hayley & rory

Mount Bulla Wedding

They say friends are the family you choose for yourself. Coming into my 30’s this has never been more evident. The people you grow up with, the people you live with, those who you have shared drunken adventures with and consoled through heart-wrenching break ups. Those you’ve fought and argued against and loved and without whom the narrative arc of your life wouldn’t be quite the same.

This day really brought this home.

Hayley and Rory met in high school, out the front of an old demountable, and became acquainted in the way that only school kids can (“hey, you want to sit with us?”) and quickly became fast friends, before becoming more.

They both love the outdoors and camping, and the quiet, shared solitude that often comes with both of those things. So they decided to get married in the Victorian high country, at the foot of Mount Bulla, only a few minutes drive from one of their favourite camping spots, with just a select handful of twenty or so people they love most in the world. People they had years and years of shared time and experience with. They wanted no fuss, no frills, just to be married and to throw a party to celebrate. There was not even to be speeches until Jack, one of their mutual best mates (who also walked Hayley down the aisle) insisted on doing one to mark the occasion.

As always, but on this day in particular, I was reminded of how lucky I am to call this a job. To be invited into some of the most intimate aspects of people’s lives for a day, to do it in locations far from home and get to see such outrageously beautiful parts of the country that I may not otherwise.

There are so many parts of this day I want to draw attention to, from the beautiful - Hayley shedding a tear at some of Rory’s words as they shared a moment against the backdrop of an outlandishly picturesque sunset over the Victorian hills - to the absurd - Jack snatching the bouquet from out of the air much to the chagrin of one of Hayley’s best friends, who quickly snatched it back - but I think this time I will let the images tell the rest of the story.

Enjoy

Dane

I love a sunburnt country, 
A land of sweeping plains, 
Of ragged mountain ranges, 
Of droughts and flooding rains. 
I love her far horizons, 
I love her jewel-sea, 
Her beauty and her terror 
The wide brown land for me