Real Wedding: Lauren & Alex – Photography by Danelle Bohane

I met Alex at a party in 2014 in Melbourne at my house. He said he wanted to see me again and I said, “Well, you know where I live”. Two days later, on Christmas Eve, he turned up in a borrowed car and asked to take me to lunch.

Ten weeks later, I had moved to Sydney where he was posted for work. We’ve been together ever since. We have a very close relationship. We communicate honestly and often, and we try never to stay angry at each other. I love Alex’s patience and curiosity, his compassion and endless support, and his smile. Alex says he loves my creativity, passion and drive to experience everything life has to offer, and that I add colour to his life. Our wedding theme was ‘Garden Glam’. We wanted people to be comfortable and to spend time outside in the glorious Sydney weather. I also wanted to light the garden up with beautiful silks and florals, and we tried to encourage everyone to wear something bold and special. Being in wedding planning, I wanted to take everything I had enjoyed and seen at clients’ and friends’ weddings and then put our own twist on them. We had a dinner on the Friday, a lady’s lunch on Saturday and then the wedding on Sunday with a recovery party on Monday, and I’d advise anyone planning a wedding to stretch it out so you can spend time with everyone. In the end, I was thrilled with the whole day. We wanted to share our favourite parts of Sydney with our most special friends and I really feel like we achieved that. I will always remember walking to the garden and seeing all the flowers, our amazing guests, and Alex standing there smiling at me. My nine year old cousin sang an Ed Sheeran song and played his guitar while we signed our wedding certificates, which was really sweet and special. There were so many memorable moments — we couldn’t stop smiling all day long. My gran called me the next day asking if my jaw was sore!