The Celebrant

Hi,

Yes we have finally completed The Big 4 of wedding planning:
1. Book venue for ceremony and reception - check
2. Book photographer - check
3. Find and buy wedding dress - check (one could argue that it should be number 1)
4. Book the celebrant - check (if you were wanting a specific religious celebrant apparently this should be done very early)

Once those 4 items are done, I would say you've already got the foundations, the most significant components of a wedding - everything else will just help make it all nice and pretty for the lovely guests.

One of the most important components of the wedding ceremony is having the right celebrant there to marry you.

How did we choose such a celebrant?
Well we needed to decide whether to go with a civil or religious celebrant first. Andy is Christian and I do not identify with any particular religion but I was fine to go with a priest if Andy wanted. Andy was not really fussed either way. I also considered getting a bilingual celebrant who spoke both English and Chinese. However, to my disappointment, a decent-looking professional celebrant who was adept at both English and Chinese (Mandarin) is quite difficult to find - which isn't surprising really, how many Asians aspire to become wedding celebrants anyway? But that's ok, because my mum assured me that the few guests of mine that do not speak English would be taken care of.
So then after looking online through many different celebrant sites and reading through many unimpressive celebrant profiles, I finally found a few potential celebrants. You really have little to go by when assessing these celebrants. It's quite superficial really - you basically go on looks and price, and reviews help if they're available. But seriously, unless you have a recommendation from someone you know, you just don't know who is good.

I found one initially that I really liked, she had a fun and lively energy and seemed to really personalise the wedding for each couple. However, Andy's first reaction to her was "she looks like a drug addict". Needless to say we didn't end up going with her.

After many fruitless emails to various celebrants we finally found one that seemed promising and was not over-priced! She was the only celebrant we actually met and we liked her instantly. She later told us that she knew she was going to marry us from our first meeting - it was meant to be! She was extremely experienced, has won so many Australian Bridal Industry Awards (ABIAS), always looks and dresses elegantly and professionally, and knew Gunners' Barracks and their staff like the back of her hand - what else could we ask for? She ran through a plan of the ceremony and how it would be conducted and gave so many great suggestions that had never even occurred to us.

This is her website (www.getmarried.com.au) below:

Coral has already sent us two massive documents with wedding proceeding information including hundreds of sample vows, poems and so forth. Of course we are free to write our own and choose our own poems and readings but this just makes things so much easier. We have yet to actually read through them all, I suspect that might take some time. She has been very helpful in other areas of wedding planning too and, mostly importantly, seems to genuinely want to help you out.

We have now officially signed our Notice of Intention to Marry forms as bride and groom and handed them over to Coral!

Now all we have to do is find a DJ, bridesmaids dresses, hair and makeup artist, flowers, decorations, cars, invitations...

Until next time,
Diane

Photographer + General Update

So its been a while since our last update. It's not because we've given up on the blog, but after arranging a venue we took a break or we haven't done things that we can write about.

We had an engagement parties in Sydney and Melbourne. They were casual BBQ's, but we didn't take many photos. However my aunty made a spectacular engagement cake for us, which tasted even better than it looked. A facebook page displaying her other cakes can be found here

Diane has been shopping for a wedding dress, she has found the dress she wants. But if she posts about it, I will know the dress before the wedding day. She is buying it online, which saves $1,000 from buying locally. We still need to get it tailored here, however even if we bought it locally it would still require tailoring. 

We are getting the bridal party to come to Sydney in early May, so that everyone can meet eachother, also to get everyone fitted for suits and dresses.

We have been meeting photographers over the last few months. I struggled to see the difference in their work, and they all tend to say the same thing when we meet them. To add to the difficulty there is no standard package in terms of hours of coverage, extra photographer, quality of the albums, number of pages in each album let alone the quality of their work which makes the whole process a nightmare. However we finally found a photographer who's work seemed unique and we have booked them for an engagement shoot as well as the wedding. 

What separated her work from the rest was the landscape and composition of her work. It seems she has only been doing wedding photography for 12 months, but previously she was a landscape photographer which shows through her artistic talent in her work. Also in terms of budget, she was probably on the cheaper end of photographers, without compromising quality. For those that are interested you can view her galleries and website here:

http://www.melissafiene.com/

We need to decide whether to get a videographer, or whether to simply get a friend to take a video of the key moments such as the ceremony, speeches etc. While I can imagine pulling out the photo album in the years down the track, its hard to imagine loading a video and appreciating that a professional has compiled it, compared to a friend with a steady hand.

In terms of what's next on our plate, we'll probably try to do the engagement shoot in the next few months and organise a celebrant/priest for the ceremony. We will post photo's of the engagement shoot when its complete.

Andy