REAL BRIDE // Clementine & Jack - A Romantic Melbourne Wedding

The most romantic wedding with old charm of Clementine & Jack. Held at the beautiful Mural Hall in Melbourne Clementine looked like a vision wearing our Marella gown in blush pink layers of soft tulle. Matched with long veil in the same pretty hue.

It was such a pleasure to work with Clementine creating her dream gown. Many hours where spent ensuring every detail was perfect & that every element of her look was perfect. From the selection of her red nails & matching lips to the flowers in her bouquet.

Clementine & her bridesmaids

As Clementine lives in Melbourne & her parents are in Sydney, it was a lovely catch up for the family. The team at Moira Hughes Couture enjoyed getting to know the family & friends through Clementines fitting appointments.

Clementines parents acclaimed Screenwriters Keith + came along to all of her fittings

Clementine sent us a lovely note after her special day.

“I absolutely loved my dress, and I received a million compliments on it that night! I adored the exquisite colour and ethereal quality, and how much it suited our venue and the romantic but elegant feel we were trying to achieve. Every element of my dress was so beautiful, the dreamy tulle, the intricate buttons, the delicate sleeves and all made with such care and quality and attention to detail. I wanted to thank-you for making me such a beautiful dress, and the wonderful experience of working with you over the fittings and all your care, patience and expertise. It was such a lovely experience flying back home to Sydney and visiting your beautiful store, it made the whole process so special. Whilst I don't miss everything about planning a wedding, I absolutely miss getting to visit your beautiful store in Paddington and Woollahra, and your support and encouragement, and answering all my million questions (and you were totally right about it being fine taking my dress on the plane!)! “

I think you can see by Jack's expression here that my dress had the hoped for effect!:

The look of love

The below blog appeared on Together Journal With Stunning images by Tess Follet

Tell us a little about yourselves, what you do, what you love, what is unique about you and your relationship… 

We met at a mutual friend’s (and future groomsman!) 21st Birthday, in March 2013. Atfer talking for hours at the party, Jack asked Clementine to ‘hang out in Melbourne sometime’. Our first date was one week later at a café on Lygon Street. 

We walked all over Carlton and talked for hours! We were just 21 year old Uni students when we met, and have now been together for 7 years! We like watching old classic movies, exploring Melbourne and Victoria together, and going to concerts and the theatre. 

Jack proposed in December 2018. The night before Jack told Clementine that he was taking her to lunch at Sydney’s Aria restaurant overlooking Circular Quay as an early Christmas present. Waiting for here there was a huge bouquet of peonies (her favourite flower) which Jack had gone to great difficulty to find out of season! Afterwards, we went for a walk in the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens and it soon became clear Jack was leading somewhere, until we came across a beautiful picnic laid out under a huge old Moreton Bay Fig tree overlooking Sydney Harbour (secretly guarded by Clementine’s Maid of Honour to be), and Clementine finally realised what was happening and started to cry! Jack got down on one knee and proposed with a beautiful ruby ring, and Clementine said yes! It felt very private, quiet and beautiful underneath the fig tree together. Jack had one last surprise, and had booked a suite at the Shangri-La Hotel, looking over the harbour, where we danced around our suite celebrating.

Tell us about your special day, was there a specific theme or style? Tell us a little about the setting, the styling and some of your favourite details… 

We wanted to create a romantic, elegant evening celebration in the heart of city, filled with flowers and soft candlelight. We chose the incredible Mural Hall in Bourke Street Melbourne for our wedding ceremony and reception. We had a glimpse of the historic 1933 Hall during an Open House Melbourne tour many years ago, and both fell in love. Hidden away on the top floor of the Myer building it feels like a secret world all to its own. It was our dream wedding venue and we adored the art-deco design and the stunning murals of women throughout history which line the walls. It is a breath-taking space! 

We love living in Melbourne, and were so happy to be able to get married right in the middle of this wonderful city. From a practical perspective too, the Mural Hall was perfect. We wanted to be in Melbourne city itself, indoors, and in a venue that could host both the ceremony and the reception, and didn’t require our guests to leave in-between. It was important to us that our wedding be really comfortable for our guests to attend and enjoy themselves, especially as we had guests coming from interstate and overseas. We had a romantic, moody, deep jewel-toned colour-palette of dark red, burgundy, blue and laJe with accents of soft pink and dark green. Lots of roses and a touch of blue hydrangeas, as both of our Grandmothers grew beautiful hydrangeas in their gardens. Our florist Jessica from Victoria Whitelaw designed a stunning unstructured arrangement at base of the double Mural Hall staircase where we said our vows, banked by masses of candles. We also wanted our wedding to be really fun, and so we planned around dancing for hours at our reception! 

We served Mr D soft drinks – a speciality of Jack’s hometown Shepparton and his 90’s childhood – and our favourite cocktail (a French 75) in vintage champagne coups, Aperol Spritz icy-poles and had surprise French Fries on the dance floor just before midnight! Jemima from Zephyr & Bloom cakes made a us an exquisite tiny two-tier wedding cake which incorporated the pillars from the Bride’s parent’s wedding cake in 1988, and the cake stand belonged to the Bride’s Great Grandmother. We also sourced a French antique cake topper from 1957, which had the original couple’s original wedding date written on the base. We were also happy to have four of our favourite delicious cakes from our beloved local bakery café Beatrix Bakes in North Melbourne, so our guests could choose from chocolate, lemon chiffon, carrot or coconut shag cake. 

Tell us about your main outfits: 

I knew that I wanted a romantic, classic gown, and imagined an A-line silhouette with a defined waist and off-the-shoulder sleeves. I wanted something that would move with me. I visited a number of Bridal Boutiques in Melbourne with my Mum and Bridal Party and was able to try on a number of really beautiful dresses. Finally, after seeing a picture of the dress in a magazine, we visited Moira Hughes in Woollahra, Sydney (my home city). I fell in love with the ethereal Marella gown’s soft layers of ever-so-slightly blush tulle, gossamer sleeves and elegant low back with delicate fabric-covered buJons. Our florist Victoria Whitelaw also made me an exquisite hair-comb of roses to wear, and I fell in love with intricate gold and silver earrings from Alex Monroe featuring tiny golden bees. I found some vintage-style silver stilettos from Kate Spade, with a pair of glitter filled block-heels from Mimco for dancing! My something borrowed was my Mother’s vintage silver mesh Oroton bag. 

My bridesmaids all wore different coloured bias-cut silk Shona Joy dresses in jewel-tones of burgundy, navy, ice blue and rose gold, and each carried a different bouquet of roses or hydrangeas in a single colour. Our bouquet stems were lee long and tied with velvet ribbon. Our gorgeous 

Flower Girls wore Arabella & Rose dresses in shades of cream, peach and dusty pink with matching flower crowns. 

Jack wanted a sharp, classic black tux and bowtie, and he looked absolutely brilliant! Jack wore his Great-Grandfather’s signet ring and his Grandfather’s cufflinks, which was really special. And we BOTH carried something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue! Jack’s Best Man and Groomsmen looked splendid in matching suits from Peter Jackson.

What were some of the most memorable/unique moments from the day? 

Jack says his most vivid memory of the day is of the wedding ceremony and “seeing Clementine walk down the aisle. It was difficult to be apart the night before the wedding, but I was comforted by seeing Clementine walking towards me. Clementine and her Dad walked out to a booming Peter Gabriel cover of David Bowie’s “Heroes”. I held back tears and thought that words couldn’t describe how beautiful Clementine looked. Throughout the ceremony I looked over to Clementine and as we looked into each other’s eyes and held hands I knew we both understood the commitment we were making to each other. We both have each other’s hearts.” 

The ceremony was so important to us. To stand in front of all your friends and family and promise each other to always be there, no matter what may come. We understood that the giving of vows is a very serious thing, so we wanted the ceremony to reflect the seriousness of the commitment we were making, but to also be joyful and warm and full of love! We choose to recite classic wedding vows because we wanted to make the promises that generations of brides and grooms had made before us. Our friends and family did readings from Shakespeare, Margaret Atwood and E.M. Forster. 

Our celebrant, Sally Hughes, did a perfect job. Booking her was one of the first things we did and we couldn’t be happier to have had Sally marry us. She told the story of our meeting and our life together, and understood perfectly when to be serious and when to make people laugh! We loved that she introduced all the members of our Bridal Party, included our parents and acknowledged our late Grandparents. One of the most special moments in the ceremony was during the signing of our marriage certificate. My Grandma used to play piano in a dance band and spent most weekends playing at local weddings and dances. Unfortunately she has passed away, but luckily we had a recording of her and her band from 1976, and so we played this during the signing. So it felt like my Grandma was playing at our wedding, having played so many other weddings before!

One of the most exciting parts of our wedding was having the incredible Horns of Leroy, a New Orleans style brass band, play two surprise sets. We’ve loved them since seeing them at a festival years ago, and it was awesome having them march down the grand Mural Hall staircases ahead of us as we made our entrance to our reception! Hiring them was another one of the first decisions we made. We also told our DJ that is was super crucial to play the Nutbush, as basically we wouldn’t consider ourselves legally married in Australia if we didn’t dance the Nutbush with our guests at our reception! 

As feminists, it was also really important to both of us that the women spoke during the speeches, not just the men. So as the bride I made a speech as well as Jack, and our Mums spoke as well as our Dads, and my Maid of Honour and one of my bridesmaids spoke alongside Jack’s Best Man and Groomsman. The speeches were all so funny and moving! 

A fun final touch were the ‘Anniversary Cards’ on each table for our guests to write. We will open these on future Wedding Anniversaries (so Table 4 writes us notes to read on our Fourth Wedding Anniversary, etc), and are really looking forward to being reminded of memories of our night all the way through to 2070! 

Any advice for other couples planning to spend the rest of their lives together? 

One of the first things we did was create a joint gmail account specifically for the wedding. This was great because it meant that all our wedding correspondence, quotes, etc, were in one place that we could both access any time. We then also used the google suite for our guest list, RVSPs, budgets, etc which kept everything centrally accessible. We also set up a ‘Task Board’ in our living room, with columns marked ‘To Do’, ‘In Progress’ and ‘Done’. We wrote down each individual wedding task (ie: book DJ, buy Groom’s wedding shoes, finalise menu, etc) on a post-it note (you can even colour-code these if that makes you happy) and placed it in the appropriate column as we went. This really helped us keep on track with everything that needed to be done (which is a lot!) and stopped us feeling quite so paranoid that we’d forget something important! 

We also spent a lot of time picking some really awesome people to work with! As well as choosing people who were absolute guns at their jobs, we looked for people who gave off a cheerful, calm and capable vibe because we knew that would be something we’d really appreciate having on the day! We were so lucky with everyone we worked with, but especially our photographer Tess Follet and our videographer Tea Wales (True Story Wedding Films) who were both wonderful personalities to have around on the day, and produced such beautiful photos and videos. We knew the day would pass so quickly so we wanted a photographer who could really capture the atmosphere of the night. We took the opportunity to do an engagement shoot with Tess as well, which was great. We are also so pleased that we made the decision to have a videographer at our wedding (we were largely inspired by the amazing film footage of my Auntie and Uncle’s wedding in 1963) now that the wedding is over! 

Tea and Tess captured the small, intimate moments which mean the most to us, all the little looks between people, because they’re the moments that say so much but might have otherwise been lost to time.

BRIDES LITTLE BLACK BOOK

Photography: Tess Follet | Videography: True Story Wedding Films | Ceremony and Reception location: The Mural Hall | Bride’s gown: Moira Hughes Couture | Rings: Keshett and Larsen Jewellery | Bride’s shoes: Kate Sylvester and Mimco | Jewellery: Alex Monroe | Makeup and Hair: Hair by Rebecca Paris | Bride’s fragrance: Chanel 1922 | Groom’s fragrance: Terre D’Hermes | Bridesmaid’s outfits: Shona Joy | Groomsmen’s outfits: Peter Jackson | Flower girls: Arabella & Rose | Celebrant: Sally Hughes | Entertainment: Horns of Leroy | Flora: Victoria Whitelaw | Catering and Beverages: The Big Hall | Cake: Zephyr and Bloom and Beatrix Bakes