It was Never about the Bike - Annie & TJ's Farm Wedding

When i first saw Annie’s pix posted on her Facebook wall a couple of days after her wedding, i immediately fired off a mail asking if i could share them. She and her husband TJ planned a celebration that was all about their love of family and friends. Read all about their amazing story.

The entire story is on our blog It Was Never About the Bike but in a nutshell, boy meets girl on bike (both training for IronMan 2010)…then nothing happens…until about 7 months later when they see one another on the start line of a race. Our worlds just collided and we’ve not looked back from there!

The ceremony for me was the best – marrying the man that I love really was all the day was about for me. I remember every moment of it.

Right from the start, we wanted a relaxed, festival vibe with no frills and colour co-ordinated fuss…we also didn’t want a formula to our wedding – it needed to be a day about us, and for that we were so lucky to have my family farm to use. we were pleasantly surprised to find that when you find one or two suppliers that do ALL the logistics, that hassle is taken away, and then the cost of stuff is very much in your control as you can use the caterer that you want, you don’t pay the huge surplus that almost all venues add when you go over a certain number (and with the size of my family, it was always going to be a BIG wedding), the bar bill is completely in your control (that’s a huge consideration), and you can have so much fun with doing whatever you want at your own venue, plus have it for as long into the night and next day as you want….just no stress!

My dress always had to be something that I can re-wear, I was not interested in spending so much money on a dress I’d only wear once. So I went to Cindy Bam and told her my thoughts. If you do something simple, it costs WAY less than a normal wedding dress. I was so comfortable all day as it wasn’t strapless, didn’t have loads of layers, and didn’t have parts that could do funny things – it was just an elegant, comfy, dress that I love. So now I just have to chop the bottom off and there I have a lovely cappucino cocktail dress that I’ll love.

We were very conscious of not spending on anything that couldn’t be re-used or that was wasteful, so even thing like name tags at place seatings seemed unnecessary – we just wrote them straight onto fun printed place mats, all the flower vases were from glass jars or tins that I collected and that friends helped me collect for ages and then they went to the church, people on the farm and the old age home after wards, and were SO appreciated!

Kate George from The Food Room did the most insane platters that just rolled throughout the afternoon…the speeches were dotted in between. We served bottles of home-made lemonade as guests arrived, there were Steri Stumpies served on ice at 10pm and late-night snacks made from all the left overs on ciabatta rolls wrapped up in wax paper.

We had seen a wedding shoot with an old VW Combi so thought we’d look at hire one for our day…but TJ found a secondhand one and we bought it for our honeymoon. Her name is Turtle.

We had the wedding service at 11.30 am and organised with our photographer to do the family photos straight after the services in a shady spot – and they’re lovely! And she then did the bridal party between 6-7pm to get the best light….sure, I looked a little bit disheveled and had the fun of a party all over me, but that was consistent with our vibe – it didn’t feel natural to be all made up with perfect hair and make up for every photo…we LOVED being so relaxed and making sure that was captured in our photos was our love for one another, not getting me at my best angle, or showing off lots of beautifully applied make up.

Annie’s Words of Wisdom

Some things that were important from our day:
Stay present (sounds funny, but it’s easy to get swept away in it all….)
Don’t worry about anyone else – they REALLY can take care of themselves
Don’t get stressed about not speaking to everyone properly – they really are there first and foremost to celebrate you and your amazing commitment to one another – a bit of conversation is just a bonus, but really not expected from everyone
If you can, have some kind of gathering the day after – it’s so lovely to hear people’s stories of things that you would never have noticed
Get a videographer – there’s SO MUCH that happens that you can never know about on the day, but amazing to see after!
Big one: make sure your caterer or the venue prepare a care package of something to eat for when you leave – you’ll be STARVING!!
Have fun!!!

Annie – thank you for sharing your story and many words of wisdom – your wedding day looked fabulous, you looked beyond beautiful and i know you and TJ have a wonderful life ahead of you. V xx