Royal Botanic Garden Wedding in Sydney from Daniele Del Castillo
These two are cute in ways you didn't even know existed. From their adorable wedding to their non-stop smiling faces to the stunning details they infused into their Big Day. And while you spend your entire day smiling from ear to ear while soaking in the full gallery of gorgeous images captured by Daniele Del Castillo, you should most definitely check out the fabulous DIY projects they crafted together. They're amazing.
From the Bride... I knew that planning the 'biggest day of our lives' was going to be a big task, but being a fastidious designer, I threw myself into the project and produced many a moodboard to inspire the many facets of the day and rationalise my ideas. We chose the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney harbour for our ceremony and The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) just round the corner for the reception so the locations demanded a slick, city wedding with bold touches. The colour palette was inspired by Uluru (Ayers Rock), where James proposed, matching an earthy red, with gold, black and white, for a contemporary edge. The striking architecture of Sydney harbour also helped to get the creative juices flowing - and I looked to incorporate the linear patterns and details found in these iconic structures into our big day as well. What resulted was a day that I am proud to say was uniquely us. Nothing too frilly or frou frou, just amazing surroundings, wonderful people, brilliant food, and lovely unique touches to tie it all together. Truly one of the most incredible days of our life.
We love good food and the sense of community it can bring, so the tables in the venue were arranged as two long tables so that everyone could muck in together and enjoy each others' company. To compliment this, all the food was served on platters along the tables so that everyone could share the food together, no "fish or chicken, sir?", just good food and lots of it!
James loves James Bond (must be the name...) so we added a few Bond touches to the day. My father walked me down the aisle to the Bond theme, played expertly by Yossi Cascun on the classical guitar. When I met James at the end of the aisle he was wearing the same design of tux that Daniel Craig did in Skyfall, very suave! Yossi then played 'We have All the Time in the World', from the Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service whilst we signed the register, and finally 'Nobody Does it Better' from The Spy Who Loved Me as we walked back down the aisle at the end. Similarly, when we arrived at the museum for the reception we walked in to a jazz version of the Bond theme, which set the scene for the trad jazz soundtrack to the meal (James' father's favourite music!), plus we did our first dance to a contemporary cover of 'Nobody Does it Better' which kicked off the dancing part of the evening littered with lots of great 90s dance classics amongst favourite tunes from earlier and more recent times.
In order to save a little cash we decided to go for pot plants on the tables instead of arranged flowers. For a fraction of the price we managed to get 12 lovely bergonia plants for only $15 (AUD) from Flower Power and then dressed them up in some nice white pots from Ikea. At the end of the night we offered the plants to all the guests, so some people got an extra little memento of the night.
James loves candles, in fact most nights we eat by candle light! So candles were key. We got our candles from Stacks of Wax in Newtown, Sydney. These included tealights held in white frosted votives up the length of the tables and beautiful wax lanterns for the tables out on the balcony. These too were also given away to guests at the end of the night.
To save cutting out 70 odd bespoke printed place cards for the tables, we instead ordered blank tags, with a chevron pattern on one side, in line with the linear theme to the wedding, from Green Ridge Designs on Etsy, complete with lovely shiny gold hole reinforcements, and hand wrote all the names of the guests instead.
Our 'x' and 'o' crayons were actually inspired by a post on Style Me Pretty Living. We bought a school size box of crayons and spent many a spare hour peeling off the labels, melting down the crayons, creating new colour combos, pouring the wax into silicone letter shaped ice cube moulds and popping out little Xs & Os.
The large 'x' & 'o' on the dance floor at the reception were made as a favour by some joiners for us and then over a two day period I painted them white and gold in my parent's back garden before the big day.
We love good food and the sense of community it can bring, so the tables in the venue were arranged as two long tables so that everyone could muck in together and enjoy each others' company. To compliment this, all the food was served on platters along the tables so that everyone could share the food together, no "fish or chicken, sir?", just good food and lots of it!
James loves James Bond (must be the name...) so we added a few Bond touches to the day. My father walked me down the aisle to the Bond theme, played expertly by Yossi Cascun on the classical guitar. When I met James at the end of the aisle he was wearing the same design of tux that Daniel Craig did in Skyfall, very suave! Yossi then played 'We have All the Time in the World', from the Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service whilst we signed the register, and finally 'Nobody Does it Better' from The Spy Who Loved Me as we walked back down the aisle at the end. Similarly, when we arrived at the museum for the reception we walked in to a jazz version of the Bond theme, which set the scene for the trad jazz soundtrack to the meal (James' father's favourite music!), plus we did our first dance to a contemporary cover of 'Nobody Does it Better' which kicked off the dancing part of the evening littered with lots of great 90s dance classics amongst favourite tunes from earlier and more recent times.
In order to save a little cash we decided to go for pot plants on the tables instead of arranged flowers. For a fraction of the price we managed to get 12 lovely bergonia plants for only $15 (AUD) from Flower Power and then dressed them up in some nice white pots from Ikea. At the end of the night we offered the plants to all the guests, so some people got an extra little memento of the night.
James loves candles, in fact most nights we eat by candle light! So candles were key. We got our candles from Stacks of Wax in Newtown, Sydney. These included tealights held in white frosted votives up the length of the tables and beautiful wax lanterns for the tables out on the balcony. These too were also given away to guests at the end of the night.
To save cutting out 70 odd bespoke printed place cards for the tables, we instead ordered blank tags, with a chevron pattern on one side, in line with the linear theme to the wedding, from Green Ridge Designs on Etsy, complete with lovely shiny gold hole reinforcements, and hand wrote all the names of the guests instead.
Our 'x' and 'o' crayons were actually inspired by a post on Style Me Pretty Living. We bought a school size box of crayons and spent many a spare hour peeling off the labels, melting down the crayons, creating new colour combos, pouring the wax into silicone letter shaped ice cube moulds and popping out little Xs & Os.
The large 'x' & 'o' on the dance floor at the reception were made as a favour by some joiners for us and then over a two day period I painted them white and gold in my parent's back garden before the big day.