Real Wedding - Bianca & Thomas, Milawa VIC

May 19, 2024 In Country, Garden, Green, Real Weddings, Victoria, White By Ivory Tribe

Real Wedding – Bianca & Thomas, Milawa VIC

After a stunning proposal overlooking Lake Como, Bianca and Tom wanted to create a dreamy getaway for their guests: a destination wedding with the feel of holiday reverie and the aesthetics of an elegant Mediterranean paradise.

The stunning Lancemore Milawa more than met the brief. From lush, manicured gardens to fresh, sleek interiors and terracotta-based olive trees, the backdrop was perfection. Love Alfalfa worked floral magic to elevate and enhance the venue with a textural, cloud-like arrangement in crispest whites, interspersed with soft greenery and elegant accents of green-hued fruits.

A wedding nine years in the making is sure to have an incredible emotional impact, but in this case, the vibe was simply epic, and Melbourne Entertainment Co mastering the soundtrack kept it that way. From a welcome soiree the night before to an after-party featuring a solo vocal performance by the bride and finishing up at dawn, this is one celebration that beautifully showcases aesthetic inspiration and all the joy-filled feels.

Liz Barnes’ photography captures every sweet emotion and darling detail with true visual artistry. Scroll on to enjoy it all.

The meeting.

We met at a mutual friend’s birthday; we hit it off right away! Tom played it cool; we only spoke for about ten minutes, and that was it. Then, the following weekend, we bumped into each other by chance, and it feels like the rest was history! We have been inseparable ever since. We met in 2015, so we had been together nine years before getting married.

The ‘one’.
The feeling was mutual between us pretty quickly. Everything was just so easy, and we both never doubted each other for a second. After only five-six months of dating, Bianca’s brother was getting married in Spain, and she asked Tom to come. He felt like it was really soon to be going on a Europe trip for six weeks with a girl and her entire family, but we went, and it was the best six weeks of travelling; it really cemented our relationship!

The proposal.
We would have gotten engaged earlier if it wasn’t for COVID. Bianca was keen but Tom didn’t want to propose at home! We were keen to go to America to visit New York and decided to go to the Design Fair in Milan, Italy, first and make it an around-the-world trip. Our first stop was Lake Como, and early in the morning on the first day, we went on a big hike, around three hours, to the top of the mountain. We finally got to the top and were looking at the spectacular view of the lake. Tom was trying to get me to look at the view long enough for him to get the ring out and bend down! Finally, he had enough time, and as soon as I turned around, I just burst into tears. It was so beautiful! No one else was around since it was too early for all the tours to start, and it was simply perfect; it set us on a happy high for our whole trip as a newly engaged couple.

Planning process.
The planning and process/lead-up was a bit stressful, to say the least; everything is about being organised and trying to lock things in before you’ve really thought about it properly and worked through the budget – it all starts to go out the door at some point!

I was on the Ivory Tribe website daily, looking at all the styling of shoots and real weddings, searching through all the vendors and researching everything in depth! It was a really big help!

We didn’t actually look at many venues in the end; we were looking at destination weddings. Once we decided an overseas destination was going to be too hard, we found Lancemore Milawa. It was really beautiful, and the thought of everyone staying in the same venue for the weekend was really appealing; we had the whole venue to ourselves and could have an after-party into the night without any restrictions that other venues have.

The hardest thing to book for us was the music – since we were getting married in regional Victoria, there were a lot of travel expenses from suppliers. Some were not too bad, and we wanted to use local suppliers, but it ended up they were charging the same travel fees, even though they were travelling much less distance from Melbourne!

For the music, we wanted a band, but the more band members, the more expensive it got. What we really wanted was someone that could play an instrument to add to the night’s experience and luckily, we found the perfect guy! Luke from Melbourne Entertainment brought the vibe with his trombone and bongo drums – everyone was loving the dance floor!

Style inspiration.
Since we got engaged in Italy, we wanted to have a destination wedding in Italy, but the more we worked through the planning of that it started to get tricky and very expensive. So, we decided to have some sort of destination wedding with a Mediterranean style. This is why we chose Lancemore Milawa as a venue; it provided this gorgeous Mediterranean-style courtyard space but also beautiful greenery for timeless photos! The rooms were all so stunning and all newly renovated. All our guests could stay and let their hair down for a country Victoria destination wedding.

The more we worked through everything it became more like a stunning timeless style, when we briefed Elle from Love Alfalfa and said we wanted to have fruits and white and green florals, she absolutely nailed the brief and created a stunning array of green-coloured fruits on the tables, it was just gorgeous!

For our guests, we put on a welcome soiree at the Sam Miranda King Valley Winery; we arranged a bus to take everything to and from the venue for some spritz and charcuterie boards to welcome them all for the weekend!

The ceremony.
Leading up to the ceremony, I had always envisioned it being outdoors. On the day it was touch and go with the rain! One minute it was raining and then the next minute it was sunny – so it was really hard to gauge what it was going to be at 3pm when we were starting the ceremony.

Finally (with Liz’s guidance on photos!), we decided to keep the ceremony outside but had an inside space ready for backup, already set up. Tom wanted to just do it inside and not worry – but it was what the bride wanted!

When the music started and the bridesmaids walked out, it was stunning and sunny. Then my father and I started walking out down the aisle; he immediately started crying, which made me tear up, and as we were walking, little tiny raindrops started hitting the little pond so softly. With the music everyone just said it was magical and took their breath away – it was beautiful!

As we were standing up at the alter under a spectacular tree that was covering us from the rain, it started to get a bit heavier, and the staff were handing out umbrellas; as the time went by, Tom was feeling for everyone standing there and stopped the ceremony to get everyone to move inside. So mid-ceremony, we all had swiftly moved, flowers and all to upstairs to the inside space, it all happened so quickly and easily, we relocated and re-started within what felt like seconds!

We had our great friend Barrie conduct the ceremony for us, he knows us and our family well. He did a stunning job of chatting to everyone in our families before the wedding to include any insights and stories that contributed to the ceremony, it made us laugh and made us cry, it was really beautiful! Jane from Love Jane officiated our marriage and worked well with Barrie on everything. They were a great duo.

After the ceremony Tom popped a bottle of champagne with a knife which was awesome!

The outfits.
My wedding dress was simple and elegant. I had tried on many dresses and fell in love with a few along the way. I thought I knew what style I wanted in the end and took my mum to Emily May Bridal to do one last sweep of dresses – we tried on the dresses that I thought I wanted to wear and in the process tried on a gorgeous simple strapless fitted dress with a corset style top, it looked so flattering and could see myself in that dress for the wedding. As we were trying it on, Mum thought it could be lovely to add a little pearl detail to the top and split of the dress; the ladies at Emily May were totally on board and were amazing at facilitating the detail to the dress. You can now get this dress with the peal details in store! I absolutely loved the dress and felt so comfortable and stunning in it all day.

To continue the little pearl detail, I got my wedding shoes from Shehzarin Batha Couture, an open-toe pearl strappy heal called the Libby by Charlotte Mills.

Tom got his suit made by Arthur Galan, he was so great with facilitating his vision for the three-piece suit, so he could take off the layers across the evening. Tom is a very stylish man and knew exactly what he wanted! We went with a velvet jacket in the end as we loved how deep-dark the black it looked.

The bridesmaids wore a beautiful silk champagne-coloured dress and the groomsmen wore a deep dark (almost black) green suit. It was perfect as we wanted green but not an obvious green!

Favourite moments.

There were many moments that we absolutely loved!

The whole vibe of the day and the whole weekend was just so relaxing and energizing; you could feel the excitement from every one of the guests; they were just so happy to be there for the weekend to celebrate!!! It felt amazing to have all our favourite people in one place!

The MC was incredible – our entrance to the reception was epic, with Luke on the trombone coming out to the song Baila Conmigo (feat. Kelly Ruiz) and then everyone jumping around us!

We asked our friend Allen to MC – he was so amazing, we didn’t want to have the typical wedding speeches so instead of speeches, he did interviews, the questions were pre-arranged so everyone was prepared (except the best man!) and everyone made it so, so funny and beautiful, we were laughing the entire time and we couldn’t get the smiles off our faces.

Champagne towers. We wanted to do a champagne tower for the day, but with the distance, it was going to be quite expensive to hire this and have someone set it up. So, we decided to do our own champagne towers, but instead of just us doing it we thought it would be fun to have a champagne towner on every table for our guests to do it too! So, after some interviews, we got the DJ to turn up the song Champagne Showers while the table captains poured the towers for everyone; everyone was having a lot of fun with it! Then my brother made a toast, and we all cheered and cut the cake.

As soon as that all happened, our MC called everyone outside for a group photo, but it was a cover-up to get everyone on the dancefloor for us to move seamlessly into the first dance. It was all so smooth, and the party really kicked off.

The After Party! After 11pm and a few great last songs, we had an after-party set up on the rooftop, which was a surprise for all of our guests.

We had a little surprise gig set up there, our celebrant Barrie on the guitar / mic and our brother-in-law / one of the groomsmen Rolando on the drums to kick off the after-party live gig – everyone moved upstairs for the party to continue. After the first set of songs, the real surprise hit. I (Bianca) was standing in the far corner with a wireless microphone, Barrie started singing the first verses of the song Shallow by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, no one knew this was coming, but out of nowhere, I start singing, and everyone’s looking around like who’s that’s singing and all turn to realise it was me in my wedding dress!

Everyone was shocked (because they didn’t know I could even sing!) and just blown away, it was so scary but such a thrill!! Then we sang Valerie, Hit Me Baby One More Time, Love Story by Taylor Swift and ended with What’s Up? By 4 non blondes. It was an epic way to end the wedding! Everyone was dancing and singing at the top of their lungs and still shocked we were doing a gig at the end of the night!
The party kicked on all night, and people didn’t get to sleep until sunrise – it was amazing.

Meaning of marriage.

Marriage means a commitment to sharing our lives together, building a family and having big respect, trust, and honesty for each other. Going through life’s journey / adventures together as partners and lovers. Loving each other unconditionally through thick and thin, never judging each other and always wanting to make each other happy and being playful / joyful always.

Wedding soundtrack.

Aisle (bridesmaids): La Vie En Rose by Louis Armstrong

Aisle (bride): Can’t Help Falling in Love by Haley Reinhart

Signing: Cheek to Cheek and Love is Here to Stay by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong

Recessional: Hallelujah, I Love Her So by Ray Charles

Funny stories and near disasters.

We had some bridal party disasters in the lead-up, but everything worked out perfectly in the end!
There was no drama on the day; it was just about us and everyone having a fantastic time on the day.

Planning surprises.

The generosity of our family in the lead-up was really beautiful. It blew us away how excited they were for the wedding. We felt truly blessed to have such a wonderful family and such a supportive network of friends around us. It was stressful, but also very special.

Words of wisdom.

Try to enjoy the process of planning; everything is doable; if one supplier doesn’t work out, there are more out there that are willing to help, even on short notice! Don’t get too hung up on the little things, everything will fall into place and you won’t even realise. Trust the professionals that you’ve engaged, they are the experts in their field and will do everything to make your day so special!

Good luck to all the beautiful couples planning a wedding, it’s a challenge but it truly is worth it. The joy and happiness you feel on the day and every day after reflecting on it, is truly magical. No wedding will ever be as great as your own, because everyone is there for you, to celebrate your great love and bless your new chapter as a married couple!

Love a destination wedding without the planning stresses? Lancemore have a suite of stunning properties accross desirable destinations, and with their wedding team at the helm, you’ll be superbly supported. See more of their gorgeous offerings in our directory.

BIANCA & TOM’S VENDORS

Ceremony & reception venue: Lancemore Milawa

Celebrant: Love Jane

Photography: Liz Barnes Photo

Videography: For The Future Films – Jackson Barnes.

Florist: Love Alfalfa

Hair & make-up: Prive Hair & Make-up

The dress & veil: Kelly Lin Couture at Emily May Bridal.

Shoes: Charlotte Mills, Libby pearl strap shoes, purchased from Shehzarin Batha Couture Armadale

Rings: Bianca – Custom ring by Simon Curwood, Tom – Cartier.

Suit: Arthur Galan

Bridesmaids: Billy J Boutique