Hello! My second couple called Sarah and James this wedding season - what are the odds?! This particular Sarah and James live in the UK, and actually married early (for visa/work type reasons) over a year ago, always with the intention of travelling back to NZ to celebrate with their family and friends and a really fabulous Kiwi wedding. I was conscious of this when we did our location photographs, trying to make sure we captured lots of iconic New Zealandness in the images.

Things I loved about this wedding: The strawbale house the girls got ready in (ey ey?!); the beautiful art gallery the ceremony was held in that used to be a dairy (and I mean dairy in the British sense rather than the NZ sense); the dress with cool winged back... but mainly, I loved how super super excited and happy Sarah and James were to be marrying eachother. Just look at the expressions during the ceremony and after. Honestly. Just lush.

Well, what can I say? I've been looking forward to this wedding for a long time. It was just one of those days I knew would be amazing. The people, the details, the locations, the ideas... Michelle kept in touch with me and let me know how the planning was going, and her excitement about the wedding was infectious.

Everything was beautiful and stylish, but at the core of the day was a very simple, meaningful ceremony at the gorgeous little wooden church on the peninsula. Then there were drinks and canapes at Tautuku, cricket on the lawn, great food, speeches, a photobooth, cigars, music, dancing... and a very sweet couple, totally in love.

A LOT of images below, because Michelle and Jonny had to wait a bit longer for blogging than usual....

Ok, so I wrote some lovely things about Amy and David, and then my internet crashed, and I lost the lot! It's now almost 1am, so I'm going to be brief.

Amy and David are two very sweet, down to earth Aussies. Except Amy is English, but she moved out to Australia as a child. They wanted a destination wedding somewhere fabulous, and chose Stoneridge, just outside Arrowtown. Such a fabulous venue, with a cute stone chapel overlooking the mountains and vineyards. A simple wedding with their closest family and friends who all flew over for the occasion. The 3 course dinner was fabulous - I know because A&D insisted Liana and I sat with their guests to eat it. Lush.

That's all for now! Here are the goods:

Helene and Nick met in London, on a train. He offered her some gum, and.. she likes gum. She is from Venzuela and is half french half spanish, and he is from Dunedin, so their families live on different continents. They only wanted a really small, simple wedding, but planned a slightly bigger one for the sakes of family and friends, and it was gorgeous. I got to meet everyone at a drinks reception the day before, and it was lovely to see people over the course of two days, chatting, becoming friends. Helene's family and best friends flew over from South America.

The wedding was emotional. Nick's mum sewed hundreds of sequins onto Helene's dress and it was lovely to see her reaction when she saw Helene wearing it that morning. Oh and Nick's reaction when he saw his wife to be. Actually, everyone's reaction when they saw Helene!

There were lots of tears, lots of jokes, lots of beautiful accents, lots of dancing. If you want some crazy skilled dancing at your wedding, why not invite some Latin Americans?

Helene trained as a makeup artist in a previous life, so she did everyone's makeup! One day, I am also going to look that good in my dressing gown...

Elmer with his two favourite Christmas presents. The car is from us, and the train set is from my parents. He adores the train, and sat playing with it for two hours on Christmas day.