Stephanie & Nick by In the Mood for Love - Together Journal

Steph and I both wanted timeless, classic elegance balanced with a contemporary chic style for our wedding and we were in luck when the perfect venue in Adelaide was available on the date of our anniversary.

Tell us a little about yourselves, what you do, what you love…

Steph – Nick and I are both originally from Adelaide, South Australia but have spent the majority of our relationship together in Melbourne. We grew up in opposite ends of Adelaide, but funnily enough, we have many mutual friends which inevitably led us to our first encounter. Nick is in corporate real estate and I am a Physiotherapist. We both have a similar competitive sporting background in our past lives but these days we are more inclined to dinner and a cocktail or two in Flinders Lane with friends but equally enjoy relaxing at home together over a glass of wine with our 2-year-old border collie Lola. When work and life align well, we love nothing more than hopping on a plane and travelling to a cold destination for Nick’s love of snowboarding or a coastal sunny destination for my love-hate relationship with Melbourne’s winter.

How/where/when did you meet – and what were your first impressions?

Steph – We initially met at one of Nick’s football functions quite a few years before we went on our first date. I had been invited by/semi-crashed to the event with a friend who was working as a trainer for Nick’s team. We both didn’t take too much notice of each other at the time, and it wasn’t until 5 years later when I was with this same friend at a local café that we happened to run into each other again. Nick was grabbing a coffee on his way to work while my friend and I were both nursing hangovers. I remember thinking at the time how nice he looked in his suit as I tried my best to string a sentence together to exchange pleasantries. It took a while for the penny to drop for both of us that we had met before, but after connecting on social media not too long after this second encounter we went on our first date. The date went really well, the conversation was easy, we both felt extremely comfortable in each other’s presence and were both more than happy to share a slice of pizza with the other. Nick is quite the gentleman and offered to pay, but unfortunately, his credit card bounced twice, leaving me with the bill (…luckily the date had gone so well prior to this though!).

When did you first realise that this was someone you’d like to spend the rest of your life with?

Nick – Our relationship was a bit of a slow burn at first. Steph had planned a two month overseas trip and had also accepted a job and planned to move to Melbourne only 3 months after our first date, but we both knew at the time that there was something about each other that we wanted to explore more of. We spent the next 10 months toing and froing with the idea of being together in Adelaide or Melbourne. After spending New Year’s with Steph in Melbourne was definitely when I saw us spending the rest of our lives together and I decided to move over early the following year. Little did I know that Steph had also carefully orchestrated with her friends a week’s worth of events to showcase what our life together could look like in Melbourne.

Steph – I realised quite early on in our relationship but was too scared to tell Nick when we were living in opposite cities! I didn’t want to pressure Nick at all, so instead I just very gently nudged him towards Melbourne.

Was there a proposal? Tell us a little about it…

Steph – We got engaged on Saturday 27th November 2021. Nick had originally planned to propose months earlier on a trip to Tasmania. The trip was unfortunately cancelled due to another lockdown in Melbourne, but the ring Nick had designed took a little over 5 months to come to fruition which was also longer than he anticipated.

About a week after Nick got the ring he had planned to propose on a Friday evening at Port Melbourne beach. The beach holds significance for us both as quite a lot of our first dates were at the beach where I grew up in Adelaide. It had been a very long week at work for me when that Friday came around and a few of my friends at work decided on after-work drinks at a local wine bar which was close to home for me so I told Nick I would be home in “an hour”. A little over 3 hours later I had (unknowingly!) blown off Nick’s proposal plans! The next day Nick was still being rather pushy about going to Port Melbourne for dinner on the beach. I thought nothing of it at the time when we were walking along the Jetty, although when the time came Nick was quite hesitant to get down on one knee for fear of dropping the ring into the ocean. It was the perfect proposal for us though!

Tell us about your main outfits, what was unique, is there a story?

Steph – Nick had a very clear idea of what he wanted to wear on the day and in fitting with the style of our wedding opted for a black tuxedo with shawl lapels. After a few hiccups with sizing, he was really happy with the end product and also came up with some really nice ideas about monogramming the date of our wedding inside his suit and putting initials on his and all of his groomsmen’s shirt cuffs.

My choice of dress was a bit more drawn out than Nick’s tuxedo. It was still a bit of a tricky time to fly to Melbourne from interstate so I was mostly having to Facetime my mum and my bridesmaids who are all based in Adelaide during my appointments. I was lucky to have various friends in Melbourne who came with me at the time, but I started to lose count of how many dresses and bridal boutiques I had tried. My mum flew to Melbourne a few months after I thought I had narrowed down my top 3 choices, but in the meantime, I had come across another dress (my dress!) on Instagram. I organised to try it on first before the other three and by the end of the consult at Marquise I ended up cancelling my other appointments and my mum and I filled the rest of the day with a long lunch and champagne! My reception dress was from Chosen by Kyha, which I thought would be an easier scenario to Greek dance the night away in.