Real Weddings

Article by

Laura Wilson

Posted on

12/04/2019

Posted in

Real Weddings

Say hello to one of our coolest, and most unique couples yet; Brooke and Benny. As owners of a marketing and branding agency, they are the first to admit, “we are a creative pair, who have based our careers on developing creative ideas for other people, so to think we’d be happy to go with something generic for our wedding was a little lie we kept telling ourselves until the month before the wedding… Then we basically turned our house and family members into warehouse workers, producing everything from scratch!” Joel of Barefoot & Bearded was the main man behind the camera and boy we’re glad he got every detail. Scroll down for more…

THE VENUE “Without going into the gory details, our venue was actually the second one we booked, as our original venue fell through six months out from our date. It was hugely stressful at the time, but it lead us to Larn and Adam Garnett who most graciously allowed us to use their family farm and we knew it was then all meant to be. They had only ever had their two daughters’ weddings at the farm as it is their family’s private property. They treated us like family and went above and beyond.”

THE VIBE “Whilst we didn’t set out with a theme in mind, I think Benny and my love for music festivals meant that we definitely had a bit of a festival vibe on the day. Whilst the ceremony was important, we only saw that as 30 minutes of the overall day and ultimately just wanted to host an amazing party for all our nearest and dearest. Our focus was on having the best time possible with them.”

MEMORABLE MOMENT “We chose to walk down the aisle as a family – Benny and myself along with our five month old daughter Frankie and our dog, Zeppelin. We fell pregnant with Frankie five months after we got engaged, so it was so special being able to have her there on our big day. We drove ourselves to the wedding, so that moment when we turned the corner of the house and saw everyone there waiting for us took my breath away.”

DIY… “The majority of our wedding was a DIY project! From the 150m of handmade bunting, the illustration of us as a family that was given out as a little postcard thank you to everyone for coming, the wooden frames that hung the lyrics from some of our favourite songs and photos of some of our favourite memories, ransacking our garden and the local neighbourhood for all the greenery and flowers that we used on the day – we did it all ourselves (with the help of an army of heroes).”

THE DRESS “My dress was a floor-length Marimekko dress from their SS17 ready to wear collection, and I also had it in the short version for the evening when I wanted to hit the dance floor. I saw it online three months after we got engaged, and I knew it was the one. I stalked their website until the collection was released, bought it online, and the job was done. I knew from the beginning that a traditional style wedding dress just wouldn’t suit me, and I rarely ever wear white. This dress was perfect – and it had pockets!”

STANDOUT VENDORS “Our celebrant Kim Oakhill and photographer Joel Alston from Barefoot & Bearded were the dream team. Kim was focused on making our ceremony as personal and relaxed as we wanted it to be, and it really showed. Joel was a total legend. Having Joel capture our day felt like having a good mate there being part of your celebration. Our brief was to capture all the moments that we couldn’t see, and he did just that. We love his relaxed style, and his talent for capturing the tiny details, and have been blown away by our photos. Also, the eclairs that Choux Patisserie supplied were show stealers. They were quite different to serve for dessert (along with Benny’s mum’s amazing wedding cake) and we still have people talking about them!”

This wedding was originally published in Issue 22. If you’d like to check out more from this issue, limited copies are available via our online store. And don’t miss more real weddings featuring Barefoot & Beared’s incredible photography work here.