Real Bride...

Erin & Mark 

It is always exciting to receive pictures from all the Karen Willis Holmes brides and I love seeing their complete look and excitement from their day.

When I was reading Erin’s proposal story it was just too cute not to include…

“For months I watched my girlfriends around me become engaged and would stir Mark up about it jokingly…until after one of my closest friends got engaged and I started with the usual jokes he turned to me and said “In all seriousness, you know it’s going to happen but let’s just let all of our friends get married so we can have our own special time when we do get engaged.”

Of course, I had only been joking and this was fine to hear…but it ended up backfiring on him a few weeks later as we headed to the Sunshine Coast for a holiday (when we pulled into the gorgeous resort I had to stop myself from the usual taunts of how nice a place it was to maybe get engaged) – when he did propose later that night over a very romantic dinner, I didn’t believe him and kept questioning him for about 5 minutes “Are you kidding? This isn’t funny!” to his response on bended knee, “Do I look like I’m kidding?!” and asked again for me to marry him – which I then did the usual hysterical squeal “YES!”. And the rest as they say is history.”

Erin and Mark were married on the 5^th of March at the RACV Country Club in the Yarra Valley on a stunningly sunny day – perfect for an outdoor wedding.

  Going with the theme ‘A Formal Affair’ for their simple yet elegant wedding with of black tie dress code and black and white colour theme with subtle highlights of pale pink, Erin and Mark wanted a simple yet elegant wedding.

As for the wedding dress, Erin first drew inspiration from magazines and the Karen Willis Holmes website before heading to the High Street store in Melbourne. “I had a fairly good idea of the style I wanted, so maybe about 5-6 dresses in KWH (I think I had tried on about 30+ dresses before coming to KWH though).”

Erin choose the Estelle gown features a corset bustier style gown with lace and ribbon top stitch detail on the bodice with a tulle ½ circle skirt.

“ The Estelle design was perfect, it had beautiful delicate lace on the bodice and a gorgeous tulle skirt that wasn’t too full – I didn’t want a big ball gown with lots of ‘tizz’ – this was clean and elegant, and had so many fabulous subtle details.”

Erin completed her look with simple drop earrings, diamante cuff, a fingertip length veil and silver ballet shoes from Witchery with black bows on the toes.  What I absolutely love was the detailing on her black waist ribbon.  She had metal initials ‘E’ and ‘M’ sewn on the ends of the ribbon.

Erin’s bridesmaids wore dresses by Rachel Gilbert while Mark and his groomsmen wore suits by Joe Black the Tailor.

Erin found a winner with Gillian Pollard Flower Designs, who came highly recommended.  Gilliam did the styling for the whole wedding including ceremony and reception decorations. Erin handmade all the invitations and stationery for the wedding with supplies from Rock Paper Scissors store – right next to the KWH Melbourne store. When it came to capturing every moment of their day, Erin and Mark enlisted Dansk Photography who they found on theknot.com.au.  The couple were married by Celebrant Barbara Beames who Erin says was ‘ very fun, relaxed and personable’.

Erin describes the work of Twisted Sugar Cake Designs as fantastic and faultless – so it was a no brainer!  Twisted Sugar Cake Design also supplied the guest room gift bags or chocolate-peppermint truffles and bonbonnieres of shortbread cookies with each guests name printed on them – yum!

All images by Dansk Photography

Congratulations Erin & Mark

Karen xx