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 the 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

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

Our wedding has just been featured over on Little Wed Hen. What a great Christmas present!

Check it out.

I’m here today with my last Polka Dot Bride DIY tutorial for the year. Find out how to make your own speech bubble chalkboards for your wedding or party photo booth here.

Have a wonderful Christmas everyone!

Luke Simon Photography

More DIY goodness from our wedding today, this time these potted branches and decorated twig balls.

Click here to find out how I made them and used them in two different ways on the day.

Luke Simon Photography

You might have noticed the full-page photo of these I Spy games in the magazine article about our wedding. We had some kiddos at our ceremony so I thought I’d so something fun to keep them entertained. Cute, no?

Head over to the wonderful Emmaline Bride to download yours now!

Luke Simon Photography

I’ve had so many tutorials from my own wedding that I have been dying to share with you. I mean, we got married over a year ago so some of these projects I began two years ago… pre-blog even! Now that our wedding has been published, I can finally unleash all the crafty goodness, yay!

First to see the light of day is the boutonniere that I made for The Man. Check it out now.

This post has been a very long time coming – over a year, in fact. I’m super excited that the day has finally come that I can say our wedding has been published! WEEEEEEEE!!!!

It’s in the fab Australian magazine Real Weddings – in the Annual Style Issue, no less.

Big props as always to our brilliant photographer Luke Simon. Thanks so much to Sophie Curnow who was very lovely to deal with and to Prue DeAraugo for capturing our story (and for describing as as a “learned couple” – ha!). Love that the article turned into gratuitous stationery porn, by the way, very appropriate. For the rest of the credits and story, well you’ll just have to pick up a copy or subscribe.

I’ve got SO many tutorials and photos that I’ve had to keep under my hat for this long, so be prepared for the onslaught! Can’t wait to share the rest with you.

I woke up on Sunday, my first wedding anniversary, to find my husband not home. There were, however, written instructions from him to catch the bus into the city and get off at a certain stop, where I would find the first in a series of clues…

I didn’t even know he knew about paper being the first anniversary present but he’d made a set of origami hearts (even made from old book pages which were a feature of our wedding) with clues on the reverse to find the next location.

I was led all over town to various places that are meaningful to us, including the bar where we got together, our wedding night hotel, my uni campus (where there was this giant ‘a’ from my logo!!), all ending up with a picnic near our wedding venue…

…where there was another giant ‘a’ (this time in Helvetica because a few days earlier he’d asked me what typeface I couldn’t live without). He’d even brought the iPod dock to play the song I walked down the aisle to. Awwww!

As you can see, it was a perfect sunny day to enjoy a picnic of champagne, cheese and antipasto.

Our favourite photo from our wedding is of us sitting on this bench so I had to recreate it with the letter, which totally cracks me up.

Prior to all this, I was pretty smug thinking I’d thought of the best anniversary present.

Now, clearly I wasn’t going to be able to top the effort that The Man put in, but I hope you’ll agree this papercut art is absolutely divine. This gorgeous custom piece was hand cut by Kyleigh’s Papercuts (thanks Kyleigh, he loved it!) and features the lyrics from the first dance song from our wedding.

I was completely blown away by all the effort that The Man went to and it was definitely a day to remember.

What are your favourite ideas for a paper anniversary gift?

I’m making the Ex Libris plate from our wedding programs available as a free download. Stick ‘em in your books and add your name in the banner panel at the bottom.

Click to download.