“It was the most incredible day. It was filled with good vibes, countless laughs, incredible people, amazing speeches, lots of dancing, delicious food, fun music, beautiful attire, polaroids, stunning flowers, drinks flowing and so much love in between.”
Tell us a little about yourselves, what you do, what you love…
I am 28 and AJ is 27. We both absolutely love to travel, adventure, surf and live by the coast. We both work in a school for kids with special needs which we both have a passion for. It’s a challenging but rewarding career. Outside of work we like to do a lot of self-care and relaxing. We are lucky to get school holidays together when we can adventure and spend time with friends. We have an epic friendship group with who we spend a lot of time with. We rescued two dogs and enjoy morning walks on the beach and cuddles on the couch every night with them. We bought a house at the end of 2020 so we’ve been doing home renos and decking out the place.
How/where/when did you meet – and what were your first impressions?
D: We met at work/school and joked about us having a high school romance as we both work in a High School. I first saw AJ when he was handing in his resume to the front office and joked to the office ladies that we need to hire that man!
When did you first realise that this was someone you’d like to spend the rest of your life with?
AJ: Previously both of us weren’t big on dropping the L bomb with previous partners but when it came to us within two weeks we were saying “I love you” at a festival, 5 weeks getting matching tattoos in Bali, 2 months moving into our first little apartment in North Beach and a year and six months engaged. So I guess the best way to describe it is life-changing. We always get told ‘when you know, you know’ and that is exactly how it felt all along. From when we started dating to now. Many of our magic moments are captured on polaroids which are in frames around our home and on the fridge.
Was there a proposal? Tell us a little about it…
D: AJ Proposed in Dunsborough in our special location located just off a dusty track near the ocean. It was a planned date day which is when one of us plan a whole day of activities without the other person knowing what the plan is. Unfortunately, the day didn’t exactly go to plan thanks to the unpredictable Dunsborough winter weather but amazingly the rain had stopped for our little walk to our special spot. During the walk, AJ talked about all these nice things we had achieved together and how incredible our love is. Once we got to the spot AJ dropped the knee got a little bit excited and blurted out a whole bunch of stuff we can’t fully remember but asked me to one day be his wife. Again full of excitement and getting into the hugs, kisses etc, AJ asked me, “is that yes then?”. Of course, it was a yes! It was always yes. We ended up getting our wedding bands handmade from a local jeweller around the corner from this spot which felt super special.
Tell us about the vision you had for the mood or style of your wedding…
Both being beach people we always wanted the wedding as close to the beach as we could have it. Luckily we stumbled across Coast and knew that was the venue for us straight away. We researched a few ideas around what it was going to be like but always went with “if it feels right that is the one”.
AJ knew what suit he wanted and how his groomsmen would dress with some Instagram inspiration. We went with the theme of whites, pinks and greens as they are some of our favourite colours.
We wanted a natural and simple vibe. We always talk about our lifestyle as ‘good vibes only’ and we were stoked that our day went so well and fit our life motto.
What was one element you were happy to splurge on?
Obviously, the venue will always be the most expensive but we were incredibly lucky to have found Coast that was affordable and came with a lot of inclusions, one of those being Katie and her wonderful team.
We wanted to capture the day as it was in the most natural way, so we were happy to pay anything for the incredible media team who we had researched and hand-picked from their previous work.
I was also happy to splurge on my wedding dress, AJ would say “you are getting your dream dress no matter what and we will always make the money work”.
Did anything happen on the wedding day that you laugh about in hindsight (even if it was stressful at the time)?
On the morning of the wedding, AJ went for a swim at Cottesloe beach and unfortunately collided with another swimmer resulting in a black eye. He did a great job of calling around to get it sorted without me knowing. I only found out as we were jumping into the kombis to head into Fremantle for photos, when one of my bridesmaids accidentally let it slip. When I got to the end of the aisle I thought that he had given someone a big hug and got makeup on his face.
45 minutes before the ceremony, one of the event managers called AJ and said the ceremony will not be able to be on the beach because it was so windy. We were both disappointed but understanding and knew it would still be a beautiful ceremony.
Tell us about your main outfits, what was unique, is there a story?
AJ has a friend who works in a suit shop, he went in with an idea of what he wanted. His friend (Barak) did an incredible job of finding everything he had in mind and sorting the groomsmen out too.
I left my dress shopping until 5 months before as I had a lot of hope that my maid of honour could make it over from Sydney for it. The chances of this were not looking promising so we had her on FaceTime. I found a dress I adored but just felt like I wanted to check one more shop (5th shop I went to). I went with just my Mum rather than the whole bridal squad this time. Because of Covid, there were some complications with getting with International shipping, meaning options were limited. Luckily Mum found a dress I liked and there was one out the back! I tried this on last out of the few I had lined up at this shop. It fit perfectly and we all ended up in tears. I made a few edits to the dress to make it my own.
Reception and Ceremony Location Coast / Videographer Lloyd James / Photographer Jack In The Box Photography / Celebrant Mark Kenny Celebrations / Entertainment Stream Line Perth / Flora Euka Floral Design / Catering + Beverages Coast / Cars Kool Kombis Perth / Bride’s Dress Luv Bridal / Ring/s Flux And Facet / Makeup Luxury Makeup House / Hair Swish Studio
