The biggest motivator for Em and Kris was that their wedding looked and felt like them. That meant a riot of colour, owl ring bearers and DIY-a-plenty! “We wanted our day to be a reflection of us and our love which is crazy and a little unpolished sometimes”, Em said. “We are both raw and passionate people who wanted to create a day that would be full of joy.”

Their vision translated into something bright, bold, and informal with a pink, red and white colour scheme. The pair put in hours of DIY to make the celebration super personal. Emily painted stones, sprayed dinosaur figurines silver for table décor and crowned the cake with a dino bride and groom, complete with veil and top hat. She hand-painted signs, seating plans, table names and even the post box. Together they dressed the venue with ribbons, balloons and table settings, building an arch from two massive branches decorated with ribbons.

Fun was a priority, not just for themselves but for their guests. Every ceremony seat came with pink or red sunglasses, which doubled as favours and looked great in photos. Em and Kris also wanted animals involved. Their very first wedding purchase was hiring owls!

“I love that our first purchase was so different, having three beautiful birds to handle and have photos with as well as having an owl fly the rings down the aisle felt kinda special. Kris got a briefing prior to the ceremony on how to receive the owl and rings. We both have a passion for animals and have a small menagerie at home – dog, tarantulas, python and iguana – so we loved that we could have some animals as part of our day.”

After the ceremony, confetti cannons were set off as they walked back down the aisle. The party afterwards kept the same energy. Everyone joined them on the dance floor for the first song, Jump Around by House of Pain. “Everyone went WILD”, Em laughed, “but my real highlight was Kris doing me a lap dance to Pony! Dream come true!”

Looking back, there are only a few things they’d do differently. “We wish we’d had the budget for a live band”, Em admitted. “We had a really disappointing DJ, like the DJ down your local community centre kinda DJ! I wished we had forked out more for live music. It would have also been nice to have a videographer or at least remembering to film the vows! It all goes so fast and it’s all so intense I would like to be able to re-watch some of those moments again.”

But all in all, they were so thrilled with how their day turned out, even more so because they’d done so much of it themselves. “Planning aa wedding is all encompassing and expensive. I love a list, a project and to plan but WOW the time you have to put into this is quite substantial – It was like another job! I was so glad for our long engagement so that we could manage the planning in chunks. I spent so many hours and had to make so many decisions. At time it felt very overwhelming. However, as alternative peeps it was so freeing to be like ‘who cares, it’s what we want!’ allowing us to make the planning a little less stressful.”