A Vintage Veil Wedding in a Melbourne Garden

How to plan a garden wedding

There’s a difference between a small wedding and an intimate wedding. An intimate wedding is a day especially planned with a specific emotion being the most important aspect of the day. Beginning at the bridal preparations, choosing where to spend your morning is apart of the process. The location you choose to wake up on the morning of your wedding will create the energy for the day. Being at a parents or grandparents home which holds so many memories and emotions is symbolic of starting your own home and family in your married life. My bride Charm chose the home of her grandparents home in Melbourne on a hot February day and it created the perfect story for the couples day.

A Melbourne Wedding

Charm and Max choose to start their day at Charm’s Lebanese grandparents home in the suburbs of south west Melbourne. As I arrived, Charm was just finishing getting ready with her mum and sister whilst her closest family waited in the back garden. Max arrived a short time later and greeted Charm in the front garden, having a quiet moment together before the became surrounded by everyone they love.

I think it was so important to have some time with their family before the rest of their guests arrived, having chance to say their congratulations then and also having so loving and natural family photos.

The garden was filled with olive trees and luscious green branches. There were paintings hung from the fence, clearly placed there as a reminder of the growing family that had painted them many years before. A symbol of love.

Food had lovingly been prepared by the family and picked from the garden, placed on vintage china and fabrics collected by the family over the years.

The couple chose the natural surroundings of the garden, the trees specifically to be the backdrop of their ceremony. Nothing else was needed…they were surrounded by everything they needed, their family memories and everyone they love.

Being an unconventional setting, I was able to place myself in places I would never have been able to in standard ceremonies. I sat on the grass in between the guests and framed the couple saying their vows. The images have a real feel for being close to the action, the energy and the love.

Their family and friends threw rice as Charm and Max excited the garden into the shade of the patio. The Lebanese tradition of rice throwing symbolises fertility, prosperity and good fortune, a beautiful way of sending a message passed down through generations.

Their guests celebrated in the new marriage with champagne and warm hugs before the couple drove off in a surprise car to take them around their home city.

We visited the botanical gardens, set with the city scape of Melbourne. A quiet 30 minutes away from their guests to have to some alone time and take in everything they had accomplished to make this day happen. They knew they didn’t want to spend too long away from their guests. They’d hired a restaurant rather than a ‘wedding venue’ to have their wedding breakfast, creating a relaxed atmosphere in a cosy location where guests couldn’t sneak off…not like they needed to.

When they arrived back at the restaurant, Old Palm Liquor in East Brunswick, they were greeted by a Lebanese band to welcome the whole party into the restaurant, and kicked off the celebrations with dancing. Almost every wedding tradition thrown out of the window…they made it their day.

The evening went smoothly moving from courses, to speeches and dancing in between, all when people felt like it was the right time to do so. No one telling them where to stand or when to speak…it felt like a home away from home. Only surrounded by the people they love the most.

And that’s how you plan an intimate wedding.

Photography shot on a mixture of 35mm film and digital.