Tess and Katelyn’s fun and rustic wedding at Buckland Estate was a breathtaking celebration of love, set against the stunning backdrop of lush landscapes and historic architecture. Nestled in the heart of nature, their wedding was a celebration of love, laughter, and authenticity. From the intimate ceremony to the joyful reception, every aspect of their wedding reflected their unique story and the warmth of their connection.

We can’t wait for you to read about all about it today on Polka Dot You! 

We met in October 2017, through Tinder. We went on our first date to a bar in Victoria Park. We arrived not long after it opened, and had to be asked to leave at the end of the night as they were closing. We found out that we were both vegetarians, which has been such a blessing.

We spent the whole night talking about music and travel, and didn’t eat much of our food, to the point that when I went to the toilet the waitress went up to Katelyn and made her feel very awkward by asking what was wrong with the food. As soon as I got home, I messaged Katie to say how much I had enjoyed myself and that I would love to see her again, she hadn’t even gotten home yet. I loved how easy our conversation was, and how many interests we had in common.

There were two proposals. We both always adamantly joked that we would not be the first to propose but had decided that we would both do it. We had both been planning a proposal for a few months before it happened, but Katie was the first to do it.

She planned a whole weekend. My birthday was on the Sunday, so she booked a hotel in the city for two nights and had organised a day of surprises. Firstly, we went to high tea at C restaurant, followed by a gondola ride on the swan river where she proposed. I of course said yes. The ride was half an hour and she had ordered a bottle of champagne so after the surprise we had to skull some champagne.

Whilst we were still on the gondola, we got a phone call from the real estate agent of the house we had put an offer in on. He had been hassling us all day to increase the offer far more than we wanted too, and earlier in the day we had decided to stop worrying about house stuff for the rest of the day so we could enjoy ourselves. We enjoyed our champagne on the boat, then went out for a drink at the Lucky Shag bar. We again, received a text message from the real estate agent, and now with some alcoholic courage we called him and said we would go up by $10,000 and nothing more and could he please leave us alone for the rest of the day. He said he would put the offer forward to the owners, but “they won’t accept that amount.”

Katelyn had booked dinner at Reveley where we splurged on a delicious bottle of wine and enjoyed some yummy food. Whilst we were enjoying our meal, we received another phone call to say that “surprisingly” our offer had been accepted and we were soon to be homeowners! The waitress then walked by our table and knocked our expensive bottle of wine over (we had finished 3/4 of it) so not only did we get engaged and got a house within the space of two hours, but we also got a second free bottle of wine!

We finished off our weekend by celebrating my birthday and our engagement with our best friends at bottomless brunch on Sunday followed by a pub crawl through Perth, and a spa day on Monday before heading home. It was such a memorable weekend, and we were sad for it to be over, but happy to come back home to our two cats.

I had been planning to propose to Katelyn for quite a few months and had the ring and knew how I wanted to do it. I just needed some help, so called up my friends Hannah and Bree and they graciously offered to help. The plan was for them to hike out to a place in the Darlington bush near where I grew up and set up a picnic on the rock looking out over the valley. It is a beautiful spot, and a very special place to me family as this is where my sisters and dog’s ashes are spread.

To not make Katie suspicious, I laid the plan that we needed to go and drop boxes off at my parents’ house in Darlington, as we were moving there in between our rental and settlement of our new house. Katelyn forgot this plan at least 3 times in the preceding week.

The day before, we were both at work and Katie sent a message that she wasn’t feeling well and was going home early and would do a Covid test. Cue slight panic.. Finding a day when all four of us were off was not easy and we had everything ready! I had also been telling everyone at work that day what was happening, and we all collectively freaked out together. When I got home, I made sure Katelyn took all the cold a flu tablets, some Lemsip, and everything else in the house that might help!

The morning of Katelyn still wasn’t feeling 100% but was not worse than the previous day. “Great.” I said “let’s get going!” I quickly popped into the shower and when I got out Katie was back in bed and asleep. Again, I dragged her out of bed, against her will, and with lots of complaints. The car was loaded with a few boxes to make the story realistic and into the car we get… and it doesn’t start. I tried it multiple times to no avail. The battery was shot. By this point Bree and Hannah have already hiked out, we are well behind schedule and still have a 45 minute drive and 45 minute walk ahead of us!

Luckily Katelyn offered to drive her car, but insisted on packing it with new things so that I could drop the stuff already in my car off, later in the week. Now, rather stressed, I flew into the house grabbing an armful of assorted items, dumped them in Katies car, jumped in the front seat and finally we are on the way. Then Katie insists on stopping for a coffee. So, I quickly pull into the local café, order her to stay in the car, so she doesn’t get enticed to also buy breakfast (there’s an entire picnic waiting). Coffee in hand, we head on up the hill.

During the drive I then had to casually convince a sick Katelyn to stop on the way to my parents’ house to go for a walk. I used the excuse “to show Hannah (my sister) my ring”… you can’t say no to that! Throughout the walk there were a few complaints and “do we have to go the whole way?” But we made it there and it was beautiful. The girls had done such an incredible job. We had made a sign that said, “will you marry me.” As soon as Katie saw everything the first thing she said was “so this is why you’ve dragged me out of bed when I’m feeling sick!”. Obviously, she said yes, and we had a beautiful breakfast out on the rock and Katie started to feel better and we all went out for lunch.

We both had two outfits, one for the ceremony and one for the reception.

Tess:

For the ceremony I wore a white sequin dress from ASOS. I love sparkly things and didn’t want to spend a ridiculous amount on an outfit. The idea of going to a dress shop and trying on multiple dresses just didn’t appeal to me and for the reception, I work an ASOS stone coloured jumpsuit. I’m much more of a pant/jumpsuit person and wanted the freedom to move around and dance.

The shoes were from Midas. Again, the sparkles. I don’t wear heels and really wasn’t sure what I wanted to wear shoe wise. I couldn’t find anything that I liked so I was even bedazzling a pair of white sneakers by hand days before the wedding and literally two days before the wedding I walked past this pair of shoes at Midas that were perfect!

Katelyn:

For the ceremony, a white dress from JJ’s House and for reception, a shorter dress, also from JJ’s house. I wore sparkly heeled boots from Midas.

The magical sparkly jackets that we both wore were made by “seams.nice” on Instagram. This was the one thing I wholeheartedly knew that I wanted. A sparkly colourful jacket. They were custom made and absolutely perfect.

The theme for our wedding was chilled, relaxed vibes. No stress. We wanted the day to be relaxed as possible as we are both no fuss kind of people. A day surrounded by all of our favourite people.

About a year before we got engaged I had gone to see the wildflowers in Toodyay with my mum and we had driven past this beautiful building. I had no idea that it existed or what it was but I remember us talking how beautiful it was, in the middle of nowhere. When it came time to start planning we really didn’t have a strong idea of what we wanted, but I saw a video of someone who had the most beautifully extravagant festival themed wedding and I was curious as to where it was and looked up Buckland, and it was the gorgeous venue that Mum and I had stumbled upon a year prior. We went and visited the next week and as soon as we parked we were struck with the beauty of the venue and knew this was the place for us before we got out of the car. It was the only venue that we visited.

We loved the idea of having everything in the same location. Buckland has lots of on site accommodation, including glamping tents. We booked the venue for two nights so we were able to arrive the afternoon before the wedding and start setting things up, and also have a dinner with our wedding party and parents the night before. On the day, we woke up at the venue and all had a lovely breakfast that my mum made. Our hair and makeup artists come to the venue in the morning. We had a very relaxed morning all getting ready together. Most of guests stayed in the glamping tents the night of the wedding. The DJ and vendors all left at midnight but because we were all staying at the venue we were able to stay dancing and chatting as long as we liked and all filtered to bed when we wanted too.

The venue is a bit of a blank slate. You are able to bring in your own vendors and decorations, we hired just the venue. So we had a drinks van, food van and hired furniture through Buckland, which we were able to set up however we wanted. You can also have the ceremony and reception in multiple different locations across their property. We loved this aspect of the venue as we could set it up exactly as we wanted and I think this saved us a bit of money too. We also put on a breakfast with a coffee van the next morning before everyone drove home.

There were so many special moments that made the day perfect. I think that one thing that made the day so special was that we spent the whole day together. We woke up together, had breakfast together, got our hair and makeup done together whilst sipping a coconut margarita mad by Mitchell. The only time that we weren’t together was when we got into our dresses before the first look. We treasured being able to spend all that time together on our special day.

We got our bridal and bridesmaids bouquets, three buttonholes made by The Flowergirl Perth. We absolutely loved her style of wildflower bouquets. They were absolutely beautiful and really fit with the rustic, country vibe of the venue. The flowers were stunning.

We didn’t have any flowers for decorations for the ceremony as the venue is already so stunning. We just hung a rust coloured drape.

For the reception we were lucky enough to pick many, many beautiful flowers from my Mum and Dad’s garden. We collected lots of vases from op shops and marketplace and our bridesmaid, Hannah, did the beautiful table set up, including arranging all of the gorgeous flowers on the tables.

We chose a general “Autumn-ish/rustic” colour scheme – sage, olive, terracotta, burnt orange, rust for the wedding. We asked the wedding party to choose a colour within this rough theme that they most related to, and would feel comfortable in. It was important to us that they all felt comfortable in what they were wearing and it would be an item they would wear again. We were happy for them to wear whatever they wanted – for example, dress, suit, jumpsuit) as long as they all chose different colours.

We had four people in our wedding party, and it was more of a shared wedding party rather than two for each bride, because they are all incredibly important to us as a couple and individuals. There was no best man or maid of honour. Our witnesses were Hannah and Blythe, and Mitchell and Breanna and they both made a speech.

Hannah was the chief flower organiser and decorator. She is a very good friend from Tess’s work.

Breanna is a friend from Tess’s high school, but one of our closest friends as a couple. We are always together.

Mitchell is Katelyns best friend from school, and again one of our absolute best friends as a couple.

Blythe is Tess’s oldest friend, since we were 2 years old.

We are very lucky that no matter, how these gorgeous people came into our lives we are all friends individually now.

We DIY’d so much. It was really important to us, to have the absolute best day, but also not spend an excessive amount of money. We just got a mortgage and also needed to save for our honeymoon in Japan.

All of the tables were put together by our wonderful bridesmaid, Hannah. We got most of the supplies from Gumtree, opportunity shops, and Amazon and Shein. The wedding signage and name cards I designed over on Canva. Our seating chart was created by spray painting picture frames and sticking them all together. We set up the drape for the ceremony the evening beforehand.

We felt that it was important to include our parents in the ceremony but didn’t love the idea of the “giving away.” We decided to have our parents walk down the aisle together, first Katelyn’s Mum and Dad, then Tess’s Mum and Dad. Our wedding part then walked, Mitchell and Blythe, with Blythe’s son, Oliver as a flower boy, followed by Breanna and Hannah. They all walked to ‘Bloom’ by Paper Kites (acoustic cover by our wonderful live performer Mim Fitze). We then walked down the aisle together to ‘I’m with You’ by Vance Joy (another live acoustic performance).

It was really important to have a personalised ceremony. We wanted to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land and also all of the people who have fought for so long for the right for us to be able to be legally married. Our celebrant, Tina, was absolutely incredible. She sent us a very thorough questionnaire so she collected a lot of information about us and our relationship. She was able to provide a completely personalised ceremony, which had us laughing and crying throughout. To be honest, I hadn’t really thought too much about the ceremony. I was a bit nervous to stand in front of everyone. but also was most looking forward to the dance floor later in the day. The ceremony was incredible. I wish I could have lived it again and again. I loved every second of it.

There were no real special traditions. The only thing that we included in the ceremony was a mention of Tess’s sister, Hannah who passed away in 2010 and couldn’t be at the wedding.

Also, my parents are founding members of Hannahs House which is an organisation which provides many services to children with life-limiting conditions in Western Australia, including in home care and palliative care, support workers and nurses, and play therapy. Instead of wedding favours we made a donation to Hannahs House.

It was really important to us to spend as much time as we could with our guests. We didn’t want to miss anything. Immediately after the ceremony we signed our wedding certificate with our witnesses and the guests went to celebrate at the cocktail hour. We spent a few minutes having a glass of champagne with our wedding party and took a few photos, then went to the cocktail hour to mingle with all of our special people. A little before sunset, Kitty pulled us away and we went and took some pictures privately for about half an hour, then got changed into our second outfits and headed to the reception. We really enjoyed being able to speak with everyone who had taken the time to celebrate this wonderful day with us.

Kitty, our photographer is absolutely incredible. From the moment we laid on eyes on her page we were sold. She captures moments so perfectly and candidly, and has the most vibrant, beautiful colours in her photos. When we met her we clicked instantly. She understood the vibe that we wanted for the day, very chilled and laid back and fun. She made us, our wedding party and family feel so comfortable in her presence. We feel absolutely blessed to have had Kitty capture our day. We treasure all of our photos so much.

Our favourite vendor was Kitty, our photographer. Utter perfection. Gorgeous human inside and out, and so, so talented at what she does.

Also, our celebrant Tina Buri, goes the extra mile to personalise the ceremony. Very professional and took so much stress out of the planning process as we had so much faith in her.

Mim Fitze, Musician, DJ, MC was a one stop shop. She has an incredible voice and performed live music before the ceremony as well as up and down the aisle. She also performed acoustic songs during the cocktail hour and then turned into a DJ and MC for the reception.

It was so hard to choose one favourite photograph. We have so many favourites from different parts of the day. If we have to pick one though, it’s probably one of us in the field with our jackets on. It perfectly captures what our faces were like for most of the day. This moment was just us. A moment away from the guests for us to enjoy.

Our most favourite part about wedding planning was at the start, choosing the big items, such as the venue, photographer, celebrant and food.

It’s all so exciting at the start, and then it definitely gets a little more stressful the closer you get to the day, planning all of the small, but very important things. We made a point to not get weighed down by planning and remembering our goals for the day. We loved scrolling though different vendors and creating Pinterest boards of different ideas.

5 things which made the wedding special for us were:

1) Spending the whole day together.
2) Being able to have an intimate dinner with our most favourite, special people the night before the wedding, and all get excited about the day together. And having almost everyone stay at the venue so we could see them all for breakfast too. It felt like a whole gorgeous weekend (midweek weekend).
3) Having an intimate first look together.
4) Being able to spend so much time with our guests, but also together.
5) Being able to fully enjoy ourselves all day. We had the absolute best day of our lives. It was perfect. We weren’t stressed about anything. We managed to cultivate a day exactly how we wanted. Laid back, intimate, relaxed, and so fun.

For our first dance we chose a song from Kita Alexander called ‘Date Night.’

This is such a beautiful song with the most beautiful harmonies. We actually attended a music festival, four days before the wedding and saw Kita play this song live. We had been wanting to see her perform for such a long time and were so happy to finally see her. She performed this song, or her version without Morgan Evans at the festival, and we knew instantly that had to be included in the wedding. We actually had a different song picked, but changed it last minute after hearing her perform this one live.

As mentioned before, the only time that we didn’t spend together on the day was as we got into our dresses. As soon as this happened we both got quite nervous, but Tess was on the verge of tears with excitement and nerves. We decided to do a “first look” which was one of the best decisions we made. Buckland has this gorgeous old stone granary, where we decided to do the first look. The only problem was that it us up an actual ladder which is not the cleanest thing. So to get up there we climbed into those giant blue IKEA bags and cut two leg holes in the bottom and bundled our dresses into it. We felt a bit ridiculous but it was 1000% worth it! only the photographer and videographer were up there. Katie went up first and then Tess. It was so special to have that moment of seeing each other in the outfits that we had chosen without everyone’s eyes on us.

Enjoy the day, it goes by way to fast.

One thing we hadn’t really thought about was having someone to make the day flow. We had a very comprehensive run sheet (thanks Breanna) but we didn’t have a wedding coordinator and the venue is completely DIY/BYO so there was support from the venue. But, we had kind of forgotten to have a person in charge of making things run smoothly, telling people where to go next, a contact person for vendors who wasn’t in the wedding party. Luckily, a wonderful friend and guest who works in events realised this and offered to be this person as a wedding gift and she was invaluable.

Thank you, Tess and Katelyn, for sharing your beautiful journey with us. We wish you both endless happiness and unforgettable adventures in the years ahead!