When Nick initially contacted me about photographing him and Claire’s wedding, he told me that it would be in their backyard. They live with their 1 year old daughter Stevie in a home on the south eastern outskirts of Melbourne surrounded by 30 acres of beautiful Australian forest – I’d say that’s a pretty amazing backyard. Their place was initially built by one of Nick’s cousins about 15 years ago in a disused quarry using the stone and metal that was leftover from the times when it was an active site. The scars on the earth where this work was done are still visible but it’s still an amazing part of the world.
The week before their wedding was a really wet one for Melbourne, I think it rained nearly every day. So their wedding was a somewhat unique experience for me, it’s the only time where I (along with all of their guests) wore gumboots for an entire day as their whole property was covered in water and mud. But it didn’t seem to matter to anyone, least of all Nick and Claire. They had their daughter, they had each other and they had their small square in the world. They seemed happy with that. I remember in the evening straight after their ceremony, Claire returned to the house to get changed out of her mother’s wedding dress and Nick gave Stevie a bath. They then both dressed Stevie into pyjamas, played with her for a bit and then gave her a kiss before tucking her into bed. In the middle of their wedding day with everyone waiting for them to arrive at their dinner, Nick and Claire still had time with their daughter at the forefront of their minds. For them, their wedding day wasn’t just about the two of them. It wasn’t about the invitations that Nick had drawn himself, the hours they’d spent arranging flowers or the 6m tall awning structure that had been purpose built out the back to cover the dance floor and band. It was about their friends, it was about their big Italian and Australian families and most beautifully of all, it was about their little family of 3. It was about making sure that they remembered what was truly important and I think that really says everything.
2 Comments
Love this! What a wedding should be all about first and foremost!
Amazing !