HAYLEY X AARON

photography by pineapple images
wedding date 7th july 2019
70 guests

Aaron and Hayley first met when Aaron was a last minute fill in for a team playing a game of Touch Football on a Monday night in Townsville in 2016. Hayley was playing with her normal team and from that night on, Aaron played every Monday night after that. It happened to be that they both walked into each other’s lives at the perfect time and the rest is history. Safe to say it was the most rewarding game of Touch Football they had ever played!

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Together for a year and half before these lovebirds headed overseas where Aaron proposed to Hayley in Greece. In SANTORINI. On sunset. In private. "It was INCREDIBLE! Aaron proposed on the most magical sunset in Santorini on top of a little white cave house nestled into the caldera!" Hayley tells. The whole afternoon was magical and Aaron even managed to capture the entire proposal on film! Aaron was that dedicated to keeping the ring (that he personally designed) safe that he carried it around in his jocks for the entire trip! "That’s dedication if you ask me." Hayley laughs. The next day the two booked a sailing cruise around the island and Hayley's parents surprised them with an engagement shoot in Santorini.

what led you to decide on Summergrove Estate for your wedding venue? Who wouldn’t select it?! It was everything we could’ve dreamt for and more! We wanted to escape the heat of North Queensland (during winter) and travel down south for the beautiful cool winter weather in Northern New South Wales. Summergrove Estate at Carool NSW is nestled into a beautiful country side up in the mountains that overlooks beautiful vineyards and on a nice sunny clear day you can see all the way to the ocean! We loved how diverse the scenery is up at the venue.

The white chapel and garden ceremony locations to the restaurant and beautiful barn to choose for reception locations are all simply exquisite. Don’t even get me started on how many stunning locations there are for photos as well!! Everything about this place is a dream! Oh and how could I forget – The food and staff are amazing! The canapés, entrees and mains were so tasty and our guests definitely left feeling very full and satisfied, especially after the desert table and cake!

what was the inspiration behind your wedding theme? Our style was inspired by the beautiful winter sunset skies on the beach in Kingscliff. I loved the nude colours of the sand, the soft blush fairy floss pinks and purples of the skies and the dried elements of the vineyards in winter. I just wanted it to be a soft, romantic, and whimsical styled wedding set in the mountains of Carool in New South Wales.

I ended up scrapbooking and selecting certain colours, textures, dress and suit colours and styles. I used these photos for ideas and communicated them very explicitly with our vendors so they knew exactly what style we were after.

favourite moment of the day: Can I say the whole day?! Seriously though, the whole day exceeded all of our expectations! The ceremony was one of our favourites. Walking in through the chapel doors and seeing Aaron standing up there was a memory and feeling I will never forget. Everything went silent in my head and my eyes were just locked to his. We wrote our own vows and it was the first time we had heard each other’s. It was such a beautiful and raw moment that we shared with each other and all of our loved ones. We had petals for our guests to throw for our ceremony exit and a sparkler exit at the end of the night and these were just so much fun and turned out to be some of the happiest moments of our day which really made the best photos!

what does marriage mean to you? Spending the rest of your life with the one person that you can’t go a day without. Sharing life memories with and having someone to venture through life with. It’s loving unconditionally. It’s being there for each other when life is easy and when it’s hard. Marriage is laughing about the greys and wrinkles, and holding each other close and tight when things aren’t going right. It’s about finding one thing every day that you love about each other and being ever so grateful that you have found and get to spend the rest of your life with your favourite person!

favourite detail about the day: My favourite detail of our day was the actual venue itself! Summergrove allowed everything to come together so perfectly! Being an away wedding meant that I had to place a lot of trust in our vendors and make sure that I was on top of everything all the time. We also decided to walk on the wild side and stray away from the typical navy suits and slacks for the groomsmen.

We found these really stylish blush pink suit jackets and matched them with ivory shirts, burgundy bow tie (to spunk things up), deep navy chinos and brown leather boots and belts. The bridesmaids wore deep burgundy dresses with rose gold pearl drop earrings and nude timber block heels. This all came together so nicely and worked in with my bolded white lace dress and hubby’s oatmeal jacket!

Then came the FLOWERS! My god.. Lola from Lola’s Wildflowers absolutely smashed the brief that we gave her and exceeded our expectations tenfold. I sent her photos of what the entire bridal party was wearing + she tied all of our colours + textures in perfectly!

how was your dress/suit shopping experience overall? My mum and sister came with me to visit the newly opened Townsville LUV Bridal Store to kick start the exciting process of looking for the dress! From looking through the incredibly diverse styles of dresses and trying over 20 styles on and finding my dream dress was an experience I will never forget.

When we arrived, the sales assistant, Robyn, was so lovely and helpful. She listened to all of my hopes and dreams of what to find in a wedding dress and she seemed to know exactly what I was after and went straight to the Madi Lane collections for me. Normally, brides will choose the dresses they like off the racks and one of them will be the one…. But, this wasn’t entirely the case for me… Robyn just received a delivery the morning that I arrived + she went to the back + pulled a dress out of a postage box + that was how I found my dream dress!

what resources did you find helped you the most during your wedding planning? Having an excel spreadsheet with all of the vendors details (email addresses and phone numbers), pricing and the instalment due dates, and the link to their websites saved me so many times. Also, making a ‘wedding’ folder in your inbox is another really helpful strategy, especially when you send + receive so many emails. I also made sure I had saved all of the vendor’s phone numbers into my contacts on my phone. This helped me a lot during the days leading up to the wedding.

any stories you want to share from the day? Ummm… that it rained 200ml a few days before our wedding + rained on our day so we had to chuck our outdoor lawn ceremony ideas and styling out the window the day before the wedding (insert laughing stressed face emoji)!! And had to pay extra to have the ceremony in the chapel and we couldn’t have the arbour in the chapel….. BUT rest assured that the ceremony was so much more beautiful than we could have ever imagined.. Lucky we are strong believers in “whatever happens, happens for a reason”! It also rained most of our wedding day as well but we decided to lol about it instead of letting it dampen our moods! The rain didn’t affect us on the day one little bit and our photos were amazing with the moody clouds + dark skies!

advice: There is too much advice that I would tell brides to be out there but the main ones are to have the best time on this one very special and important day of your life because you won’t get the chance again to relive the day! Smile, laugh, breathe and take it all in no matter what happens or if something doesn’t go to plan! Pick vendors that have a good reputation and don’t be afraid to spend that little bit extra on videography! It’s the best choice we made and we watch our videos all of the time (seriously).

standout wedding vendors: All of them! Seriously, all of our vendors were standouts in their own ways! Our celebrant, Vanessa, was just the best and made our ceremony so personal and fun! Our musician, Benny, made our day so special, adding that little extra bit of romance with his acoustic guitar and incredibly talented voice!

Our florist, Lola, exceeded all of my expectations of what I thought was epic wedding flowers! Our photographer and videographer, Eliza, was just everywhere at all of the right times. She captured our day so flawlessly and we couldn’t be happier with the photos and videos! Our cake and treats were made by the beautiful Johana and we don’t think we’ve ever eaten such a delicious cake in our lives (and we eat a lot of cake)!

Our wedding stylists, Jenna and Jaime-Lee, brought our whole vision to life perfectly! They were so approachable and helpful throughout the whole process and were just lovely girls! Last but not least, was the very talented ladies, Tamika and Megy, who worked wonders on us girls with hair and makeup! When these two artists work together, magic really does happen!