A Fairytale Wedding in the Heart of Sydney

H A Y L E Y + L U K E

Luke and Hayley had a fairytale wedding complete with a gorgeous ball gown, chandeliers, and a beautiful view of Sydney.

F R O M T H E B R I D E

How we met…
We met each other on a P&O cruise. First we became friends for roughly two years and then it became more.

We knew it was love…
We both new it was love when we couldn’t wait to see each other again and to be alone with each other.

Our engagement…
We got engaged in Las Vegas while on holiday. Luke and I went out to dinner, there was no build up at all and I had no idea how my night was about to turn out. After we had left the restraint we went for a walk to The Bellagio Fountain, we watched the fountain, which goes for approximately 10min intervals every 15mins. Once it finished I said to Luke, let’s go for a walk but he wanted to stay and watch it again. So we stayed and we watched the fountain BUT this time it was going to be like no other. Midway through, the love of my life got down on one knee and asked me to be his wife. With the little breath I had left I managed to say yes! Then I saw the little Tiffany pouch and out came the tears. Best Holiday Ever!

T H E W E D D I N G

Our dream wedding…
We both wanted an elegant and sophisticated wedding. Luke picked the colour lavender for our theme and I have always loved chandeliers lots of flowers and tea light candles.

Our photographer…
We had Splendid Photography capture our special day. After meeting up with so many different photographers the minute we saw Jeff’s work we locked them in. What we love most about our photos is that looking through them is like re-living our special day in slow motion. Everything was captured and I just absolutely love that.

Our ceremony…
We had a church ceremony at St Therese Mascot, picking our ceremony location was easy I always wanted a church ceremony. We recently moved to mascot so it was nice to get married in our local parish and just by coincidence my mothers name is Therese so it was a nice little touch.

Our reception…
Dolton House, Darling Island wharf.

The bridal party…
We had five each, made up of people from our families and close friends. The bridesmaids were dressed in Forever New dresses and Tony Bianco shoes. Our groomsmen were dressed in Ferrari Formalwear & Bridal and Julius Marlow Shoes. The groom was dressed in a Ferrari Formalwear & Bridal Suite and Versace shoes.

The gown…
I purchased my Dress from Abbey Bridal, Maggie Sottero is the designer. I fell in love with my dress as soon as I put it on, it was about the 10th dress I had tried on. The gown was everything I wanted: glittering Swarovski crystals and pearls. The dress was a fitted sweetheart bodice with dramatic folds of tulle and organza. For my shoes, I had Christian Louboutins. I had a long flowing veil with Swarovski crystals around the trim and a Swarovski crystal head piece.

Our styling…
For all our flowers Best Buds were so professional and really helped with bring my ideas to life. We wanted lots of flowers for our spring wedding. My bridal bouquet was white roses with green foliage and the bridesmaids’ bouquets had a lovely combination of seasonal flowers in lilac, pale pink and lime green. The bouquets looked stunning against the lilac bridesmaids’ dresses. We carried out the same theme throughout the church and reception venue.

Each table at our reception alternated with vases and flower balls or chandeliers with floral wreaths. Along the bridal table we still kept the theme but added green foliage and floating tea light candles. I love tea light candles they really set the ambiance. We also had 3 x 18 globe chandeliers from Chandeliers To Die For over the dance floor and bridal table. To me the chandeliers were the cherry on top. One thing that was really important to us was to be able to take photos in our reception room before the guests were invited in. When I first saw the reception room I was so overwhelmed with excitement to see what I had envisioned come to life.

We had a three-tiered wedding cake from the Cake Studio Sylvania. I didn’t just want an all white cake I wanted to incorporate the lilac theme, we had chocolate flavoured cake for the bottom tier, caramel in the middle and strawberry on top.

We had a sit-down menu. Dolton House are absolutely amazing with their food and portions. As our guests arrived, they had canapés and then as they were seated an antipasto plate. We had an alternating menu entree was mushroom risotto or lamb ragu. For main we had a beautiful chicken wrapped in prosciutto or pork belly. For dessert there was crème brûlée or chocolate fondant cake. There was so much food no one went home hungry. We had a bomboniere for each guest: we had alternating little brides and groom boxes with chocolates in them.

One thing that was very important to us was to have a little area set up to remember my husband’s mother who passed away three years ago. We had a picture of Sandra and a candle burning the entire night. I purchased the candle from Wedding Candles.

Wedding songs…
During the wedding ceremony we had an organist playing. I walked down to Pachelbel’s Cannon. I love traditional wedding music. We signed our wedding certificate to Ave Maria, which our organist sang live for us. We love a huge variety of music so we wanted to play as many different genres as possible at our reception. We had our guests request a song to be played during the evening on there rsvp. Our bridal waltz was Magic by Coldplay.

M A R R I E D L I F E

Our honeymoon…
We spent 16 magical nights in Hawaii, we stayed at the Outrigger Waikiki on the beach. Hawaii is our favourite holiday destination, it just has everything on offer that we love.

Our plans for the future…
Our plans for our future together as husband and wife are to travel as often as we can. We want to take as many adventures as we can together and fill our lives with so many memories.

In 40 years time…
In 40 years time from now I hope that we can both look back on our lives and reminisce about all our holidays that we shared together and look back at all our photos from the various cities we visited. Most importantly I hope we have both great health, and have enjoyed watching our children grow and possibly grandchildren. I hope we still hold hands at night before we fall asleep.

Words of wisdom
On the engagement…
Being engaged to the love of your life is the best feeling, enjoy every minute of it. Our nicknames for each other became” FI” or “FI FI”. Getting engaged is the start of the commitment it’s a wonderful feeling. When it comes to planning the wedding I tried to involve Luke as much as possible, I found the best thing was to do all the researching then narrow it down to about three options and then between the both of us we would make the decisions.