Intimate & Earthy Daintree Rainforest Wedding

Clara & Chris

Marrying in a truly sentimental place for this gorgeous couple, they chose the beauty of the Daintree to say ‘I do’. Enlisting help from friends and family, the couple mainly DIY’d the wedding and ensured there was very little environmental impact from their big day. Issac from Perspectives Studio was there every step of the way to capture the beautiful day that was. The couple share the intimate details of their wedding day and we can’t help but fall in love with the incredible backdrop.

Clara and I met in the summer of 2014 at the Falls Festival in Marion Bay, Tasmania. She was the girl with the sparkly eyes, a broken shoe and tube of glue. Chris was the best dancer with the biggest smile and was able to advise how best to apply the glue to fix the broken shoe.

Our wedding was intimate, earthy and colourful. We both love being in nature and like simple earthy designs. We wanted our wedding to be part of the beautiful environment that we were in so we went with light earthy tones, groom and groomsmen in light browns and whites, and contrasted it with bright pops of colours with the bridesmaids wearing different coloured dresses.

Flowers were from local florist, Flowers by Wynne. She created a beautiful bouquet using southern natives and tropical foliage. The bridesmaids actually made their own posies from locally sourced orchids and ferns from the property. Most of the furniture was up-cycled timber put together by Clara’s dad Peter leading up to the event.

With food, we didn’t want to lock ourselves into either the sit down, or just canapés. Arthur from Platinum Cuisine was wonderful to work with and very accommodating. He created a tasting board for our guests to get started on while we were away capturing some photos, followed by substantial canapés and a help yourself style buffet for mains. This worked really well, the food was fresh and tasty, and didn’t get in the way of conversations, dancing, or speeches!

To walk down the aisle, one of Clara’s long-time friends who lives in Port Douglas is a very accomplished drummer and guitarist and one night he sang a cover of “Under the milky way” by The Church. It’s a classic Aussie band, plus he’s a longtime mate and legend of Port Douglas, it all fit together!

Wompoo Eco Retreat is located at Cow Bay, the Daintree Rainforest. It’s generally a boutique retreat, but given enough convincing, we managed to shoehorn our way into booking the date. We couldn’t be happier with the day. It’s a stunning venue with a view that covers Thornton’s peak to Cape Tribulation. We chose September as it’s almost always dry in the Daintree and it’s the lowest humidity of the year up there.

Anna from Port Douglas Marriages did a fantastic job of turning our chicken scratchings into the lyrical readings, vows and speeches of the day. We couldn’t recommend her more highly. It was beautiful, personal and intimate. I had may people come and tell me they learned lots about our relationship from the content of the ceremony and speeches. Clara’s uncle Michael did a passionate reading called “the Amulet”, I’m still chasing the author of this.

Issac from Perspectives Photography did a fantastic job! We love his shots and also his presence. One of our favourite shots is us having confetti (made out of local ferns) being thrown on us after we got married!

Chris has a bit of a problem with Orchids at our place in Sydney, so unbeknownst to him, Clara went and arranged that the bridesmaids posies be made with orchids local to the Daintree and Port Douglas area, which was a wonderful surprise on the day for Chris.

Each of the flowers in Clara’s bouquet had some special meaning to her, from Geralton Wax flowers to orchids, Wynne did a great job making a fairly diverse set of requests into a cohesive and stunning set of flower displays for the bridesmaids, arbour and button holes.

Designer Rachel Bradstock at The Definite Article made a stunning dress for Clara a few years ago, and that was a really personal experience. It was so much fun hanging out with Rachel and talking about all the possibilities, flicking through photos and telling her what I liked and didn’t like. Rachel would then produce a number of sketches and we went from there. Rachel is based in Melbourne so it also gave Clara the excuse to visit her old stomping ground and hang with friends and family.

Chris was after a linen suit, because of the heat of the Daintree and also just because he likes linen. He anticipated some problems getting his hands on this in the Sydney winter. As it happens MJ Bale had linen in stock. Chris pretty much only wears Carhartt pants, so why change? Chris matched his linen vest and jacket with a new set Carhartt pants. The groomsmen had beautiful bow-ties from Peggy and Finn, which looked great against the simple whites and tans.

We had a mix of siblings and close friends in our bridal party!

Chris really enjoyed the set up of the reception with the open dance floor and loud music area on one side with a view of Thornton’s peak and the escarpment, then an intimate, quieter area on the other side with lovely soft lighting and lots of sitting areas that folks could hop between.

Clara’s favourite detail was having her friend Mick sing her down the aisle, and old and special friend singing a song that was special to her. She also loved her flower crown!

Our first dance was set to a song from the first night we met – which my brother-in-law (who was there on that night) had trawled the internet to find a version of. It’s a Norwegian producer called Todd Terje with him covering Whitney Houston’s “I wanna dance with somebody” in his trademark up tempo style. Really a party track! All the music was put together by Clara and my longtime friend Cameron Smith, which was magic. Cam picked up and set up speakers, as well as all the music on the day and night, what a legend!

We DIY’d nearly everything! We had so much help from family and friends – special thanks to Peter, Jill, Maggie, Tim, Mick Webb, Shaun, Jake, Floss, Adam and Craig.

Clara’s sister is an incredible cook and she made the most beautiful lemon and thyme wedding cake. That was really special because we know how much effort, love, and care went into it.

Our advice for future couples? Don’t over think everything. It’s easy to get too caught up in details which no one else will notice, and you won’t even care about on the day because you’ll be too happy!