weddings, harmonicas and soaking it up

This weekend I have probably my biggest wedding to date, not as far as in numbers of guests, but more so in the amount of handcrafted and designed elements.

I’m so happy about it, the house is a sea of paint, paper and packaging ready to cart everything to the venue where it will shine. I love the week in the lead up to weddings, its where I work my best and its also where I am my happiest being creative and truly loving what I do. I love watching it all come together… but as I think I have said before, I love the celebration the memories that are being created and my little styling elements are there for the ride.. it humbles me.

My Bride and Groom this weekend are a breath of fresh air, there wedding style is unique and fun and they are so relaxed and easy going. This is a bride who left her wedding cake in my hands, Im so looking forward to her seeing it on the day of her wedding.

Image via {love and lavender}

It’s also the first ‘real’ wedding I am shooting with my dear friend and photographer Jen of Jennifer Sando Photographer, we have worked commercially together a lot, Jen is one of the coolest people I know she is currently working on this I want to take a portrait of Eddie Vedder … Mmmmm Eddie Vedder…the first time I heard of this project was on a long drive to a shoot and she was telling me about her idea and I loved it, I knew immediately that she would rock it out, and she certainly has.


I grew up in a family that at Christmas spent weeks in preparation, all of my cousins and I have ALOT of them would practice for weeks and every year we would have a talent show, and sing songs and do skits for our parents, then the parents would all put on a show for us… it was all very Sound Of Music.
My Opa loved it so much and I can remember seeing his face when I was dancing to the ‘Peppermint Twist’ and he was claping along and happy, young and old  would put so much effort into all the details, our costumes, the décor and the food, I’m sure this is why I do what I do, and I’m even more certain that it is why it warms my soul.

{Here I am right at my Opas knee.. with only a pinch of my cousins and my sister.

We would all sit and get gifts and then the talent quest was on followed by dinner and lots of dancing, Harmonicas and Boney M were usually involved }

Every event I do I always think of my Opa, like he is there with me it is a bit freaky but even if I’m in the middle of a set up,  I see his face and know he would enjoy the events I create so much.

My Opa Johannes and Oma Lily loved Dancing

I can also remember being very young, maybe 8 and sitting on a bench overlooking the meadow where my Opa lived and in his beautiful strong Dutch accent we were having a discussion about what he liked most about celebrating, which with the size of our family we did almost fortnightly,
he said his favorite thing was to sit back from afar and ‘people watch’ and how much he loved watching all of his children and grandchildren just being together, I sure enough I can remember him sitting on the bench in the middle of parties often and I knew precisely what he was doing.. Exactly what I will be doing late on Saturday afternoon …..

Soaking it up!!