After the ceremony, it was time for the official bridal party photos. We began in the stunning Circulating Library, which was the original library before the Mortlock Wing (where we had our reception) was later added. I would have actually loved to have our ceremony there but alas the room is way too small. It sure made for some atmospheric photos though.

And now in the larger but similarly beautiful Mortlock Chamber:

Our photographer Luke is such a dude. He was so friendly and funny that having our photos taken felt like hanging out with an old friend, which made us so relaxed he could capture some lovely genuine expressions.

One of my fave shots from the wedding – very formal, yes, but that staircase looks like it’s simply made for bridal party photos!

I just realised I haven’t introduced you to our wingmen and -women. From the left on the stairs is my dear school friend Jaime, my friend since the age of three Jo and my beautiful maid of honour Cherie,  then on our other side is Ryan’s brother and best man Dan, best mate Sam and my brother Liam. They were all brilliant and so helpful in the leadup to the day and were so fun to spend our wedding day with.

And finally, my favourite (and might I add, award-winning!) photo from our wedding.

Photography by Luke Simon Photography

For some reason I don’t have a photo of the kitchen with the old light (oh yeah, could be because I didn’t like it so I always cropped it out).

But I do have a photo of the same fixture elsewhere in the house. Because when we moved in every. single. fitting. in the house was the same boring builder’s special that you see above.

Ah, I love how pendant lights work to define a space so much more than the ceiling-mounted variety. The industrial brushed metal finish of the Ikea light we chose ties in perfectly with the cabinet handles, and at just fifteen bucks it was a very cheap tweak to the room.

I would be remiss if I didn’t also thank The Man for installing it for me. x

Family Handyman

Hands up who could do with some more storage in the kitchen? Yep, me too.

These fantastic drawers installed into the usually wasted toe-kick space have to be one of the cleverest ways I’ve seen to cheat more storage. They’re perfect for those awkward large items such as baking trays and best of all, they can be retrofit into your existing cabinetry.

Here’s the tutorial if you’re game to DIY it, otherwise ask a kitchen company or your local cabinetmaker.

Edison by Tracie Andrews

I left you last week with the girls and the lads all ready for the big day (go here if you missed it).

Sweet ride, huh?

We were actually never planning to have ‘proper’ wedding cars. Sure they look nice in photos but we figured none of the guests would see them so we’d prefer to spend the money on something more important to us. Then our friend Dave showed us a photo of the latest vintage car in his collection. Um, yes please sir.

I know it’s traditional for the bride to have the white car but what can I say? I’m a colour-loving girl and wanted to have the funky blue car for myself!

Sneaky photographer getting a shot from inside through the blinds. Thankfully he didn’t capture the moment when my bridesmaids realised I had indented stripes in my back from the stitching on the vinyl car seats and had to vigorously rub my back to get them out.

My friends at Mary & Gabrielle Events kindly set up the room for me. The ceremony was such a whirl I felt like I didn’t really have the opportunity to soak in all the details I’d worked so hard on, but looking back at photos it turned out exactly as I had imagined.

Our whole wedding was at the beautiful State Library of South Australia, with the ceremony being in the older wing, the Institute Building. Built in the 1830s it’s one of the oldest buildings in Adelaide.

During the leadup to our wedding I kept expecting to start getting nervous. Initially I thought maybe the nerves would kick in with a week to go. Nope. Maybe the day before? No, too concerned about being sick. That morning? No. How about when I’m dressed and the photographer has arrived? Still no. Surely when I arrive at the ceremony I will be nervous?

It was the biggest day of my life and I dislike being the centre of attention and yet I never had any nerves whatsoever. It sounds cliche but I was just so giddy with pure happiness and excitement. Hence why I have I have most ridiculously cheesy grin on my face in half the photos (way to be an elegant bride, Alicia).

I won’t go into too much detail as I’ll be doing a whole post on our vendors at the end of this series, but I have to mention how fantastic our celebrant Megan was. We didn’t like the idea of asking the father of the bride’s permission and giving away, so here she is asking for the blessing and support of all four parents. Her words, the readings done by a couple of friends and of course our own vows were so special.

Loving that beautiful golden light, don’t the girls look positively glowing?

What’s that? Oh, it’s only a flipping choir at our wedding.

We saw them perform a few months before our engagement and they were so rad we decided we had to have them at our ceremony. It wasn’t in our budget but we nixed the idea of having favours altogether and put the money towards this as our surprise to the guests. I only wish I could have been in the room to hear the first couple of songs they sang before my arrival!

Cue another goofy grin from me.

Hooray!

Come back next week to see the bridal party shots (there’s even an award-winning photo in there!)

Photography by Luke Simon Photography

I’d had these pink box files for some years and they’re really handy, but the colour had faded a lot in the sun and was looking a little drab. Besides, it was the only remnant of pink in the now yellow, grey and aqua office.

They were perfectly functional so I didn’t want to ditch them, instead I covered them with grey fabric for a neutral, classy look.

I used this technique for turning thin cotton fabric into sturdy cloth stuitable for gluing. Getting the flaps to stay put is the only tricky bit but with help from some pegs and rubber bands you’ll be fine. It would work better on a cardboard rather than plastic surface like this, but since I use these files for seldom-accessed items they didn’t need to be super durable.

Cutting out the finger-pulls was going to be a real headache, so I simply stuck on some metal rim tags in the same shape and size. I actually threw out the previous contents of the files and haven’t decided what will go back in them hence the blank tags.

I had the tags, as well as the rest of the materials, already on hand so it was a lovely zero dollar project – and you gotta love that.

The graphic designer in me loves infographics. I mean, it’s kinda what design is all about: communicating in a visual way (not just making things look pretty as some think). But I’ve also noticed that there has been a bit of an explosion of fairly irrelevant infographics lately.

Obviously Alberto Antoniazzi agrees, because he’s created this hilarious spoof poster. You can buy yours here.

Oh me oh my by James Joyce

This post series has been a loooong time coming. The Man and I were married in September 2010 but I couldn’t show you any photos until they were published in Real Weddings in October 2011. Late last year I already had a pretty full blog calendar and to be honest I guess I was also a bit daunted at the task of editing down to my favourites and capturing the day with words.

I know I’ve been banging on about our wedding for the entirety of this blog while not showing you any photos so thanks for your patience and I hope you enjoy this series!

I definitely didn’t have the ideal leadup to the wedding. I woke up the day before feeling absolutely rotten with the sinus infection from hell and couldn’t get out of bed. No, it wasn’t nerves or exhaustion from doing last-minute wedding jobs or crash dieting or anything like that – in fact, I purposely finished up work a week earlier than planned and sorted out virtually all of my wedding projects ahead of time specifically to avoid a situation like this.

I postponed plans with my bridesmaids so The Man could drag my sorry arse out of bed and to the doctor, who prescribed antibiotics but said they wouldn’t start working for several days – wah! I drugged myself up and perked up enough to have a lovely afternoon at a day spa with my girls.

Oh but did I mention a couple of days prior I was trimming our wedding programs and sliced off the top of my thumb and the carefully grown nail? (It’s true when I say I put in my blood, sweat and tears into this wedding!). I had this gross scab and half a nail (on my ring hand, naturally) and required an emergency reconstructive manicure. This polite girl had rung several beauty salons who were booked out, so my normally very mild-mannered Maid of Honour ripped the phone from my hand and said, ‘Right, this is how we’re going to do this now’. She totally pulled out the ‘Listen, I’ve got a bride here who needs your help and don’t mess with a bride’ card. Hilarious.

So then on the morning of the wedding day I woke up not being able to speak. For reals.

It was at this point when I stopped worrying about something going not quite to plan with the cake or the weather or the cars or whatever. Being able to say my vows was the only thing that mattered.

My girls came to the rescue again with lots of lemon honey tea and words of encouragement and thankfully by the time of our ceremony my voice had returned. I still had to drug myself up to the eyeballs for the pain though.

Anyway, enough of this bad news! Let’s get stuck into the photos, starting with a scary close-up.

I knew from the outset that I wasn’t a traditional veil kind of girl. I had been searching high and low for the perfect birdcage veil when my friend Mary said I could borrow hers. It was PERFECT! She only wore it to her reception so we weren’t worried about looking too similar for the mutual friends attending both weddings.

My mum is going to kill me for posting a photo of her on the internet but I couldn’t not include a photo of my parents now could I?

Me and my gorgeous ‘maids. I love the look of mismatching bridesmaids, so I pretty much just said I wanted purple and full-length and it was up to them to decide a style that they liked. I hadn’t even seen two of the dresses until the day but I couldn’t have been happier with how it worked out. I still wanted them to tie the look together though, so I gave them each a headband.

Meanwhile, the boys were getting ready at a hotel near the venue.

My spunky groom.

Next week I’ll share the ceremony photos.

Photography by Luke Simon Photography

Don’t you just love when you go to a wedding and the couple has added personal touches to really reflect them? Well, me too, so I’ve written an article about how to personalise your wedding with stationery over at A Paper Proposal.

Read the full article.