Autumn sunshine at tocal homestead

The Journal

21 Oct

Teegan and Marco said celebrated their love on a beautiful day in April at the historic Tocal Homestead. After multiple nationwide lockdowns, their wedding had been postponed many times before we all finally were able to come together making this day extra special. By the time the day rolled around I felt like Teegan and I were old friends.
Working alongside some of my favourate local vendors and designing her blooms in the Autumn sunshine made this day so incredibly lovely.

Read on for beautiful insights into Teegan and Marco’s wedding day..

Tell me a little bit about yourselves and how you become engaged

We are Teegan and Marco, I (Teegan) am from New Zealand, I am a High School PE teacher and Marco is an Electrician from here, Newcastle. We have two wildlings, Kyro and Ida who keep us busy and full our lives with great joy.

We met in 2017, in Egypt of all places in the world! We were both fortunate enough to spend a couple years living and working in the UK, whilst there, we happened to both book last minute trips to Egypt and the rest was history. We continued to live in London and travel around Europe before being moving to Australia and starting our family.

Marco won a competition for a half price engagement ring, he happened to get the phone call when I was sitting next to him on the couch! I said to him that he may as well make the most of it knowing how tight he was with money and that I would never get one otherwise!! The next day I came home from work and went to play with our son in his bedroom, I was 8 months pregnant with our daughter Ida at the time and I asked Marco to help me off the ground, as I was coming up, he was going down on to one knee, he asked with Kyro around our feet and it was perfect!

Marco and I are best mates, I think it is one of the coolest dynamics of our relationship. We often get told that we have something special, and we think so too. Name a better thing that getting to hang out with your best friend and lover every day? You can't!

Postponements! You had just a few unexpected spanners in your planning. Tell me about them and how you dealt with each one and stayed so chill!

A few! Gosh, just a couple. I think April 13th was our fifth date we had started planning for, including plans to be married in New Zealand. I won't lie, it was difficult, we started to feel defeated by the final date, but it was really hard to take in personally as we knew we weren't the only ones that it was happening to. We both were also really feeling for all of our vendors, it was a special day for us, but this was people's livelihoods and I think that gave us perspective as well. For us, having a plan was the way we made it through, knowing we still had each other, and kept thinking, did it really matter if we were married in June, July, August or the following year? We were still getting married! Having half of our guests in New Zealand and other states was another complexity that we had to keep considering, we just kept asking ourselves, would we be happy if (insert name) wasn't able to make it?.

When we finally made a decision to push it back to April it came with a sense of relief, it gave us time to regather, allow the Covid world to settle and make us excited for our day again and not just be a business transaction.

Our vendors we incredibly supportive through all of the changes, and I am not sure how, but we managed to keep all of our vendors for each date, that was also making things easier. If vendors weren't able to do new dates due to other bookings that would have been extremely hard to deal with, we were very attached to each and every one and I knew I had to have them all for this wedding to go ahead!

Tell me about an unexpected magical moment you experienced on your day:

I will never forget, walking around the corner of the house to see the ceremony set up, wow. The flower towers that you created!! It was something I had NEVER seen before; I couldn't believe it was ours. Honestly, I was in shock. Even though I was in my dress, we had done our first look, that was the first moment of the day that I really was like "we are getting married baby!!" So, thank you for that Ash.

Did you incorporate any special traditions or unique elements that represented you both?

We actually stayed together the night before the wedding which I feel like is a unique thing to do, we then all had breaky together and once the hair and makeup artist arrived the boys went off to the pub. I know its not traditional, but it was so special and exciting waking up that morning and saying and being like "WE ARE GETTING MARRIED TODAY BABY!!" It was very us, I wouldn't change it.

My mum made a ring cushion for the day which our son, Kyro carried down the aisle. Mum saved the pattern and material that my Nana use to make them with when she passed away, it was extremely special, I felt like she was there with us. I also had a picture of my other Nana with me on my bouquet, this was a surprise for her and my dad, unfortunately she wasn't able to make it due to covid.

During our reception we had multiple cultural performances that took place, we were honoured with a Haka followed by Marco's cousins performing two cultural Samoan dances for us. It was SO cool! Everybody was blown aways by the performances, it made our day very special, our cultures are strong, and we are proud of them. It was such a fantastic way to honour them!!

The planning process: What was your plan of attack? Budgets, making decisions, inviting guests?

Ahh, the planning process, that was fun! Try planning a wedding for 120-130 guests with your fiancé who thought the whole thing should cost no more than $1000... There were a few hairy moments. We wanted a fun, low key day. It was quickly decided that we would have a cocktail wedding over sit down, we wanted everybody to be able to move around and socialise. We didn't have a budget as such, it was just not to go overboard. We talked about what was important and where we were willing to save money. Venue, food, band, photographer, videographer, flowers, they were important to us, the rest didn't matter. The guest list was always going to be challenging, Marco is from a large, close family and I am from a village family, my parent's friends are family to me. We had to do a couple lists, then started cutting back from there, having a cocktail style wedding gave us more room for numbers, however, as time went on the list was getting smaller and smaller due to covid restrictions then travel conditions once they were lifted. If you took out the covid altercations, I would say it was easy as pie!

The team of vendors you chose work together often - did you choose your vendors with this intention? Did you find it changed anything in the planning process or on the day?

Since I am not from here, the entire vendor world was extremely daunting when we first started planning the wedding for Australia and Marco, well, he didn't have a clue. We chose our venue first, Tocal Homestead. We wanted a venue that we could have everything on site and loved that the wedding party were also able to stay in the accommodation. I happened to stumble across them on a Facebook group, we instantly fell in love with the pictures and the menu. When we went out for a visit, we knew we didn't need to look any further. Bonnie Lass was recommended to me by a friend who was also getting married, she said she was the gal you want, I booked her straight away (boy was she right!). For photography we were also recommended someone by the same friend, however, she was booked, we were lucky enough that she actually sent us Benedict Sutton's way. I definitely feel like things happen for a reason and this was one of them. Ben really suited us as a couple, super relaxed, it put us at such ease on the day. When we had our pre wedding meeting Ben he asked if we had sorted florals yet. It was something that had slipped my mind, that's when he recommended you again, booked straight away!

What drew you to Film and Foliage and why were flowers important to your day?

Once Ben had recommended you, I am pretty sure I became your biggest fan on social media! The obsession was real. I wouldn't say I am a details person; Marco definitely isn't. So, I wanted flowers to be our main point of the day as I knew I couldn't be bothered spending hours leading up to the wedding making table decorations and bringing all the little elements together. Some people are great at this, but I am not so I knew the flowers were going to be important. High impact, space filling, look great, somebody else who is talented doing all the work, it was a win for me.

What was your vision for the day and how did you choose your style?

I probably did find this part the hardest, as I said, I am not great for attention to detail. I know my friends all had mood boards and themes; I was like umm....? So, I left that one up to you, Ash! I thought to myself a few times, Ash is either going to love me for allowing her to get her creative flow on or hate me for giving no direction.. It was definitely the loved one, right?

My girls were in green, not planned, I happened to like the dresses and they were on sale. The boys I wanted casual but nice and an outfit they would wear again (So practical). I wanted white Lillies as they are my favourite flower so naturally, I suppose the colours became green, white and tan. The venue was naturally stunning, I kept thinking how we really just wanted to enhance it not create something new there.

What’s one piece of advice would you give to loved-up couples planning their day?

Wedding's are expensive, I think before you start it's important to have realistic expectations. I knew the price of things, where Marco didn't so each time a quote came in, he was in shock which did make it hard to plan realistically to start with. Talk to people who have been married regarding these conversations, I found that helped and changed the planning process.

Think about weddings that you have been to, what did you like/ not like / actually remember? I found we always came back to the food, the band, the drink. Those were the 3 things that always determined what we thought made a good wedding, so they were our priority.

Don't stress about it, at the end of the day, you're marrying your best mate. That's what matters.

For dreamy wedding blooms without the stress inquire with us