Clare & Tom's Elegant Voyager Estate Wedding
Date: 7th March 2015
Wedding Photographer: In Sight Photography
Wedding Ceremony: Voyager Estate, Margaret River
Wedding Reception: Watershed Winery, Margaret River
Interview with the Bride
We made sure that all of our brothers and sister were involved in the readings. We also made mention of our Grandparents who couldn't be with us at the wedding. Tom's nieces who were the flower girls and Tom's nephew, were all apart of our ceremony. Our vows were very personal and told our story, which is exactly what we wanted. We also had the String Trio learn and play pieces of music that were special and extremely personal to Tom and myself.
The ceremony had mainly white lanterns strung up through the trees and wine barrels with baby's breath on them. I wanted to keep it simple as Voyager Estate has the most beautiful gardens, views and architecture, so I really didn't want to take away from that. The reception was filled with yellow and cream flowers. There were other small details I did around the place but again the view and the room was quite beautiful so it didn't need much. I did however make sure there were literally thousands of fairy lights on the balcony outside. You can never have too many fairy lights!
When it came time to look for my wedding dress, it took me a while to get into it. But a friend who was also engaged at the time, took me shopping about a year out from the wedding. It was such an odd yet wonderful experience. The dress I bought was the first one I tried on. However I had to try on about 40 dresses after it before I realised that it really was the one for me. The name of the dress was Belle which reminded me of a Disney princess so that was one thing. I also loved the colour, it was more of a champagne. Plus it had an amazing waist bow which was always a must on my list.
I had my bridesmaid wear ivory as I just love the elegant look. A lady at Vera Wang gave me the idea when I was trying on a dress there. Why do we always think we have to put the girls in these bright colours to match the theme?
We got married about 15 months after we were engaged. I pretty much got into the planning straight away to book the big items such as the venues. A lot of places were already booked out even at that stage. But we feel we definitely still ended up with the best.
I was surprised to learn just how structured wedding days were. We had a run sheet that started at 9.30am and ended at midnight. You really do need it to coordinate all the suppliers though. Our ceremony was at 4pm and the pre-drinks for the reception started at 5.30pm. We will never forget that our "first dance" was at 9pm as it was our last official duty as bride and groom, after that we could just relax and do anything we wanted.
Our theme was very traditional but also definitely had our personalities in it. The colours were butter yellow, cream and mint green. I mostly did all the decorations myself such as the table numbers and name cards. Some decorations were hired from Chic Rustique and I had a PA just for the day of the wedding who set them all up. I didn't want my family members missing out on anything on the day and wanted everyone as relaxed as possible. The wedding day didn't involve any family or friends but we had a lot of family helping out with the days leading up such as dropping off chalk board signs and feeding the masses of family that had travelled down for the weekend. Our wedding was quite timeless, nothing was too crazy except maybe our wedding cake which was made of 100 and 1000's with penguins on the top wearing Disney hats. The cake definitely summed up my husband and I very well. There were subtle pops of Disney around the place, for example the table numbers. But overall it was quite classic.
We had a traditional sit down 3 course meal. We really enjoyed it. I have quite traditional views when it comes to wedding so we never considered anything else. It was a nice time to relax and just talk at the bridal table while everyone was eating. Watershed had the most amazing food. People couldn't stop raving about it. We had our wedding cake served with coffee after dessert.
All the speeches were great at our reception. Extremely funny but also very meaningful. Our first dance definitely stuck out in my mind. We had one dance lesson to learn how to waltz and it turned out Tom picked things up so quickly we put together a really nice relaxed dance in the end. The dance included a small lift but we practiced it before we entered the reception and the hook and eye flew off my dress so we decided to take it out and avoid splitting my entire dress. Actually it was not until the reception that I realised just how massive my dress was. I could hardly move in between the chairs. But still completely worth it. I don't think I will ever forget the image of my brother dancing on the tables towards the end of the night, or him dancing around in the circle that formed so we could farewell everyone. It also started to rain just at midnight which made me smile.
Clare's advice for other brides planning their wedding:
It's actually a great experience. Even though at times it can be so stressful you just want to run away, it is all definitely worth it in the end. Start early and enjoy the experience. Put effort into everything that is important to you because you don't want to have any regrets on the day. I feel you need to decide whether you are going to care about every little thing or be ridiculously easy going and care about nothing. I didn't go crazy but I put a lot of effort into every detail because I had a very clear vision of what I wanted on the day. Plus I never planned on doing it ever again so thought might as well go all out!
Tom was very involved. I made sure I ran every decision by him because it was his day and much as it was mine. I remember people laughing because Tom knew every suppliers name. Tom designed our wedding rings completely on his own which was a wonderful surprise. He was also responsible for booking all the hotels and honeymoon accommodation. Anything that is important to me is important to Tom so he was 100% involved.
Honeymoon:
We stayed a few nights at Capelodge and Crown after the wedding but we are going to Japan for our real honeymoon. We have waited 4 months after our wedding because I wanted to enjoy planning our honeymoon and not have it add extra stress around the wedding.
CTCW Wedding Suppliers:
Ceremony Location: Voyager Estate
Reception Venue: Watershed Winery
Photographer: In Sight Photography
Accommodation: Private house in Margaret River
Brides dress & accessories: Dress – Tuscany Bridal, Shoes – The Bridal Room, Head piece – Untamed Petals (USA)
Bridesmaid's dresses & accessories: Dresses – Tuscany Bridal, Jewelry – Kate Spade
Rings: Rosendorff
Groom & groomsman attire: Calibre
Transport: Bride – Classic Jaguar Limousines
Favours: Personalized M&Ms from New York, Door hangers from USA
Decorations: Chic Rustique
