Real Wedding: Emma + Alistair II

Today I'm delighted to be featuring the work of Michele Austen for the first time on the blog and I'm pretty sure if these photos are anything to go by, it won't be the long before we feature more. Emma & Alistair were clients of mine and were the first to choose the Etoile design from the Signature Classic Album (which has gone on to be a very popular design) for their wedding at Mantells. She had this to say about working with Michele..."Michele is a lovely lovely person to work with – she made our day so special. She was so delicate and calming – made us all feel wonderful while she was shooting us."

Emma's dress is by Luci DiBella, from Tutta Bella Bridal, as is that gorgeous headband. Emma takes up the story of finding her stunning dress below...
My wedding dress was a matter of “meant to be”, we went to the Aotea Centre Wedding Show and watched the models on the runway – I saw a dress style that I really liked. When we walked around to find Lesley the owner of Tutta Bella Bridal, she was just lovely and ran all the way to the other side of the expo to grab the dress off the model for me. It was just stunning. Later that month I was at home looking through her dresses on line – they were beautiful, so I called up to book an appointment. The day I called just happened to be the designer (Luce Di Bella’s) trunk show she was there for one day with her new range from Melbourne and she had just had a cancellation!! An hour later I was standing in the beautiful shop with Luci herself who found me my dress, I didn’t try any others on from any other shops, as soon as I put the dress on the she choose for me I just knew it was the one. We decided that my particular dress would be made in a whiter silk and incorporate a silver lace. Luci went back to Melbourne and sourced the silk and lace to suit me. I didn’t try any other dresses or even set foot in any other dress shops, me and my mum knew we had found the dress. On the day the dress fitted like a glove, and was absolutely perfect in every way.




What was the inspiration for your wedding?
When I was a little girl I always remembered my parents getting dressed up for my Fathers work Christmas party – which was always held at Mantells. My mum would always stress about what she could wear, that was fancy enough, however she always looked absolutely magical. She used to say that Mantells was the only function she ever really enjoyed. To me as a child that was a venue that was for very very special occasions.
When Ali and I decided that we would get married in Auckland, I knew that Mantels would be our first port of call. A year in advance and already all of the weekends were fully booked – however we had completely fallen in love with the venue, so we decided we get married on a week day. Consulting the old wedding rhythm we choose Wednesday (the best day of all) and the first week of Feb (the sunniest week of the year). Amazingly this date turned out to be Feb 3rd, which was Alistair’s Great Grandmothers birthday, her middle name was Emma – and the weather was perfect.
I choose silver and white as my colour themes I thought it would be a light and delicate colour palette. The theme that I wanted was at first look to be beautifully simple and then upon a closer look - you could make out stunning intricate detail. This was something that I think is represented best in the design of our wedding cake.

Don't go anywhere....we have more coming up!