After a wonderful, relaxing morning being pampered and getting ready with my girls, we got married in a beautiful ceremony at a lookout overlooking the beach. We then had an amazing afternoon getting our bridal party photos on the beach, celebrating with our bridal party and enjoying our wedding reception with our wonderful guests. Our photos and wedding reception topped off a perfect day and we are over the moon with our incredible photos from the day.
We headed straight off from the ceremony to one of our favourite places in Port Macquarie, Tacking Point Lighthouse. The Lighthouse is so iconic and overlooks our favourite beach, Lighthouse Beach and the gorgeous Little Bay. We’d hired VW Kombi’s from Mirror Image Weddings and the owners, Jann and Wally were fantastic and ensured the cars were spick and span for our big day! They also had the cars decked out with hair products, umbrellas, thongs (flip-flops), umbrellas, mints, deodorant, perfume, bottled water, beers and champagne! They’d literally thought of everything. We popped the champagne and enjoyed a drink at the lighthouse before we started our bridal party photos.
I knew from the moment we’d decided to get married in Port Macquarie that I wanted photos in front of the Lighthouse. I am so glad that we did because they turned out so beautifully and are some of my favourite photos from the day.
Our lovely bridal party then got to enjoy a few more drinks whilst Dan I headed down to the clifftop for some photos of just the two of us. I love these photos so much and have the best memories of laughing and enjoying myself with my best friend and husband.
We all headed down the stairs to Little Bay, one of our photographer’s favourite locations for wedding photos. We had so much fun posing, laughing and mucking around on the beach and again I think the photos turned out brilliantly! How lovely and good looking do our bridal party look! I think the boys look dashing in their Tarocash suits, the girls look drop dead gorgeous in their Forever New dresses and our flowers from Touchwood Flowers just pop against our outfits.
We had time to pose for a few photos in front of the Kombi’s which everyone absolutely loved! They are one of Dan’s favourite cars and he was so happy when I booked them for the wedding! I think they make for pretty fabulous wedding photos too!
Our reception was held at the Port Macquarie Surf Life Saving Club on Flynn’s Beach. We love the venue as it is located directly on the beach and the location and venue suited our coastal theme perfectly.
One of the main things that we love about the surf club is the large balcony which is right on the beach. By late afternoon the beach was empty and we had perfect views of the beach whilst everyone mingled over canapes and drinks. We’d arranged our catering through local caterers, XS Foods and they were brilliant – everyone raved about how amazing the food was. I think good food and wine (plenty of it) are important at a wedding and well worth the expense!
As everyone settled down for dinner, Nic and Brett stole us away for a few minutes for photos on the beach at dusk. It was so lovely to have that moment just to ourselves amid the craziness of the day and I think the photos are brilliant!
We then settled down for dinner and ended our meal with speeches. One by one Dan, my Mum & Dad, our Best Man Adam, my Uncle Brett, Dan’s brother Jay, my Maid of Honour Nina and I all gave speeches and there was seemingly endless toasts and laughter!
Our cake was by local chef and friend, Kate Caters. Kate is a brilliant chef who has recently started her own successful business. Kate creates beautiful food and cakes using only natural, organic ingredients and uses no refined sugars in her cooking. Our wedding cake was a dark chocolate velvet cake topped with a white chocolate mud cake topped off with a lemon butter cake. The cake was made for 110 people and surprisingly the entire cake was eaten that night! I ordered our cake topper from the US and thought it was very cute and appropriate based on just how much Dan loves surfing.
Neither Dan or I are great dancers but we managed to make it through our first dance successfully and enjoyed it! Our first dance was to Thinking Out Loud by Ed Sheeran and our singer Jake Davey was incredible with his cover of the song!
One of my favourite memories from our wedding reception was the bouquet toss. There were a lot of girls who wanted that bouquet very badly and I am just so glad that our photographers captured every moment. They make me laugh so hard every time I look at them! My beautiful friend Jade caught the bouquet in the end and her boyfriend Greg was one of Dan’s groomsmen, we would be very happy if they were the next to be married!
Once all the formalities were done, everyone hit the dancefloor and Jake kept the dancefloor packed until the night ended!
Our wedding reception was fun and filled with great food and plenty of alcohol – just as a wedding should be! We had the best day ever surrounded with 110 of our favourite people in the world and we loved every minute of it! We held a brunch the next morning at my parent’s house for everyone who’d travelled to attend and it was lovely to spend some more quality time with them before they travelled home.
A few days after the wedding festivities died down we headed off on our honeymoon which we’ll be writing about very soon and we are so excited to share all our adventures from Sri Lanka and the Maldives with you all!
Check out our other wedding posts: Part 1: Getting Ready & Part 2: The Ceremony.
