What made our day so special was the personal touches, the decorations I made myself, the little things that bought our day together as a relaxed, joyful and fun filled day.
I had a lovely time making our invitations, creating our decorations, planning our day (which I’ve mentioned before in my “our reception” blog), my inner craft Queen had a fantastic time.
My Bouquet..
I had originally planned to not carry a bouquet as I had my lovely shawl and thought that was just enough, then we noticed there are some lovely roses at the supermarket and how about we grab a bunch and I tie them up with a pretty ribbon.
Of course we came to the day before the ceremony and no roses, no pretty bunches of flowers at all at the supermarket (I suppose I was being optimistic for early April/not exactly the optimum time for beautiful blooms).
My wonderful man then surprised me with a dozen white roses, just a simple bunch from the local florist, which I pulled together with kitchen twine, tied with a satin ribbon and pinned with florist pins. I cannot believe how great it looked. I then added my grandmothers pearls to bring it all together for a simple beautiful bouquet.
Beach Circle….
We wanted to sprinkle rose petals all over the beach in the circle around the Altar, however I could only see a waste of beautiful flowers, and a lot of beautiful flowers would be needed to fill the circle. I then found 1000 silk rose petals very cheap on eBay… didn’t think that through did I…. Can’t leave silk rose petals all over the beach, some small creature would surely be injured trying to eat them, and what a great finish to our ceremony that would be … “Ok guys, hope you enjoyed the ceremony, you now have to pick up the 1000 rose petals!”
Solution: Every Valentines Brett gives me a dozen lovely red roses, and I have dried and saved them all, I realised I had been saving them for a reason. We sprinkled all the lovely dried petals in the Altar circle along with chips of Rose Quartz “the love stone”, just perfect for our barefoot ceremony, walking on a bed of rose petals from my love.
Good Food, Good Wine, Good Friends
“To Cater or not To Cater”
The Penthouse was booked, The Beer Fridge was full, The “vast” Wine cellar stocked and the Champagne on ice, all that was left to organise was the food.
We thought about hiring a Caterer for our “reception”, but my man has an extremely simple palette, in other words “he’s a fussy little fecker”…so finding a caterer to do simple food was difficult. The “Observatory” Penthouse didn’t bode well for “roving roast”, and there was no way I was serving party pies and sausage rolls!.
By chance earlier in the year we had dinner in the restaurant below the “Observatory”, we noticed they had a takeaway menu, Voila we had a caterer… Posh hamburgers, chicken snitty burgers, pasta, fish n chips… Mains done! (I won’t mention the hamburger container fire that nearly went all bad.. Tip: don’t serve the hamburgers in their flip top containers when you table is covered in burning candles!!)
For the afternoon of drinks & nibbles, on the balcony of the Penthouse, I had simply made up some cheese platters, a platter of crusty fresh bread to dip in basil infused oil/caramelised balsamic & Dukka and some simple “bruschetta” sticks.
The Wedding Cake…
Dessert was another hurdle, my “fussy little fecker” only eats vanilla ice cream with strawberries, on a special night he’ll lash out and have pancakes with strawberries & banana… I was not spending the night cooking pancakes, and there was no way we were spending $$$ on a frothy “wedding” cake which no one would eat.
We had been out to dinner at one of our favourite local cafe’s, I splurged and had a dessert which I made the fussy one try…OMG he liked it.. New York Baked Cheesecake with Raspberry…and the cafe could order us one ready for the day.
I got a bit artistic and made some simple chocolate hearts and with the left over chocolate I wrote “love”, which I was sure would fall apart when I moved it to the cake, surprise it stayed all together.. Wedding cake DONE!
You played what game at your reception????
We have an easy going group of friends, and had bought along our “cards against humanity” game just in case. Of course they all wanted to play..terribly politically incorrect game. But a lot of fun with friends who like a laugh and don’t take each other too seriously..
We had a fantastic day and evening with our wonderful friends and family.. What is the saying “I couldn’t have done it better myself” Oh Wait…I did do it myself! And enjoyed every minute.
Our kind of Crazy..
I’ll leave you with a bit of silliness us girls thought up… You may have noticed my man has one of those things under his nose, you know 70’s Porn Star type moustache!!…and we never let him forget that it’s really really out of fashion..as a little joke we stumbled across some stick on moustaches in a party shop, just enough for all the girls.. It was gold, the photographer caught his expression as we turned around for the photo…priceless!! (Mind you it still didn’t shame him into removal of the hair!but we stay optimistic!)
Our Handfasting Ceremony 