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. 

Sweet Magnolia Estate Wedding by Claire Mossong

Hello lovelies! How is your week going? I've kinda lost the first two days down to travelling one of them and then dealing with frustrating IT issues most of yesterday (as well as a sick husband... which naturally makes him grumpy!!) But all back up and running today! You may recognise the top image from this lovely wedding by Claire Mossong in the board I posted yesterday... how gorgeous is this vintage plate? I also love the pomander balls hanging from the pergola!

Mark and I met when I was 15 years old and he was 16. I am lucky to say that I married my best friend and childhood sweetheart. When Mark first proposed I knew our wedding had to reflect both of us in some way. We both share a strong love and passion for things vintage! Mine are textiles, colours and pretty eclectic pieces and Marks is with his old cars - so we knew that was going to be the theme and inspiration for our wedding. We choose Feburary as it was our 10 year anniversary and we tied the knot 5 days after the actual anniversary date. Both growing up in Whakatane and coming from large familes, we knew we had to get married there. Finding a venue to suit our theme was going to be a little more tricky. The search was worth it. Our ceremony was held in a private garden in which over looked the town, river and Whale Island. The location is stunning and I knew that I didn't want too many decorations to detract from the view. Dad made the recycled timber pergola and my girlfriends and I made the rose and hydrangea pomander balls. These were the perfect touch, a few hanging from the pergola, the rest hanging from the end seats down the aisle.

After studying fashion design for 4 years I always new what I wanted for my dress and toyed with idea of making it myself - but then I found Corina Snow Bridal. She did an amazing job of turning my ideas into reality, creating my gorgeous dress. Mum made all the rosettes on the dress so it still had that personal touch and that made it ever more special to me. With Corina making my dress I was able to focus on making the bridesmaids dresses. As soon as I found the soft polka dot tulle I knew that was the starting point for my colour palette for the wedding. The polka dot tulle was used as the bodice fabric and as my dress was made from silk georgette, I sent more of that off to be dyed to match the tulle. We found matching shoes, bracelets and earrings which tied everything together.

Our florist was Nikki from Ruby Dunes in Ohope who did an absolutely amazing job on the bouquets and buttonholes! We provided the large dahlias from Mum's garden for the bridesmaid's bouquets and Nikki matched roses perfectly along with lisianthus, gypsopholia, hydrandgeas, Queen Anne's Lace, Vivian spray roses and gorgeous Lambs Ears. My aunt created the flower arrangements for the head table and they tied in perfectly with the table linen Mum and I had made - 110 napkins and table runners to match!! Coming from a family filled with creative people our reception was very much DIY. Family and friends were amazing in helping Mark and I with all the finer details. Not only did my girlfriends help to make the pomander balls they spent many nights with me putting labels on the ice cream tubs, fabric covers and tags on the jam favours and making up all the candy boxes. My darling father crafted the lemonade stand, ice cream sprinkes caddy and cut all the little signs for our sign post. Mark made the screens for the candy bar and ice-cream parlour, while I did the signage, labels and wedding stationery. We had every one involved - even my nana made all the jam favours.

We had a marquee reception in the beautiful gardens of Sweet Magnolia Estate, where Wendy and Cathy were absolute stars and worked like trojans to make sure everything went like clockwork. The venue is perfect and the hosts go out of their way to help. The idea of having vintage china for table settings came from inheriting my great-grandmother's little pink tea set. The cups and saucers, dinner and side plates added the finishing touch to the reception. We had a gorgeous mix of birdcages, candelabra, teapots and vintage glassware with flowers for centrepieces all from The Heirloom. The stunning hand-painted cake also from The Heirloom attracted many compliments - as did the beautiful pink and white two-tiered cake made by my friend Kerry at Sugar Town - it tasted as good as it looked!

Mark's main job was to sort out the wedding cars. Being a car enthusiast and having too many cars to name it was always going to be a difficult decision for him to make as to which one we would travel in. In the end he chose his white 1976 Mazda as we had friends with matching black and grey ones. It was a sentimental choice for him to have his own car carry me to the ceremony - even though just a few short weeks earlier there was a big question as to whether or not we would be able to use it.

It was a godsend when we discovered our photographer Claire Mossong and her husband Alex! They completely understood the idea I was aiming for, their style suited our love for all things vintage! I cannot thank them enough, they caught all the special moments and we both love our photos! It makes us wish we could do it all over again!

Photographer | Claire Mossong, Reception Venue | Sweet Magnolia Estate, Wedding Cake | Sugar Town, Handpainted Cake, Stationery - The Heirloom, Stylist + Props | The Heirloom, Make Up | A Little Beauty Shop, Brides Dress - Corina Snow Bridal, Flowers | Ruby Dunes, Brides Head Piece | Queens and Bowls

Rainy day wedding by Claire Mossong...

I love seeing how photographers face the challenge of a rainy day wedding and Claire Mossong certainly had her work cut out for her with Hannah & Thomas's wedding in the Bay of Plenty. And I'm sure you'll agree that she certainly rose to the challenge and then some with these gorgeous misty almost ethereal photos down by the waterfront. The lovely bride Hannah shares some details and contingency plan with us...

Thomas and I dated for 2 years and then he popped the question at the end of a very eventful day! and now we're married and loving it! It's just the best thing ever! We planned to have our wedding ceremony on Papamoa beach but it poured with rain the whole day! So we ended up at our church (it was a rush to set it up because we'd planned a beach set up but my bridesmaids did the best job ever! I was so lucky to have them do over the church just hours before the ceremony!!) We then had a picnic at our new house (bc it was too wet to have at the beach!) and then headed to our reception venue early to get some pics on the beautiful staircase... then we headed to Mount Maunganui and had photos taken on the wharf (in the rain!) and down by the water... we also headed to Kulim Park and took some beautiful pics before racing back to our reception venue at our friend's grand house on Matua waterfront - it was perfect for our afternoon canapés!

Nicky Hayward, my best friend and bridesmaid, made my wedding dress and jewelery. We designed it together, ordered in the fabric, measured up, chose crystals and pearls, had multiple dress fittings and voila! I absolutely loved it! Nicky also dyed the Corina Snow bridal shoes that I wore... they were brought white and dyed Coral Pink! Matched my nails well! And my friend Daneka from Rodney Wayne in Bethlehem did my hair - it was exactly what I wanted! Soft around the face with plaits braided around bringing my hair to one side, she was incredible. My make-up was done by a private beauty therapist, Sarah Thompson. I loved the natural look that she gave each of us, she was brilliant. My Aunty Christine put our flowers together. She got up at 3am to make it to the Wellsford flower markets and picked out the wild-looking flowers that I had described to her... They were perfect!

My day was exactly how I imagined it thanks to these incredibly talented people!

Sweet Picnic Engagement Shoot from Claire Mossong...

Boy oh boy haven't we already had some huge events in the first few months of this year? From catastrophic natural disasters, to the biggest wedding event we're likely to see for many many years, and now this historic day in history with the death of Osama bin Laden (oh I don't even like having his name on here!). I was in two minds as to whether to post anything today and to be honest if I hadn't already had a post ready I wouldn't have, as I spent most of the afternoon glued to the TV screen as I'm sure a lot of you did. Amazing how in 72 short hours we have experienced two events at such opposite ends of the spectrum... from the giddy heights of a fairytale romance and love to the downright hatred that terrorism has installed in many.
For those of you who want a wee escape and bit of pretty, enjoy this lovely sweet Engagement shoot from Claire Mossong. Love that dangling feet one!!