You lucky lot are going to enjoy this! This morning we shared the first part of Gemma, a (self confessed!) RMW addict’s wedding, and her email to us in the days before she left for Australia to get married. If this is the product of a RMW readers wedding, then I am fit to burst with pride. So so pretty and full of love.

Enjoy, I certainly did!

Our ceremony was at St Mary’s Cathedral in Hobart, which was where my Dad married my Mum and also where my grandparents were married.

Our reception was at Stonefield in Brighton, a country farmhouse built in 1824. It has the most beautiful cottage garden where we were hoping to do champagne for our guests as they arrived at about 4 pm, but it was misty and freezing. Luckily Eric, the owner, had another room available for this very problem, and instead people gathered around roaring fires(!) before entering the main reception.

Spring Florals

Our florist was in Sandy Bay, Hobart. I wanted old fashioned-y, higgledy piggeldy, overblown spring flowers and I wanted them everywhere! Gay Flowers were brilliant, and again, I organised the flowers from London with the help of family ‘on the ground’ in Hobart.

They did bouquets of a stronger blue for my maids and spring posies for the flowergirls. Raymond came with me and chose the buttonholes for his grooms.

I raided my Grandfather’s jam making supplies and prettied them up with ribbons, more vintage wall paper, brown paper and raffia. The night before the wedding, Raymond, his Mum and I went out to look at the venue and the flowers had been delivered and installed – they took my breath away. I wanted to stay there and look at them all night. The bouquets were just as gorgeous.

Photography that speaks for itself

Our photographer was Lisa Kuilenburg, and not only did she take photos that surpassed anything I’d ever imagined for our day, she also became a good friend into the bargain.

She is funny and incredibly easy-going, and having her around made the day run more smoothly because she helped with a lot of things outside her remit. I think her photos speak for themselves.

A Taste of Home

We had miniature bottles of Glenlivet Scottish Whisky as favours sourced (and lugged to Australia) by Raymond’s sister, as well as a CD with songs that are special to us as a couple.

I ordered a vintage wedding magazine from 1930 from Etsy – it was French and called ‘La Petit Echo de La Mode’, and we had notecards for people to write messages for our guestbook which they then pinned onto a lemon ‘money’ tree.

Cupcakes and Love Birds

The cake was a stand of cupcakes from Cutie Cups in Hobart. Again, all organised over email, we topped it with a pair of kissing lovebirds I’d bought in Covent Garden long before I even met Raymond.

Half the cupcakes were vanilla and half were chocolate, and the top tier was a traditional fruitcake with a layer of marzipan for those who wanted it (R and I certainly didn’t!)

A Good Old Fashioned Knees Up

We both wanted to make the wedding a celebration of Raymond’s Scottish heritage and the fact that he proposed at Loch Lomond near his home city of Glasgow – so we decided on a Scottish Ceilidh dance and found Dancer’s Delight who provided a good old fashioned Scottish knees up, and we literally had a ball.

We chose ‘Please, Please, Please let me get what I want’ by the Smiths as our first dance – we are both indie kids at heart and the Smiths was one of the first bands we bonded over. Neither of us are very good dancers (I am abysmal) so we kind of swayed and giggled throughout the song. It was lovely, we didn’t know whether anyone was watching us and we didn’t care.

A Wise Bride

Our wedding really was a celebration of the two of us, and the bringing together of our families. When we all landed in Australia lots of relatives from both sides hadn’t met, and that was why we decided to have the Bridal Party made up of family only…if we’d included all the special friends we love into our day in matching dresses and suits, we’d have had a church full of maids.

Raymond and I have both travelled a lot in our lives, both together and separately, sometimes by choice and sometimes (like when I was stuck in Australia waiting for a visa for 9 excruciating months) definitely not. When we first met we both felt like we had come home – and that feeling of belonging, the ‘anywhere I lay my hat with yours is home’ was how the style of our wedding evolved: encorporating the florals and art deco touches that I love with the vintage maps, rockabilly aesthetic and green hills and rivers that say ‘Raymond’.

Choosing readings on the day for the Church was one thing that was difficult – because we had decided to get married in a Catholic Cathedral, we were bound by having readings and music that were solely liturgical. I found a reading called ‘two are better than one’ from ecclesiastes which I’m just putting in here because I thought Rebecca, particularly, might be interested to read it. I agonised over what readings and music to have because R and I are so into literature and music that having solely Catholic liturgy (especially as he’s not Catholic, and agreed to the cathedral because he knew it was an important link to my mum etc) limited us and sometimes didn’t feel very ‘us’. We thought this was simple and said it all – that we are an unbreakable team.

Two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor. For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up. Furthermore, if two lie down together they keep warm, but how can one be warm alone? And if one can overpower him who is alone, two can resist him. A cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart.

Photography – Lisa Kuilenburg

Flowers – Gay Flowers

Ceilidh Band – Dancer’s Delight

Table runners paper – Paperchase.

Place cards (Vintage map paper) – Oliver Bonas.

Gemma is the first person on these pages to articulate the way I feel about my own husband and her church reading really resonated with me too… (You were right Gemma! In fact I think we might be some kind of spiritual twins as I have that paper (for the placecards) too, and when I was a child I was always found playing dress up with a band on my forehead… )

Thank you so much Gemma for sending this in, on behalf of all our readers too. I have loved sharing it with them all.

Yours Truly,

Rebecca
xoxo

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