Wedding Inspiration | Scottish Wedding at Chapel Hill Retreat: The McDonald Wedding

In August 2018 I had the pleasure, privilege and honour of marrying the most amazing man I have ever met. Our love story began 5 years before – we met online and went on our first date to an Italian Restaurant in Summer Hill. I remember thinking how charming and sweet he was. We didn’t have too much in common beyond our love of music, but I quickly I discovered we shared ideals, morals and dreams. Just a few short months later we were officially boyfriend and girlfriend and have enjoyed every day together since.

We got engaged in the Mudgee wine region in NSW. We were watching the sunset on the deck of our cabin, drinking a lovely glass of wine and chatting when Gav suddenly disappeared inside the cabin and returned to drop on one knee and presented me a gorgeous diamond ring! I cried, I laughed, I jumped around, cuddled him and actually managed to forget to say yes!

Inspiration Board

One of the first things I did when I started planning my wedding was I gathered as much inspiration as I could. In fact I was so keen to gather inspo that the morning after we got engaged, I couldn’t sleep with excitement so as Gav slept I crept out and drove into town to buy wedding magazines (remember, we were in that cute cabin in wine country!). I fully intended on being back before he woke up but the poor guy called while I was driving back and was like, “umm, heeeey, where are you?” Whoops! Imagine his shock when his new fiancée AND the diamond was missing! Eeek!

So yes, magazines are a great place to start. The reason being, they show you the current trends really quickly and it’s a nice way to start your planning journey – offline.

From there you can start looking at Pinterest, Instagram and blogs. I recommend definitely starting a Pinterest board of inspiration (and you can save inspo from other sites on this board too) and I kept a physical folder of inspo that I pulled from magazines as well. The kinds of inspiration I looked for included: 

• Colours
• Flowers
• Invitations and stationery
• Dress, make-up and hair
• Venue (ceremony and reception) styling

To begin with I really focused on the first few: colours, flowers, invitations and stationery. This gave me a sense of the style and feel I wanted to create for our wedding. One of the key things I did that really helped was I also defined the key words that I would use to describe the feeling and experience I wanted to create for both Gav and I and our guests. Pulling all this together, I create a inspiration board that would serve as a guide for all the decisions I made throughout the planning phase and also really helped my vendors understand what I was looking for!

Every bride will have that one thing that ends up being the anchor to the rest of the inspiration. For me, it was Gav’s family tartan. He was born in Scotland and came to Australia young, but his Scottish heritage is important to him and something I absolutely love. I knew when I saw his tartan (you’ll notice it in the inspo board above) that a lot of my decisions would be anchored to that tartan. Being such a rich, bold tartan, it largely dictated colour for our wedding.

Style Board

With the inspiration locked in, I then create a style board that outlined colours, fonts and elements that I would use throughout the invitations, website and stationery that I created for the wedding. I used this predominantly internally while I designed the different elements but it was also something I showed my vendors – mainly so they’d see the colours but also to give them a better sense of the feeling I was creating.

A strong style board for a wedding theme will include:

• Unique logo, mark or element | For our wedding, I really wanted to have a logo that would be present on all stationery items. I was looking for something elegant and a little ornate that would feel a little bit traditional, that’s why I created the decorative edge on the circle. To modernise it slightly and give it more texture, I added the dots around the edge – this was a detail I repeated elsewhere in the wedding styling on the charger plates I selected.
• Core colours and flower colours | I new I wanted some really rich reds and soft nudes and blushes for my flowers, however I didn’t want to bring this into my wedding stationery. The wedding stationer I wanted to keep rather simple with gold, charcoal and navy. I also included the green reference so that my florist could see I was looking for deep green leaves and foliage rather than light green.
• Fonts | Determining the fonts you’ll use is important to ensure you’re being consistent across all pieces. For my classic, elegant and romantic wedding I opted for quite a traditional font pairing, a font that was quite rigid (the serif font – Baskerville Old Face) and then a cursive to soften it down and create interest (Milton Two Bold).
• Inspiration | Finally I included three inspiration reference images. The first being the kind of flowers I would like, the second being Gav’s family tartan that he would be wearing on our wedding day and the third being a detailing, table style image to give vendors an idea of the mood and feeling I was looking to create.

Invitations

I designed our invitations myself. I knew that I wanted letterpress on the thickest and most lush cardstock I could find. I also wanted to create a monogram emblem for our wedding. I chose a 600 gsm Crane Lettra stock in Pearl White and I opted for 2 PMS colours. This means that there were 2 different ink colours in the letter press. The emblem in a gold colour and the text in a deep grey.

I paired them with a front and back printed envelope in matching stock and instead of including enclosure cards, I create a wedding website. The site was custom built using our engagement photos and our wedding style board. It included information like:

• Date and location
• The wedding day schedule and timeline
• Accomodation options and information
• A map of the area
• The RSVP form
• Wishing well information
• A few more engagement photos 

The Details

The Venue

Our wedding was lovely. Our ceremony and reception was held at Chapel Hill Retreat in Berambing, NSW. The team at Chapel Hill was incredible. They attended my every request, answered all my questions and were extremely flexible. The venue is located in the Blue Mountains and is an all inclusive venue. Our family and the girl half of the bridal party stayed onsite in Bulgamatta, the adjourning, homestead which was first settled in 1830 by Lieutenant George Meares Countess Bowen. The boys stayed just down the road at a gorgeous little place called Suzarosa. At Chapel Hill, there is indeed a little chapel but Gav and I opted not to use that space. Instead we had the ceremony on the big deck off the reception room to keep it all contained.

THE DRESS

The dress was a huge highlight for me. I went to only a handful of shops and the dress I picked was one of the very first I found. It was a Sophia Tolli gown that I ordered through the Penrith Bridal Centre. It was a drop waisted, heavily beaded corset gown with a huge train. I was totally in love. I found a hair piece that matched perfectly on Etsy. I was debating whether or not to have a veil and ended up making my own with super fine ivory illusion tulle.

THE BOYS

Gav’s outfit was equally a main event in our wedding! We purchased his entire outfit through St Kilda Retail and hired matching McDonald Modern tartan kilts for Gav’s five groomsmen. This was a bit of a battle and took a while to find somewhere to hire the five identical tartans AND get Gav’s made too. Doug at St Kilda Retail was extremely helpful – he only had four McDonald Moderns for hire but kindly made a fifth especially for us!

HAIR AND MAKEUP

Hair was taken care of by a very talented hair stylist named Tiffani (Hair At Tiffanis). Tiffani is married to my best friends brother so having her involved in the day was lovely. And she did a great job of creating the hair style I wanted! Makeup was by an artist named Nicole (Nicole Patten Makeup). I had worked with Nicole previously on a photoshoot so I already knew and loved her work, she was a natural choice! I had so much faith in both these ladies so I think it’s really important to build up that trust with your vendors. They came to the venue on the wedding and not needing to travel anywhere was a massive load off my mind.

COORDINATOR

Speaking of loads off my mind. Perhaps one of the best things I did was bring on an excellent on-the-day coordinator, Emily from Emily Jean Events. While I largely planned the whole event myself, I did have Emily jump in a few times to follow up with vendors for me. But one-the-day, having Emily there honestly made the whole experience so smooth and it meant that I didn’t have to worry about the finer details. I knew she was taking care of everything for me. It was just so nice having someone take care of all the logistics on the day, so I can’t recommend this enough!

CELEBRANT

Our ceremony was conducted by Phil Timbrell JP, from Happy Day Celebrants. There’s so many things I loved about having Phil as our celebrant. Firstly he is adorable and so kind. He met us when and where it was convenient for us in the lead up to our wedding. He wrote thorough and thoughtful drafts of our ceremony and understood that I didn’t want to leave anything to chance. He respected our request to ensure that there was no attempted humour in the ceremony and integrated some Scottish tradition for us including handfasting. He even wore the McDonald clan tartan tie! He was professional, prepared and dedicated. I couldn’t ask for more.

FLOWERS

The vendors we used for decorations did a beautiful job. Our flowers were from Your Floral Indulgence and Jess did an incredible job – even managing to find some peonies for my bouquet even though peonies weren’t entirely in season! We had my bouquet which had a slight waterfall of cascading flowers, and three bridesmaid bouquets. She also made a dummy bouquet for the toss. She created gorgeous round arrangements for each table and a long arrangement for the bridal table which was only for Gav and I (we had our bridal party back out with their partners rather than beside us). Jess also created a stunning arrangement for our arbour. After the ceremony, our arbour was carried in and placed over the little bridal table that Gav and I would sit at.

STYLING

The styling elements were hired from By George Events. Leigh provided us with the arbour, ceremony benches and signing table and chairs. She also provided a grazing table and styling crates along with a range of candles including our gorgeous antique gold, mirrored candelabra centrepieces. They were key in styling our event and we hired charger plates elsewhere which complimented perfectly. Once we had settled on the antique gold centrepieces I sourced antique gold bottle opener keys from Etsy and tied a place card tag to each. One the reverse of each card we had a little message printed that thanked our guests for attending the wedding and let them know that they really were ‘the key to our happiness’ on our special day.

PHOTOGRAPHY

The very first vendor I booked was my photographer, Krystal from Clarity Photography. Krystal and I worked together a few years before on an artistic collaboration and I have been a huge fan of her work ever since, so I knew right away that she was the only photographer for me. Krystal has the lovely energy about her and she made Gav and I comfortable during our engagement shoot and all through the wedding process. My favourite element of her work is the clear, crisp quality and rich colours, she’s an absolute pro and I can’t wait to work with her again!

Wedding Stationery

For me the on-the-day stationery elevated the event to the next level. Everything was consistent across the wedding – from our vow books to our guestbook to the signage and place cards. And everything matched the original invitations our guests received to continue that experience through to the wedding itself. I designed a menu that was framed and placed on the mantle in the reception room, the bar menu, grazing table sign, guestbook table sign. I also designed velvet covered vow books and a matching guestbook. I designed place cards that doubled as bonbonniere tags and designed a seating chart that was framed in a beautiful multi window antique gold frame on an easel.

A huge thank you to everyone involved in making our wedding so special. Particularly to our bridal party:
Tilly, Caitlin, Nicole, Darren, Coopper, Liam, Aaron and Nick. You’re all very special to us!

Also special mention to our friend Demi who made the perfect cake for us and our friend Aaron who played our absolute favourite songs on bagpipes and made the day complete!