Fun, colourful wedding by Claire Mossong

I love the sentiment behind today's beautifully colourful wedding from Claire Mossong. Kim & Ryan chose to incorporate their local community into their wedding as much as they could, and re-purposed what they could from times past. And how fabulous does it look? I LOVE that the bride chose a printed fabric for her dress, it just looks so fun! And the bridesmaids... sorry 'honourable ladies', look fabulous in their colourful dresses with flowers adorning their hair. I will leave it to the gorgeous bride Kim, to tell you why they chose to have their community based wedding.

An opportunity to support our community... Ryan and I have been sharing life’s adventure with each other for over 10 years. He proposed to me whilst we were cycling around the East Cape of New Zealand over the sunrise at Rangitukia. A year later on January 6th 2012 we were wed at a unique location, Winsley Kent Lodge, a beautiful property owned by family friends. We both love the outdoors so the ceremony and banquet were held alfresco amongst the trees. Our wedding was inspired by the art of multipurposing materials and beautiful things from bygone era’s. 

We were extremely lucky to have Claire Mossong Digital storytelling shoot our big day and on her suggestion we did a “first look” and had our photos taken before the ceremony at Pohutakawa BnB. This meant when we arrived at our wedding, we were able to relax and mix and mingle with our guests enjoying Marg Harper’s stunning instrumentals and Apple Tree Cider’s delicious brews before the ceremony. Guests enjoyed picnic nibbles on our up-cycled pallet furniture reworked by Marilyn Cleland Interiors. On My Hand set up our photo booth which became extremely popular as the evening wore on. 

Supporting our local community through our wedding was really important for me. Wherever possible we supported local producers and grew everything else ourselves. Good food was paramount and between us and our families we harvested potatoes, grew chickens, hand-picked herbs and flowers, pickled vegetables, whipped up chutneys, brewed limoncello and grew the lettuce table runners that guests took delight in harvesting their own fresh salads from. We were determined to use organic and local ingredients where possible and sourced most of our produce from the Tauranga Farmers Market. 

12 honourable ladies, including two bridesmaids were the Madame’s of Ceremony who took us through the evening from behind a loudhailer. We didn’t have bouquets but wore our flowers in our hair which were woven into flower headbands. The honourable ladies picked their own dresses to match the colours in my own dress fabric which was created by Robyn Pascoe. Make up was by Rebecca Curevela at RK Beauty Design and hair by Myra Shakesby at Lynx. 

Having a wedding is an incredible opportunity to create an event that reflects what you and your husband-to-be love about life. It is also an incredible opportunity to support local producers and celebrate artisans and creative professionals in your local community.