Real Wedding: Natacha + Andy

For today's real wedding feature we have a lovely little beachside affair shot by Jody Lidstone. Natacha & Andy chose to share their day surrounded by their closest family and friends, at a beautiful Northland beach...."Peaceful far north New Zealand was the inspiration for our wedding. Andy and I had spent some nice weekends on the KariKari Peninsula. We felt it would be the perfect place to have a nice relaxed wedding. We had our ceremony on the beautiful deserted Puheke beach and then headed up to KariKari Estate Winery where we took in the beautiful views and indulged in gorgeous food and wine."

I was especially delighted to hear that Natacha had her dress made by Emily Percy who also made my dress and is an amazing talent. Natacha tells us "I had no idea what I wanted. I brought Emily a whole bunch of magazine clippings of dresses and I told her what I liked and didn’t like with each. Emily was an amazing listener and she helped me decipher what it was that I was really looking for. Such a patient and talented woman!"



Their wedding has such a fresh, natural look to it and has really played on the natural beauty of the area. Sometimes keeping things simple not to overwhelm what you already have in front of you, is the best option.
"We wanted to keep a nice relaxed feel to our reception. Most of the day was spent outdoors and dinner was in a marquee tent so that we could continue to take in the relaxing surroundings. We decided to do the decorating ourselves and to keep things casual and relaxed in the marquee. For table decorations we bought terracotta planters which we painted white and planted Blue Tussock in. We also had glass vases with sand from the beach we got married on and white pillar candles. The winery provided gorgeous old candelabras and placed them on wine barrels to create light around the marquee. Our gift to our guests were little soapstone tea light holders lined with paua shells from Trade Aid. They were used to weigh down place cards. Guests lit the tea lights when they sat down for dinner. We also rented a whole bunch of fairy lights which we strung up in a random pattern across the top of the marquee."