One year ago, on 21 October 2017, I married the love of my life. 💕 Nicholas and I met in 2014, and although we were not mutually attracted to each other at first, we became very close friends and soon found that we had deeper feelings for each other. We were crazy for each other. 🤣 We still are. 😊

Our wedding day was so much fun and I did a super quick recap of it last year, but I actually never got around to writing more of the details about what happened on the day itself, so I’m doing a bit of that today. I did write some detailed posts about how I designed our wedding invitations and how we put together the succulents we had for our wedding favours, so if you haven’t seen them yet, have a look! 🌵

This blog post might seem a little bit all over the place but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. Through this post I’ve scattered some of my favourite photos that our photographer Kieran Moore took. ☺️

Morning

I had a hectic morning as I had to get up at around 5:00am to get my hair done. The hairdresser is one that my mother-in-law has been frequenting for years. Nick got his hair cut by her when he was younger. She lives in a relatively remote area and has a salon set up in part of her house. She did an amazing job on my hair and my bridesmaids’. I actually saw her a few weeks earlier to have a trial of my hair done. At the time, my hair was long had a lot of highlights in it from when my previously purple hair washed out.

I got my hair in an up-do, and the highlights made my hair look really nice, actually. Most of it was in a bun of curls, with some curls framed around my face. I asked for the bridesmaids’ hair to be done similarly but with a braid going down the side of the head. She did a really good job. 😍

My mum did my makeup, but my mother-in-law knew someone who was able to do the makeup for my bridesmaids, so they had their hair and makeup done at the hairdresser, while my mum and I returned home and she did my makeup. It was a bit stressful because so much of my entire extended family were in my house. 😵

The flowers were delivered on time. I was pleasantly surprised by them; they looked almost exactly like the photos I found on the internet that I sent through! ☺️ (I’m pretty sure if you did a search for “wedding blue and white flowers”, you might even find some of the photos I sent them, haha.) If I had to nitpick, the roses were more off-white than pure white, but whatever. I suppose pure white might have looked a bit odd against my pure white dress. Our flowers were done by The Grounds Florals by Silva.

I should mention, too, that Nick didn’t know what my dress looked like, and neither did my dad. 😆 But it made for a nice surprise on the day. 😍

Noon

I mentioned last year that we had two ceremonies: a church ceremony around lunchtime, and a second one just before the reception (at the same venue). The church ceremony was at a local church near my parents’ house; my brother and I went to the school next door when we were kids. The ceremony went relatively well, I mean, the priest got my name wrong (🤦🏻‍♀️) and told some odd jokes, which had everyone laughing. I should also mention that the church was undergoing renovations so the overall interior appearance was a bit of a mess. 😬

My friend Dylan played the music for us. I didn’t find out until later but apparently the audio wasn’t even set up when Nick got there, so he had to set it up himself (good thing he is familiar with audiovisual setup), and Dylan was holding a phone to a microphone to play the music. WTF – church was so disorganised! (🤦🏻‍♀️, again.) The song I chose to walk down the aisle to was Beautiful in White by Matt Johnson. We didn’t even rehearse walking down the aisle, so we actually winged it. We winged it good. 😂

The fun song we picked for our exit music was Dancin’ and Romancin’ by Jeremy Neale. The song actually has some sad undertones, but it would hard to figure it out unless you really listened to the lyrics. Musically, though, it’s a joyous song and it relates to love! ♥️

My family had spent a lot of time the night before making some Indonesian treats for the guests, to be served after the first ceremony. Oh, they made for a nice snack haha. The day was going by so fast and I forgot that I hadn’t eaten, so I was pretty hungry. Um, I think we all were, actually.

Afternoon

Our mode of transport was kombi vans. On our way to the location shoot, we had a few people in their cars honk at us or wave. I was marvelled by the whole experience, I suppose because it was all rather new. There was a little boy sitting in the back of a car who blew me a kiss, haha aww bless.

I have to admit it was quite chilly because of the wind, so I was shivering while our photos were taken. October is not exactly the warmest month, but it’s not the coolest either. It was supposed to be spring time but it was definitely on the cooler side.

Evening

We ducked into our second ceremony and reception venue, The Grounds. We got there with enough time to spare but had to make sure we were well hidden. There wasn’t a super secret entrance, but we did have a room set up for us that we could wait in. We had some cheese, snacks and water prepared for us. The staff at our venue were exceptional, too. They were so very helpful and made us feel comfortable.

People probably noticed and were too nice to tell me, but I definitely walked waaaay too fast down the aisle at the second ceremony. I saw a short clip my cousin recorded and realised. 😳

I think that because the venue was so intimate, and the aisle was narrow and “informal”, I felt so close to our family and friends as I walked down the aisle with my dad, so I felt anxious and walked very fast. People were taking photos too and I was freaking out that all eyes were on me. 😱

For the second ceremony we had a couple of meetings with a marriage celebrant, who had a chat to us about how we met and our love story, and sent us some questions in an email to help us write our vows and to help her write the ceremony. She did an amazing job. There were tears, and more tears when Nick read his vows to me. 😭 It was something we decided to not share with each other until the day. It was honestly really lovely. It’s true that writing vows are hard, but our marriage celebrant said that even though they are important, she herself didn’t remember her marriage vows, and most couples will not remember them forever. Haha.

Now I… don’t think I really wrote anything about this, but, we did manage to get Hey Geronimo to play at our wedding. 😅🤩😍 I honestly didn’t even think it would be possible to get a band I like to play at my wedding, much less my favourite band ever. It’s wild, totally wild. The band played some impromptu music while our parents and the bridal party walked in, followed by myself and Nick. Our emcee was one of my father-in-law’s friends and he announced everyone’s names as they walked in. He did an excellent job throughout the night introducing the speeches and overall being very entertaining. 👏

The keyboardist had another gig to attend so he only played for an hour. Originally, the band was going to play while dinner was served and then leave, but they decided to stay for the whole night and play songs towards the end of the night so everyone could have a boogie. In between, they had a sound guy playing some party tunes. (We originally had a playlist of some of our favourite songs, but this quick change didn’t make a huge difference. Yeah, the party tunes were pretty average, though. 😆)

Night

The night went by so quickly, we were walking around talking to our guests and having photos taken throughout the night, so I didn’t finish all my meals! I was kind of too excited to eat, too. I did drink some wine, but I think I was wary of drinking too much because I didn’t want to use the bathroom in my giant dress. I only had to go once though. 😆

Through the night we had a few speeches from my brother and Nick’s dad, my best friend Lilian and Nick’s groomsmen Zac and Shekhar, and from both of us. My brother did a speech in place of my dad and repping the whole family. 🤘 He said some things that put a tear in my eye!

Before long it was time for us to do our speeches. I did mine first. I wrote a speech that thanked my family and friends, and then I told a story. As a writer and blogger, it was actually hard for me to think of something “fresh” to write. The story that came to mind is what I wrote in Finding cloud ninety-three (part II), about how my ideals of romance were often crushed, but falling in love with Nick was like a fairytale. 💕

Then we cut the cake! The cake we chose, which was also supplied by The Grounds, was fudge brownie with salted caramel buttercream. If you know me and Nick, we are salted caramel fiends. 😂 Most of the other options we had for the cake were probably not going to be popular, like matcha and red velvet, so that’s why we went with the fudge brownie. You can’t really go wrong with a chocolate sort of base. 🍫

Our first dance was to Wonderful World by Sam Cooke (haha). We choreographed something simple in the week before our wedding. I used to dance, but not partner dance, and that’s an entirely different ballgame. 😅 We wanted some fun in our dancing, so Nick edited the audio to cut at a certain point and warp into Shut Up and Dance by Walk The Moon. Then we got the entire bridal party to join in. 🙂

We did have a wishing well, and put on our invitations that gifts were not necessary. 🙂 We just used a small box for the wishing well but it turned out to be essentially useless because it was far too small. 😂

Soon the night had come to a close, and we were farewelled by the remaining guests (some had left early). We booked a Tesla to pick us up at the end of the night, which was 11:00pm. We had wanted the night to finish relatively “early” because we didn’t want to be exhausted after a long day. Regardless, The Grounds said the venue had to be vacated by midnight. Still, the night went by so fast I couldn’t believe it was time to go!

The ride back home was a short one because we don’t live far away, but the driver took his time and let us enjoy the ride as Mr and Mrs Cooke. 👰🏻♥️🤵🏻

Wedding details

If there are any details from this list that you think are missing please let me know 🙂

• Wedding ceremony, reception, decor, cake: The Grounds of Alexandria
• Flowers: The Grounds Florals by Silva
• Bride’s dress: Madison James (purchased from Brides of Sydney; in-house alterations)
• Bride’s jewellery: Gabrielle (small temporary kiosk in a shopping centre)
• Bridesmaids dresses: Allure Bridals (purchased from Brides of Sydney; Matilda’s Alterations)
• Hair: Dianna Debono
• Bride’s makeup: my mum did mine
• Bridesmaids’ makeup: Emma Moore
• Groom and groomsmen’s suits: MJ Bale
• Groom and groomsmen’s bowties: DECLIC
• Wedding rings: Gregory Jewellers
• Marriage celebrant: Jacquelene Hatch
• Photographer: Kieran Moore
• Transport: Kombi Weddings and Evoke
• Musicians: Hey Geronimo
• Invitations: DIY
• Bonbonieres/wedding favours: DIY

If you read up to here, thank you! 💙 I’m so glad I could finally write about this day in greater detail. I chose a selection of photos, but if you have any requests I’d be glad to share them or add them to this post too.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments. I can’t believe a whole year has passed. It’s been a great one and I look forward to many more. ☺️

To celebrate our first wedding anniversary we went to Cho Cho San, a Japanese fusion restaurant, which is incidentally where my bridesmaids took me on my hen’s night (which is yet another event I never got around to writing a blog post about, haha). 🥂