My little sister’s wedding – last Friday in the Hunter Valley – was certainly a family affair. Every immediate family member played a role in the ceremony as well as behind-the-scenes, which made the whole thing even more special.

- Gretchen’s new brother-in-law Shane designed the invitations and was the best man.

- Her mother-in-law, Charmaine, made and decorated the cupcakes, organised the tiered cake stand and was a witness (a sweet way to include the mothers who usually don’t get to do much!)

- Dad set aside 24 hours to handmake chocolates in special moulds she ordered in of little cars, motorbikes and boats – a nod to her new hubby Nathan’s obsessions.

- Mum helped out with the decorations, the chocolates and was a witness.

- Our sister Kristie made the veil and helped out with the decorations (her hand was almost crippled after I made her cut out all the placecards with fancy scissors!) and was matron of honour (we rotated the roles throughout all three of our weddings so we each got to be matron of honour. Not that it matters, but anyway!).

- Her brother-in-laws Steve (as in my Steve) and Tim (Kristie’s hubby) MCed the event.

And I got to play bossy decorator as well as bridesmaid. One slip though and I wouldn’t have been able to do anything as I spent a good portion of the morning of the wedding up in that tree balancing on one foot and perched on rather narrowish branches tying up the lanterns. But I think they were worth it. Here is a little of how the outside looked and the ceremony itself – I’ll post some more detail/decor pics tomorrow…

 

 

We ended up including some battery-operated lanterns in the mix, which we turned on at dusk – so pretty in the evening having them glowing along with the fairy lights we strung up along the deck’s ceiling rafters and the abundance of tealight candles on windowsills… I’ll post some more detail and decor pics tomorrow as well as ways to cut costs with your wedding! x

{Images by me, Tim Christian & Amber Taylor}

My baby sister gets married on Friday! So it’s crazy-busy wedding week in all of my family members’ households – spraytans and pedicures to have, placecards to print, speeches to write, motorbike-riding-and-fishing-by-bucks to be done, chocolates to make… My own to-do list involves shopping for lanterns and ribbons, sewing paper doilies, making pretty paper tags, painting chalkboard signs, cutting up placecards, creating table numbers… That’ll teach me for volunteering! So, as with this week, next week will be a slow-blog week. But if you need me, I’ll be the crazy girl flailing and wailing about in a pile of tissue paper making way too many pom poms… Being the total opposite of wedding obsessed, I thought I’d post some pretty pics to get me in the right head space!

Psst: Big thank you to everyone’s comments on my last post. As soon as I pressed “publish” I wanted to unpublish because I thought it might be insensitive to talk about other people’s heartache. And yet, everyone was so sweet and helpful, I’m now going to bundle up all your words, links and love and send it off to those who’ve lost so much when the time is right. I think they’ll appreciate it. x

{Images by Jose Villa. This just might be my fave wedding shoot ever. The couple is so cute and cool and casual (my kind of wedding!), the dress is perfection, the location heaven, the yellow shoes and striped socks are adorable, the barn gorgeous, the yellow cake a sweet surprise and I love a fabric backdrop done well as this one was. I tried to get my sister to do the same thing, but she decided not too. Good thing that, or else there’d be something else I’d be doing this week! If you like drooling over wedding pics, spend a few days lost in Jose Villa’s gorgeous images}