Timelessly Glamorous Wedding Day

As if planning a wedding wasn’t stressful enough, the plans for Katrinka & John’s Timelessly Glamorous Wedding Day were changed with only a few weeks to go! A change of venue from the Mornington Peninsula to the city due to capacity limits at the time, then a change the day before due to wet weather from an outdoor ceremony at the Botanic Gardens to inside Carousel Albert Park. Considering all of these changes, they pulled together one of the most incredible weddings! Katrinka says, “The fact that it could actually happen – we were the first weekend after the restrictions lifted and there was so much confusion around if it could go ahead!” And go ahead it did, and captured so beautifully by Brendan Creaser Photography. Katrinka tells us about their day…

John proposed on our 5-year anniversary. We went on our yearly trip to Torquay, and once we arrived home the house was set up with a trail of rose petals with 7 letters staged at increments along the trail. The last letter was the proposal.

John wanted a timeless and classic formal look so opted for a black tux from M.J. Bale. We were heavily impacted by lockdowns and were unable to go shopping. John loved the look of their suits online so we conducted an online fitting. They were amazing and got it right the first time. John’s pocket square was an offcut of the material from my dress.

I made thank you boxes for my bridal party. They all got a box with earrings, a necklace, champagne, slippers and a robe, and a framed photo of me and the respective bridesmaid. I also made one for my mum and my dad.

I wore a custom Silvana Tedesco gown. There were a few reasons I chose to go with Silvana. Firstly her dresses are incredible and individual, secondly, she has a passion for making gowns for curvy girls. I also was lucky enough to have my friends take me to Silvana’s event “The Road to Mrs” and my friend actually won a $5000 credit to have Silvana design a dress. She gifted this to me. It was the most amazing experience and a wonderful gift.
The experience was phenomenal (COVID notwithstanding) – working with Silvana was so special. I bought her my ideas and she took them and transformed them into my dream dress and veil. I had purchased my shoes before anything else and she created the veil to match. Her attention to detail and eye for fashion was incredible to see up close. My dress was very grand and yet still simple which is exactly what I was after. Working with Silvana gave me the dress of my dreams and a new friend for life. Every bride needs a Silvana in their life.

My favourite detail of the day was my wedding shoes from Dior. John actually picked these out from the window in the store and when I saw them I knew I needed them. They were my first purchase for the wedding and they just made me really happy. They were also really comfortable which was a pretty cool win!

I walked down the Aisle to Wildest Dreams by Taylor Swift played by the string quartet, I was escorted by my father. John and I decided on this song together because we knew we wanted a Taylor song and this one sounds so beautiful instrumental, when we listened to the strings version we knew this was the song for our day.

We had initially chosen a venue, but due to covid restrictions, we had to change 3 weeks before the wedding day. We managed to secure Carousel at Albert Park Lake – they are a wonderful venue and the staff was incredible. We had chosen to have our ceremony at the Royal Botanical Gardens however the day before the weather was so poor we had to move the ceremony inside. We moved the ceremony to Carousel and it could not have been more perfect.

Our ceremony was amazing, We had our original celebrant pull out 5 weeks before the wedding, then Kahani came into our lives and she was amazing. She completely captured our vibe and our ceremony was filled with laughs and kindness and so much love. She really captured our essence. We wanted it to have a romantic but relaxed vibe. We chose my dear friend Sheridan to do a reading from Modern Family we felt really captured the two of us…
“There are dreamers and there are realists in this world. You’d think that the dreamers would find the dreamers and the realists would find the realists but more often than not, the opposite is true. You see the dreamers need the realists to keep them from soaring too close to the sun. And the realists, well, without the dreamers they might never get off the ground.”

My favourite photo of the day was actually of the ceremony. It captured the entire scene, the wedding party, all the guests and the styling. It just really encapsulated our day with all the people who were special to us and every time I look at it makes me happy.

John adds, “I remember most of the day, but what sticks out to me the most is the anticipation and the wait whilst standing up at the top of the aisle. The reaction and the tear in my eye when seeing my bride for the first time, the nerves I felt when listening to Kahani and finally the relief once the ceremony was over! We faced so many obstacles, as did a lot of Covid weddings, but the fact that we had to change our venue the day before put added stress on everyone, on what should have been a relaxing day. Signing the marriage certificate was like the ultimate stress relief – no matter what else might happen from this point, we were married.”

We had our sausage dogs – Sizzle and Kobe – as two of the groomsmen. They wore Burberry-print bowties and leashes from Etsy.

The most special part for us was the inclusion of our dogs – they are so important in our family and we couldn’t have imagined the day without them. They made it so much better. It was also important for us to give back and because we are so passionate about our sausage dogs we decided in lieu of favours to make a donation to Dachshund Rescue Australia.

One of our favourite parts of the day was the rain the morning of – it reminded us of our first date together.

My sister lent me her diamond and sapphire ring as my something borrowed and blue. It was stunning and matched my earrings which my husband had bought me.

For my bouquet, I chose all white flowers in the form of roses, peonies and phalaenopsis orchids. I chose these as they are my favourite flowers. The bridesmaids’ bouquets were all white roses. We wanted lots of flowers particularly white roses everywhere. I completely trusted my florist, The Bouquets of Ascha Jolie, and gave her creative reign within the brief. She did an amazing job in such a small time frame and really hit it out of the park – completely capturing what I envisioned.

Brendan Creaser was our photographer and he was amazing. He has a really relaxed vibe and is just a really cool person. He made us feel really comfortable and took incredible photos. He fit right in and was more like a guest. He made two very uncomfortable people comfortable in front of the camera. He was nothing but good vibes and all our guests loved him. The photos we received were amazing and he captured everything. We had a highlights collection within 24 hours and it was unbelievable. Could not be more thankful to Brendan and could not recommend him more.

In the end, all of our vendors were amazing. I could not recommend Kahani our celebrant and MC more. She really took the time to get to know us and our guests loved her. Our photographer, Brendan, was also incredible – he captured our day perfectly. As was Rich our videographer from Hey Jack. These people were standouts and were such important components of the day and so integral to our memories we couldn’t be happier with it.

People went above and beyond for us – particularly Melbourne Event Florals and Carousel the day before when we had to make last-minute changes. Without their efforts, our wedding may not have gone ahead and certainly wouldn’t have been so beautiful.

Honestly, wedding planning was actually very stressful. We had an entire wedding planned and then COVID came and ruined it in many ways. We had to make lots of changes and were let down a lot. However, the best part was probably doing the Zoom meetings and actually meeting people “in person” – that was really enjoyable and I think it really helped nail down decision making.

Our first dance was to “Unchained Melody” by the Righteous Brothers. We love this song because it was being played live by the band and would really be special. It fit perfectly with our timeless and classic theme and we both just truly loved the song. We thought a lot about which song to go with and we also really loved “You and Me” by Lifehouse, we used this as our wedding party and family dance.

My advice to other couples is that you cannot control everything and that can be really hard, but at the end of the day as long as you have each other and you support each other the rest is just extra.