I had so many wonderful moments throughout the day. The morning preparation with my bridesmaids and mother was very relaxed and fun. We drank Champagne, danced and ate while getting ready. The first time I really felt nervous was when I was due to walk down the isle and the church bell rang. I walked a while by myself before I met my dad who walked me into the church, I was very emotional. The best part was seeing my husband standing at the altar waiting for me. It was a very special moment sharing our vows with my step sons and our family.
We were very lucky in that we had two honeymoons. We had a mini -moon in Cape Town for a week just after the wedding and had our main honeymoon to Europe in July. We went to a big music festival in Belgium, spent a few days in Barcelona and then a week on a cruise ship! What a lovely experience.
We chose Shepstone Gardens as our venue and we are so happy we did. They have beautiful lush gardens and a such friendly and helpful staff. A beautiful setting for our perfect day.
I trained quite a lot leading up to the wedding and went to gym twice a day for about a month. This was a great stress reliever but was also my motivation to fit into my tight wedding dress. I had my teeth whitened about 3 weeks before the wedding and spent a lot of time catching up on sleep.
I would describe my decor as urban chic. We had a lot of greenery, wooden tables, raw bulbs and candles. We like modern, clean lines so we had various geometric shapes throughout our decor. We had a few hints of colour with white flowers and grey and aqua menu cards.
The groomsmen and little groomsmen were very classic in their black & white tuxedos. Very sharp and very handsome!
I wanted my bridesmaids to be comfortable and wear something they could keep and wear again. It was a two piece outfit with a white top and grey tulle skirt with silver strappy heels. My thoughts were inspired by Sex & City and tied in with our urban chic look & feel,
Sue from True North was lovely, she guided us on the types of non denominational ceremony she could do and was very accommodating to keep our ceremony short and sweet. She was also very helpful in registering our wedding for us.
We had both a photographer and videographer. Our Photographers - Estilo, did such a magnificent job of capturing all the special and natural moments throughout the day. They also did our engagement shoot so we were very comfortable with them and they did a great job. Our Videographer, Anna from Who's Anna photography did our stop motion wedding video. Such a quirky and fun way of capturing the day. We are very happy with both outcomes.
I planned and coordinated most of the wedding myself, with some help from my family and friends of course but I did the bulk of the planning. Our venue offers different services for a coordinator and we had a lovely lady, Alex from Shepstone Gardens who helped coordinate on the day. She was wonderful and ensured everything ran very smoothly.
Our food was delicious and I can honestly say that none of our guests went hungry. Our catering was done by Taste Explosion and we had a wonderful trio of starters, a lovely lamb shank and a buffet for desserts. Taste explosion also did our Cheese wheel wedding cake that consisted of a variety of cheeses including Gorgonzola and brie as well as various nuts and crackers.
Shawn and I did take dance lessons and we learnt the Cha Cha. Our dance instructor cautioned us not to learn a specific routine as people get nervous and tend to make mistakes, which is exactly what happened on the day. Our family & friends were gracious enough to say they didn't notice, but it was fun anyway.
