Rebecca & Michael
Photos by Soul Sisters
Rebecca and Michael chose a warm rustic style for their wedding day and carefully curated a stunning celebration for them and their loved ones to enjoy and treasure forever. Rebecca shares details from their day…
You often hear people call their wedding “the best day of our lives”, but it’s not until we got to experience it for ourselves where we could truly understand how special it is to be surrounded by those closest to you, celebrating love. Family and friends travelling throughout New Zealand and Australia, coming together in celebration of us and our love story - it’s surreal, euphoric and as they say, it goes way too fast!
Our venue Turanga Creek really took care of everything, including on-site accommodation the night before and after!
I got ready with my mum, sister and bridesmaids. We drank mimosas, played our favourite music and just had the best time. Mum’s wedding pearls (which my sister also wore at her wedding) were borrowed from my sister and stitched into my veil. My bridesmaid Sarah was on the makeup tools and Jo from Exile Hair Design made sure all us girlies were wind-ready and looking incredible! Jo not only nailed the hair, she even jumped in to steam all the bridesmaids dresses which was a true help - all brides know how quickly the time slips away!
Rebecca and Michael included Lockie in their engagement shoot.
Photo by Soul Sisters
Michael spent the morning walking our dog Lockie and hanging out with his groomsmen. Lockie joined our family as the retired greyhound foster that never left. Due to him being an anxious boy, especially around lots of people, he couldn’t come to our wedding, but Michael was wearing a greyhound buttonhole pin so he could be with us on the day.
The keepsake greyhound pin so Lockie could be part of their wedding.
Our day wasn’t all without drama, but in what turned out to be a happy accident less than three weeks out from our wedding, our celebrant realised he’d double-booked our date. Luck would have it that a friend who was already a guest at the wedding had just been officiated for another mates wedding so could jump in! Our ceremony became much more personal, funny, relaxed and very much us.
We chose a March wedding to avoid the February heat, but with a wet 2023 summer no one expected we were blessed with a stunner of a day.
We went with a warm rustic-style theme, with our decor made up of gorgeous log rounds and colourful wildflowers in various thrifted vases, which reflected our shared love of nature.
We kept decorations to a minimal to showcase the gorgeous Turanga Creek Vineyard, with its beautiful wooden panels, fairy lights and panoramic sunset views of the rolling vines and hills.
We loved our florals so much! Lorna from One Poppy did an amazing job - I said "plucked from a beautiful garden" and she nailed it!
I bought a bunch of wildflower seed paper from The Blue Goose Papermill Trust and handmade all of our table cards with it. We also wrote our vows on it. We chose it because you can plant the paper afterwards and it’ll (hopefully) grow wildflowers! It makes such a cool wedding keepsake. We also wanted to support the papermill as they’re such a beautiful organisation, hiring people with intellectual disabilities to hand make all of their unique paper.
We spent about 8 hours baking our own wedding cake from our favourite Nadia Lim recipe. But otherwise the rest of the food was all sorted at the venue and WOW it was was so incredible and drew a lot of compliments from guests.
A highlight was our first dance. As a surprise, Michael swapped out our chosen song with a piece he wrote, produced and sung himself. Three years in the making, it tells the story of our fight to be our best versions of us for each other. There’s still not a dry eye in the room when it’s played! Our first dance is a moment we’ll never forget, and even those in the room had no idea how significant the moment was for us.
There’s nothing about our day that’d we’d change! Everything fell into place perfectly and we had a day that we’ll truely cherish forever.
Our advice to others getting married would be to relax and enjoy the process - don’t get caught up in every little thing, prioritise what matters to you and don’t expect everything to be perfect. What matters at the end of the day is who you’re marrying, not napkin colours. Think about what’s important to you and your partner - then just enjoy it together!
Photographer: Lara from Soul Sisters Photography
Venue: Turanga Creek Vineyard
Bride's attire: Astra Bridal Auckland (Josie by Rebecca Ingram, Maggie Sottero)
Florist: One Poppy sustainable wedding flora
Bridal accessories: Earrings from S-kin Studio. Shoes from Merchant / Rings: The Diamond Shop / Groom's and groomsmen's attire: Barkers, Otaa / Bridesmaids dresses: Shona Joy / Makeup artist: Sarah Courtier / Hair stylist: Exile Hair Design / Stationery: The Blue Goose Papermill Trust, Wedsites / Guestbook: My Guestbook, Instax cameras / Celebrant: Andrew Dalton
