Colorful Melbourne Wedding at the Boyd Baker House
This bride is my new hero. Because not only did she rock a stunning navy blue gown on her wedding day (it's gorgeous), together with her dapper groom, she threw one seriously amazing party. An al fresco paradise meets all kinds of colorful details kind of party that has completely blown us away. See it all captured by Love Katie + Sarah in the full gallery.
From the Bride... We always knew that our wedding wouldn’t be traditional - at one point during the planning process, my Maid of Honour suggested that the theme of the whole event was ‘non-bridal’, as this is the instruction we kept giving to all of our suppliers!
We wanted our wedding to feel welcoming and informal, an atmosphere which matched our venue, the very 1960's, very Australian Boyd Baker House. To this end, we chose to have a barbeque, rather than a formal three-course dinner; we let people choose their own seats; our decorations and flowers had an undone, natural look and we ensured that the main room was kept vacant to become a sizeable dance floor once the formalities (such as they were) had concluded.
We’re not exactly savvy when it comes to ‘DIY’ but with the help of our families, friends and an indefatigable bridal party, we ended up doing several things ourselves. My bridesmaids and I made all the streamer arrangements that hung from the giant balloons. My husband and I assembled and tied the bonbonniere bags, and wrote out individual swing tags for them. The bridal party spent the night before the wedding smacking pomegranates with wooden spoons to make the base for the cocktails we served.
On the day, we fluffed up and hung paper pom-poms (some were more lopsided than others), and set up the flowers, the chairs and the ceremony space ourselves. Two of our friends are artists, and made ‘rock sculptures’ along the aisle from rocks they found near the ceremony space, and another friend arrived with a plastic bag crammed full of rose petals that she’d pilfered from her neighbours’ gardens - we didn’t know about them until they were being thrown on us, which was a lovely surprise!
Looking back, we’re so glad we did a lot of the work ourselves - people loved helping out and getting involved. We’re also so glad we did things in a way that was a little different from the ‘traditional’ white-dress-beef-or-chicken wedding - it’s such a cliche, but the day really felt like an authentic reflection of us as a couple, and the community that’s grown around us over the past ten years.
We wanted our wedding to feel welcoming and informal, an atmosphere which matched our venue, the very 1960's, very Australian Boyd Baker House. To this end, we chose to have a barbeque, rather than a formal three-course dinner; we let people choose their own seats; our decorations and flowers had an undone, natural look and we ensured that the main room was kept vacant to become a sizeable dance floor once the formalities (such as they were) had concluded.
We’re not exactly savvy when it comes to ‘DIY’ but with the help of our families, friends and an indefatigable bridal party, we ended up doing several things ourselves. My bridesmaids and I made all the streamer arrangements that hung from the giant balloons. My husband and I assembled and tied the bonbonniere bags, and wrote out individual swing tags for them. The bridal party spent the night before the wedding smacking pomegranates with wooden spoons to make the base for the cocktails we served.
On the day, we fluffed up and hung paper pom-poms (some were more lopsided than others), and set up the flowers, the chairs and the ceremony space ourselves. Two of our friends are artists, and made ‘rock sculptures’ along the aisle from rocks they found near the ceremony space, and another friend arrived with a plastic bag crammed full of rose petals that she’d pilfered from her neighbours’ gardens - we didn’t know about them until they were being thrown on us, which was a lovely surprise!
Looking back, we’re so glad we did a lot of the work ourselves - people loved helping out and getting involved. We’re also so glad we did things in a way that was a little different from the ‘traditional’ white-dress-beef-or-chicken wedding - it’s such a cliche, but the day really felt like an authentic reflection of us as a couple, and the community that’s grown around us over the past ten years.