There are so many great images – I especially love the photo of my dad and I just before we started walking down the aisle. We love the photos of us with our bridal party laughing as we walked to the formal photos, and we love the photos of us together in the green field, again, laughing and enjoying the moment.

There was a moment I think we both loved, we took a 10 minute breather after the main course was served where we walked outside and had a chat and watched our guests enjoying themselves inside the reception area. It was quite a surreal moment.

All of our vendor’s were fantastic. Tarn our celebrant, Jon our photographer, Anna from Ecostudio Fellini, Julieanne and Alicia my hair and makeup artists, Keren our florist, Michael from WeRDJs. I loved the wedding planning process – my favourite part was planning the finer details such as the table decorations, guestbook, favours etc.

If I have any advice for future bride’s – don’t stress the small details!! I found I didn’t really look at many of the details I put so much time into planning for the day. Keep your focus on the fact you are marrying the person you love, as that is the most important thing and why you are having your wedding.