ANGELINA & CON'S SYDNEY WEDDING

Highschool sweethearts, Angelina and Con did the sneaky on their family and friends and eloped 12 months before their wedding celebration. “We are so glad to have taken the time to have our secret little elopement,” these cuties told us. “Stolen moments and cheeky inside jokes became a welcomed constant for the year that Con and I were married before the whole world knew. Taking the moment to celebrate us on an intimate scale before having the big party is something I’ll always cherish.”

They enlisted our mate Adam Egan to shoot both their elopement and “big wedding day”, and the result, as you’ll see below, is DREAMY! The weather may not have co-operated (ummm hello 142mm of torrential rain in one day!), but Angelina (or Ange, Angie, Angel to her mates) and Con took it all in their stride and had some solid gold to offer up to others in the throes of planning: “The day is yours and yours alone. If it doesn’t suit you or doesn’t align with you, simply let it go.”

THE PROPOSAL “Con and I are big brunch people, so heading off somewhere for a good time, some avo toast and a coffee is in our regular date wheelhouse. I’m also a BIG sucker for anything Christmas. And so Con suggested we go to Bondi for a cute brunch date, but first we had to go see decorations in the Botanic Gardens for Christmas. Spoiler alert: they didn’t have any decorations up, but what was set up was a surprise picnic at Mrs Macquarie’s Chair with my favourite flowers, drinks and snacks. Once we got to the set-up there was a chalkboard asking the big four words, and Con had bent down on one knee.

THE INSPO “We wanted a Hamptons, fine-china garden party vibe for our day – lots of blues and white!”

LITTLE LOL “Given that Con and I eloped a year beforehand without telling more than a handful of people, we surprised all our guests during our ceremony with Kerstyn, our celebrant from Hire A Bridesmaid, dropping subtle hints and then a final… ‘and so today they are really celebrating one year of marriage!’ This was closely followed by multiple gasps and cheers as people were able to put two and two together. Post-ceremony, we had many playful ‘you cheeky *****’, ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me’; ‘I’m never trusting you again’ or our favourite, ‘If I ever need to keep something a secret, I’m telling you’.”

STANDOUT VENDORS “Having our photographer Adam Egan, Hire A Bridesmaid and the event team at Athol Hall genuinely saved our day from ruin. With a wedding planned to be out in a garden during torrential rain, we had every opportunity to have the day fall apart and be one of the worst experiences of our lives yet the only thing that prevented that from happening was our amazing vendors coming together – there was no scenario that was thrown at this team that put them on the back foot let alone made them break a sweat.”

DIY “I definitely suffer from having a ‘how hard could it be?’ gene, which meant a lot of our details were DIY. We created our own invite suite, menus, signage and display of our elopement photos.”

MEMORABLE MOMENT “Our favourite moment that I will easily look back on in 60+ years with a smile is one that got captured so perfectly by our photographer Adam – and that was Con and I vibing in the rain. Despite quite a few of our original plans being canned from the torrential rain (142mm in one day), Con and I took the stance of “You can dance in the rain or sulk in the rain, it will rain regardless”, and chose to do just that.”

Enchanted by this gorg wedding album by Adam Egan? Chat with him about your own day of days here. After an uber-fun guestbook that your guests will be raving about for years to come? Hit up Off The Hook here.