Dreamy Wedding at The Bungalow
Pastel Flowers and Ocean Views
January 2025
What started as a quiet secret quickly grew into a love that stood the test of time, through the highs and lows of teenage years, countless afternoons by the ocean, and finally, a seaside proposal that set the stage for their wedding day. When it came time to say "I do," they dreamed of a celebration that felt soft and romantic yet full of colour and all about them.
Located at The Bungalow and surrounded by family, friends, and a dream team of vendors, they created a wedding that was beautiful and completely theirs.
Read on to see how their day unfolded
Tell us a bit about yourselves and how you met?
We met at a young age of 14 on an app that connects you to a random person somewhere around the world, we linked up that we were both from the same small town. We knew that this wasn't a very normal place for two young teenagers to meet so we kept it to ourselves for a very very long time. Our relationship has always been really strong, we related to each other a lot and stood by each others sides during some hard times during our teenage years which has made our relationship even stronger. We spent a lot of our time at the beach and being outdoors when we spent time together and now the beach holds some of our fondest moments together, such as getting engaged at the beach.
Were there any important details that were special to you as a couple, you wanted to incorporate in some way?
One of our important details we included was having our grandparents that had passed away be there on the day with us, so we saved them a seat with our families and had their photos on their seat.
What was your vision for the day and how did you choose your style?
My vision was to have a very soft but colourful wedding, I was wanting to have a lot of pastel colours incorporated in the day which was incorporated with the flowers and my bridesmaid dresses. I had done a lot of research on social media, looking at what the current wedding season was looking like and took some ideas from that and used Pinterest to help create some mood boards.
I knew from early on that I wanted to capture the eyes of our guests and so I wanted to have each of my bridesmaids in a different colour and style of dress. I mostly wanted each bridesmaid to feel confident in what they were wearing too so I gave them some colour options and they picked what colour they thought suited them.
With the flowers, we were able to share ideas with Rebecca and she helped our vision expand and create some eye capturing ideas. We were wanting to use plinths for our ceremony flowers and that meant we were able to use these for our focal point during the reception. We were wanting to make a little more of a statement and from the inspiration photos Rebecca saw that I was wanting very draped and flowy flowers and she came up with the idea of having a larger plinth with flowers that cascaded down to a smaller plinth and created a waterfall of flowers.
We wanted to keep our reception area quite simple but still have a little bit of eye catching elements. Being able to use our ceremony flowers helped immensely. Our linen for the tables was where we played a bit, we opted for a soft coloured pinstripe table cloth and pastel blue napkins which probably isn't everyone's cup of tea but we loved it and we had cute little bud vases of flowers all down each table.
How did you find and select your venue? What were you looking for in a venue?
The Bungalow had always been our top choice for a wedding venue, it provided everything we were wanting for a venue. It had a beautiful spot for the ceremony, a place for the reception and it had accommodation onsite for us and our family and friends to stay.
We actually only viewed The Bungalow out of all of the wedding venues on offer in Taranaki, we fell in love even more with the venue when we were able to experience it in person, particularly with the beautiful backdrop. The beach/ocean is a really special place for us and we knew that this was the place we wanted to get married.
The venue has a really nice flow, easy for guests to manage and know where everything is. The accommodation is incredible and is very accessible. To top everything off, Sandi and her husband are such wonderful venue owners. Sandi went above and beyond for us and made the while day so seamless for us, she helped set up in the morning and worked alongside our vendors and made sure that we were okay at the end of our night and helped with tidying up the venue.
How did you go about choosing the vendors you booked?
I had done some extensive research for the vendors! I had kept my eye out for who people were using and really looked in to each vendor to make sure they would match the energy/vibe our wedding would be like. Then it was a matter of who would be available on our difficult wedding date being the 4th January, which to our luck the vendors I had reached out to were all available. We were extremely fortunate to have had every vendor I had wanted for our day available, this made the process so much easier for me.
Having selected vendors that had also worked together before made everything so dreamy and easy.
The planning process: Did you love it? What was your plan of attack? eg, Budgets, making decisions, choose who to invite as guests?
I actually found the planning process relatively easy. I feel so fortunate to have had vendors all able to accommodate to our wedding date and they were all so easy to work with. I made sure to have booked our big ticket vendors as soon as I could and worried about the other stuff a little bit later down the track.
We started with a budget and that soon went way out the window! It felt impossible to have the certain things we wanted and keep to our original budget. We made a spreadsheet and kept discussing what we truly wanted and then we just calculated what we could save over the next year and a bit and just rolled with it. Thing were bound to cost more than what we had anticipated so we stayed very open minded and made sure we had some wriggle room for extra things.
We mostly made the decisions together, I would come to Josh with the ideas and see what he thought and then we would compromise to make it work for the both of us. At the end of the day, Josh is always my "yes man" and does anything that makes me happy and he trusted my decisions with the wedding.
The guest list was a struggle from us, Josh comes from a small but very close family so we had everyone from his family on the guest list and I come from a large split family so I had to make some decisions on who to invite from each of my parents sides of the family. We also made sure not to fall into a trap of just inviting guests for the sake of having them there, sadly there will always be guests you wanted to invite because they are family or an old friend but weddings are expensive and having an extremely large guest list wasn't attainable for us.
Was there one key moment in your day that you will never forget?
This is such a hard question because there were multiple moments on the day that I cherish. But if I were to pick one, it would definitely be walking down the isle with my dad by my side and seeing Josh, he was crying and that made me feel very emotional seeing him like that. I also remember from that moment, hearing my little 3 year old niece call out "aunty Lala" when she first saw me come down the isle which was very sweet as she had been so excited to see me dressed up in a pretty dress. Emotions were quite high for that moment and I will always remember this all very fondly.
For Josh, his key moment was when he first saw myself and my bridesmaids walk down the isle. He explained it as: When I saw your bridesmaids walk down the isle, my heart started racing because I knew I would get to see you soon and when I did see you, everything I was feeling washed away and I felt relaxed and I became quite emotional. You looked so beautiful in your dress, it was a little bit of a relief seeing you in such a lovely dress as if I am being honest, not knowing what your dress looked like had me slightly worried but that thought quickly vanished once seeing you.
What’s some advice you would give to couples, reading this, planning their day?
Never fear that it is too early to reach out to vendors, if you have set your wedding date, start the process as soon as you know because they get booked out so quickly! Be easy on yourself as well, there will be bumps during the process of planning and there will always be a solution to it so stay open minded and things will start to fall into place with time. Remember that this is your wedding, people will give you advice and it can be useful sometimes but never let their advice or judgement taint how you want your day to be like. Stick together with decisions and don't stress about the small stuff, once you get to the actual day, you will be thankful that everything has planned out.
Looking back on your day, is there anything you would do differently?
I would definitely have changed the way my morning timeline was planned for getting ready, I felt quite rushed for time for getting ready. I would have changed to have had the hair stylist and makeup artist come to me to have allowed more time to get ready and eat some food before leaving for the venue. Once we arrived out to the venue, everything ran smoothly and we enjoyed ourselves.
Is there anything else you’d like to share about your wedding?
We are just super grateful to have had an incredible day, we couldn't have been more thankful for our incredible vendors who worked their absolute magic. Our friends and family that supported us the whole way through the planning process was incredible, being able to have such a good support system made the process seem so easy.
Dream Vendors
Venue The Bungalow
Photography Fleck and Forest
Celebrant and Co-ordinator Weddings by Emily
Catering Smokin Comrades
Content Creation Abby Creates
Bridal Dress Churchwood Bridal
Hair Vivo (Rochelle)
Makeup Makeup by Annalee
Bar Staff Hello Audrey
Linen and Cutlery Dobsons
