Kris and Kim’s wedding day was a beautiful, DIY-filled celebration packed with bright colours, family history, helicopter dreams, and non-stop dancing. Kim tells the story of their perfect day…

Kris and I met when we were 14 and have been inseparable ever since! We moved across the country for university, moved back to our hometown, bought a house, adopted a dog, and have had so many more adventures in between!

For our big day, we wanted chill vibes, bright colours, yummy food, and to just have a great party. We’d waited so long for our wedding, so we really just wanted it to feel like a celebration with everyone we love, without the pressure of having everything perfect and uniform.

“Bernadette Thomas created my wedding dress — the same designer who made my mum’s gown when she married my dad in 1994. It made the experience incredibly meaningful, especially as I completed my look with my mum’s wedding earrings, which she had lovingly kept for me.”

When I started looking at wedding dresses, I knew I wanted it to be a special moment, so when my mum suggested getting Bernadette Thomas to make a dress for me, it made perfect sense. Bernadette had made my mum’s wedding dress when she married my dad in 1994, so for her to be able to make my dress too was so meaningful. Working with Bernadette was so fun — she is very talented and made the whole process go smoothly. Using the jacquard fabric was a great way to give the dress some character, and it turned out absolutely perfect. I also wore my mum's wedding earrings on the day, which she had kept for me.

Kris knew he wanted to wear a green suit, and after some extensive suit shopping with no luck finding what he was looking for, we decided to get a custom-made one that turned out exactly how he wanted. We also got our names and wedding date embroidered on the inside of his jacket.

The morning of our day was so fun! My maid of honour made us pyjama shorts to wear, which was such a cute detail. It was raining all morning, which was a little stressful since there wasn’t really a wet-weather plan considering we weren't expecting rain in the middle of January. It had also been raining the whole week leading up to the day, but thankfully it stopped just as we finished getting ready.

The boys did what boys do: PlayStation, yarns, and I believe a trip to Mitre 10? Just good vibes all around!

We had our first look and photos on my family's farm. Because we were having our photos on the farm in the middle of summer, we wanted to bring a bright element to the dry brown of the environment, so we really wanted to make sure we had super colourful and gorgeous flowers to bring some excitement to the pictures.

Our first look was so special and just took all the pressure off, and we had the most fun time with our bridal party. We had Champagne and lots of laughs. Our photographer, Kelsi, took the most gorgeous photos. It felt really natural and fun, and everything went so smoothly. After our first dance, we snuck away to a sunflower field just up the road and had some sunset photos there, which was so cool and the photos are incredible!

Arriving at the ceremony in a helicopter was something I’ve dreamt about since I was a little kid, since aviation is such a big part of my life, so it was unreal that the weather allowed us to do that. Having both my parents walk me up the aisle was something that I felt really strongly about. They raised me together, so it was only right that they did that together too.

We used Kris’s late poppa’s vintage Chevy pickup truck for him to arrive at the ceremony, which meant a lot to Kris and was so special to have a piece of him with us on our day.

We had the most perfect outdoor ceremony amongst the vines. My brother played an acoustic version of Blackbird by The Beatles on the guitar, which was so special. I had spent so long trying to find a song that I liked enough to walk up the aisle to, so when Ollie suggested he play something, I was like, "Yes! Why did I not think of that?!"

We did a lot of DIY; Kris is great at taking my ideas and making them a reality. We DIY’d our flower stands, ceremony arch, friendship bracelets, selfie mirror, menus, and also some bar leaners that we upcycled from some old wine barrels we had. We were also gifted some bottles of water with our names and wedding date on them from Kris’s granny, and they looked so cool.

Our reception was the most fun! Our bridal party had come up with fun ways to enter the reception and they did not disappoint. We had made friendship bracelets for all our guests, which were so fun to make, and then to see everyone wearing them and trading them was so cool! We had Polaroid cameras around as well, which is such a cool keepsake for us and our guests to have.

*Kim’s aunty made their beautiful cake. Kris has a severe egg allergy, so she spent a lot of time leading up to the wedding trying different eggless cake recipes until she found the perfect one.*

Our first dance song was Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd, which is not your typical first dance song, but it’s a really special song to us and was a nice way to have a slow dance and then get straight into the party!

The band my brother had booked for us was unreal and absolutely the best part of the night. We were able to party all night and the dance floor was never empty, which was exactly what we wanted. We love a good boogie, so having great entertainment was really important to us!

We couldn’t have been happier with how everything turned out. All the details came together perfectly.