Melbourne Town Hall wedding

Tara + Adem’s wedding

Melbourne Town Hall

Photography: All the love in the world

Wedding film: Lovely Day Films

The couple

Tara is an old friend on mine – we worked together some one billion years ago at the City of Casey at the time when methane-gate was firing on all it’s smelly cylinders. It was a hellish nightmare to work for the council IN THE COMMUNICATIONS + MEDIA department at that time, and we most definitely trauma bonded over the experience.

Tara is a super cool gal, really excellent at her job and a sassy, hilarious molh, so we got an get along like a house on fire. Recently, when I broke my toe and had to cancel some plans with her to rest it, she mercilessly mocked me for being a moron who broke their toe on an esky, and I respect her for that.

When she met Adem, we all cheered because she had previously had a wholly unsuitable boyfriend who was no match for our girl. Adem is a legend – he’s funny and kind and we love him too!

Never one to do things by halves, they got engaged and started planning a HUGE wedding (they are both Italian) at none other than Melbourne Town Hall. In the Grand Ballroom. Thus when Tara asked me to assist her with the styling I was over the bloody moon! Tara has an amazing sense of her own style and so as you might imagine, her wedding is stunning.   

GETTING READY

CEREMONY

Held in the upstairs room of the town hall, the ceremony featured a banner hand made by Tara and adorned with the most beautiful flowers and autumn leaves thanks to the epic talents of Good Grace and Humour, who also created Tara’s flower wrap garland, instead of a traditional bouquet. The idea behind the flower wrap is that when both parents walk a bride down the aisle while she is holding a bouquet, it can look strange – kind of like the parents are carrying the bride by the elbows!

Letting the room’s beautiful features do most of the heavy lifting, we only added minimal other items to the ceremony – our dusty pink rug to jazz up the stage and our mahogany plant stand as a non-crap lecturn. Tara and Adem got married earlier that week at the place they got engaged – the last remaining analogue photo booth at Flinders Street Station, so there friends/bridal party did most of the ceremony, with help from excellent celebrant Zena Lythgo.

RECEPTION

It’s hard to know where to start with Tara + Adem’s reception. The grand ballroom has so many truly amazing features that when you’re there, you don’t know where to look. As such, a decent portion of the styling budget went to lighting the room beautifully, including lowering the amazing antique chandaliers, light washing the giant grand organ at the front of the room, and uplighting the columns around the space.

For post ceremony drinks, a pink wash lighting was used, along with pink, red and burgundy furniture to create a grand entrance. With that checker board floor, the look was very striking.

Lux lounging

The grand hall is quite massive, so we had plenty of room to create several lux lounge areas under the balconies – making them super cosy. Using our Victorian, Baroque and antique furniture to complement the venue’s beautiful features, we added cute touches like vintage glass plates with lollies, plants, flowers, cushions and heaps of candles.

Crafty fun times

Tara and Adem have both been to a million big Italian weddings in their time and they wanted their wedding to be quite different to these – mostly in that they wanted there to be lots for the guests to do. So in addition to sitting at their tables, they could also lounge, use the old school photo booth, visit the coffee cart or do some craft on the epic craft (and lolly) table we created. There’s also another super awesome activity – you’ll have to scroll down to see it.

Using lots of brass and coloured glass vessels, we added lashings of washi tape, glitter glue, confetti, card, paper, pom poms and diamontes so the guests could create bits of art for Tara and Adem to keep.

The table was a huge hit with people young and old, with a queue forming several times! 

PINATA FOREST

I’m not sure exactly how I came up with the idea of a pinata forest. I think Tara mentioned she wanted a pinata, and I prob said, why not have 20?! And thus the pinata forest was born. Set up on our copper arch, we added lots of colourful ribbon, and made a crown of sticks above it to create that forest vibe.

As you can see below, it was a massive hit – again with young and old – and resulted in lots of laughs and people eating candy off the ground.

Normally, we create people’s weddings and then go home before the fun starts. It’s actually kind of a bummer because we can just tell that the wedding is going to be amazingly fun because our couples are always such legends. 

But in this case, Dave and I were ushered into one of the backstage green rooms, where we cracked some champagne, had a shower (because event work is truly filthy work) and got into our wedding outfits. My magenta sequin dress was a massive hit – I felt like a sparkly princess and people literally came up to me and hugged me and told me how much they loved it and it made them happy.

We had a wonderful night celebrating with Tara and Adem as well as some other friends who also used to work at the dreaded council with us. It was a fab way to end the wedding season.

The Video

THE TEAM

FURNITURE USED

33/180 Fairbairn Rd, Sunshine West VIC 3020

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