I am charmed by the delight of Clarissa & Steve’s whimsical summer barn wedding. From the summary hues of the florals to the incredible personal touches, these two added to every moment of your day. Their wedding is like a nice warm hug and the perfect way to end the week!

With Cast in Colour behind the camera and (almost) endless details, Clarissa and Steve somehow made not just the beauty of their day, but the sentimentality of it look effortless. “We wanted our day to be colourful and fun with a lot of personal touches”, explained Clarissa, “we just wanted everyone to have the best night ever! We didn’t have a huge wedding (well small for Italians anyway) and it was really special keeping it intimate with the ones we love most.”

After meeting at a mutual friend’s 18th birthday party in 2010, the pair knew there was an instant connection, messaging each other constantly on MSN messenger for six months before Stephen asked Clarissa out.

Eleven years later, the time was right for Stephen to ask Clarissa to marry him. “No one believes me when I say that I had zero ideas Steve was going to propose because at the time we had been dating for (one week shy of) 11 years, but I honestly had no clue” laughs Clarissa. “One of the many COVID lockdowns had ended and I was spending the morning with some friends catching up over brunch. I was taking my sweet time coming back home, little did I know Steve was waiting anxiously for me!

When I opened our front door there was a beautiful message in the hallway and a timeline of our relationship laid out on our stairs – when we met, when we travelled the world together, adopted our cat Kiki, bought our home etc. I went upstairs and found Steve on his knee in our living room and was shocked – so many happy tears! He proposed with one of his grandmother’s rings which I still wear every day, it’s so special to have a piece of her with me since it’s the only grandparent of his that I never met. Afterwards, we designed a ring together – so I have his grandmother’s ring on my right hand and the ring we made together on my left.”

Clarissa & Steve had Momento Films capture this beautiful film of their day.

Steve and his groomsmen wore beautiful deep green suits from Suitably Tailor Made, Clarissa explained “One thing Steve said at the start when we were working out what colours to do is that he didn’t want a black suit. He wanted something a bit different and colourful, but not tacky and something he would regret later. When searching through inspo pics we came across a forest green suit and he was stuck on it – it was perfect for our colourful colour palette but still subtle and classy. Plus we got married outside so the green was perfect!”

Steve added a charm inside his coat pocket representing each of his late grandparents, just one of the moments these two made sure to add to their day. “Family is so important to us, and we wanted to acknowledge the grandparents who had passed and weren’t able to attend,” tells Clarissa. ” Not everyone would’ve known this but we wanted to have them all there in little ways that were personal to us.

For Nonno Fagoli,  Steve wore his tie clip on the day, for Nonno Fasciale, the guest favours on the tables were DIY’d from his orange tree. For Nonna Fasciale I wore her ring on my right hand and for Nonno Diez – my dad wore his watch.”

The bright and beautiful floral arrangements by Wildflower + Twig well and truly won us over, and were so on brief for what Clarissa had envisioned. “I run a business called By Clarissa where I preserve people’s wedding flowers and turn them into resin blocks to display after their day” she notes. “Working so closely with flowers, I just knew I wanted our flowers to be special. I found Paula from Wildflower and Twig and instantly clicked with her – I wanted a foraged feel to our flowers. As someone had just plucked a whole bunch of different blooms from a field – and most importantly I wanted it to be very colourful. I’ve preserved hundreds of bouquets and so many are white/green which is gorgeous too but Steve and I wanted to inject colour and fun into our day.”

Clarissa chose a gown that was classic and beautiful, finding her match at Bella E La Bestia. She remembers “I was so nervous going dress shopping, I’m not much of a shopper and just thought it was going to be so difficult to choose something. Turns out the dress I ended up buying was VERY similar to the first one I tried on! I wanted something simple and classic, I tried on dresses with lace and sparkles but they didn’t feel like me.”

Clarissa and Steve chose the beautiful Warrawong Estate for their big day.  “We fell in LOVE with Warrawong Estate once we arrived. We’d already been to the Yarra Valley and looked at some venues there as well as around our home in Brunswick/CBD but once we got to Warrawong we both just instantly knew it was the one.
It was the perfect mix of rustic without being too rustic if that makes sense. We fell in love with the ceremony area, who doesn’t want to get married overlooking a valley? Plus it wasn’t too far away for the oldies to get to. The staff were absolute gems to work with and it happened to be a DIY venue – Steve and I LOVE a DIY. We were able to choose all our vendors including catering and booze.”

Jess from Paper Hearts sang a version of Elvis’ “Can’t Help Falling In Love” as Clarissa walked down the aisle on the arm of her father.

The couple to able to have their local priest perform the ceremony. “We’re both raised Catholic but wanted to get married outside, onsite at Warrawong rather than in a church as you traditionally would. So we asked Father Vic, the priest to come to the venue and marry us there. He got permission from the church and we were so happy to be able to have our vision come to life. The readings were all traditional Catholic ones – we had the standard vows too – we made sure to include some nice words to each other in our speech later on in the evening instead.”

Clarissa died flower petals herself for guests to celebrate with as she and Steve were pronounced married.

“Try your hardest not to get stressed in the planning and enjoy it, it’ll all be over soon and you want to remember positive memories, not stress. Also, take some time during the reception to be with your partner together, you’ll be swept around all night; so for us, we just loved having a moment together. And remember the wedding is just one day, you have the rest of your lives to celebrate together.”

   

Steve’s favourite moments? The moments where he was able to reflect a little, he tells “The day was such a whirlwind, we moved so quickly in between ceremony/photos/cake cutting/dance/etc that the moments I treasure are when Clarissa and I got to step aside and have some solo time. A stand out was when we escaped to the suite all together with our wedding party and hung out to regroup with them. We shared some funny moments that we’d all had together and had a shot before heading back into the party.”

This was a wedding full to the brim of DIY details! Clarissa explained “We DIYd HEAPS! Warrawong is a DIY venue – you have the option to have them help with as much or as little as you like. We leaned into organising things ourselves, both Steve and I love DIYing things and we always have projects and side hustles on the go, so we wanted to put our personality into the day.

For our stationery & signage,  Steve designed all our stationery and I helped with the layouts. Steve is an art director/photographer so it was handy to have his skills!  I thrifted a lot of the decor  (including candles and vases) from marketplace or op shops and had our florist and the venue staff set them all out on the day.  I made the place cards myself out of resin and flowers/greenery! I wanted to incorporate my passion project (turned business!) into our day and they injected some colour into the tables. We even turned we turned someone’s old camping box from the marketplace into a beautiful wishing well! If only I had a before photo!”

The couple made sure that even the wedding favours were special. “Steve’s nonno (grandpa) passed away a year before our wedding, and he had a beautiful orange tree in his backyard. When it was full of fruit we picked as many oranges as we could, sliced them up and dehydrated them into slices that you can have as a snack or use in cocktails. We bought some jars and made some tags for them as our guest favours. So everyone got some of Nonno Fasciale’s oranges!”

“I had a special cake knife that has been used for all my birthdays and celebrations since I was little – my sister has one too – I think it’s a thing my family made up haha. We used that cake knife to cut our cake.”

Guests enjoyed a sit-down feast crafted by Damm Good. “We just loved all our vendors, couldn’t say a bad word about any of them” remembers Clarissa. “We got a lot of compliments on the food for the evening which was done by Damm Good Catering – Thomas is a magician in the kitchen and worked with us so closely to make a Mediterranean-inspired menu for the night. He even packaged up leftovers for us for our recovery day – so glad he did because we didn’t get to eat everything on the night! Steve said his favourite was choosing our caterer and doing food tastings with Thomas from Damm Good. He made it such a fun experience.”

Even the guests got in on documenting the moments. “We had to bring in some of Steve (he’s a photographer), and rather than doing a photobooth, we had disposable cameras on each table for guests to use. These pics were amazing! Steve wanted to capture some of our day on film too so he brought along his film camera and we got some beautiful shots on it. We absolutely LOVED looking at the photos developed from the film cameras on our guest tables. We got to experience our wedding all over again from everyone else’s perspective and saw so many fun moments that we otherwise wouldn’t have known about.”

The newlyweds chose Adele’s “Make You Feel My Love” for their first dance performed live by Paper Hearts, sharing “We are seriously obsessed with Jess’ voice. We’re both quite shy people so were nervous about our first dance, we didn’t have it choreographed but wanted to have a practice run at home before the big day. It wasn’t until the morning of the wedding that we both realised we hadn’t practised and it was too late now! Worked out fine in the end though.”

Clarissa and Steve were over the moon with their wedding photographs. “We loved working with Claire and Martin from Cast In Colour, they were absolute gems to work with. We wanted to capture a documentary of our day, not just all us but also our guests and all the moments we’d miss. They did an amazing job making us feel at ease throughout the day and killed any nerves.”

 

Clarissa and Steve surprised their guests with one final magic touch – fireworks! Says Clarissa “I’ve always LOVED fireworks, every New Years I’d drag everyone out to our local park in Brunswick which has an amazing view of the city fireworks. Our whole family had been so involved in the planning process leading up to the wedding, we wanted to have something as a surprise for everyone, almost like a gift back to them on the day. No one knew except Steve and I and it was just so exciting being able to surprise everyone on the day.”

The biggest congratulations to you both Clarissa and Steve! What a joy of a day to be able to share. Thank you both and thank you to Cast in Colour for sharing today’s beautiful wedding!