Not just another wedding
Host: Manners Creek Station
Written by Jodie Grant – Manager, Manners Creek Station.
Every girl dreams of their wedding day, the day they get to be a princess and marry their very own prince charming. Yes I was one of those girls that had my fairy tale wedding planned and then well I met Dusty and over the years we have spent together Princess and Prince Charming is perhaps not the way I would describe either of us, which changed my idea of having the wedding you are ‘supposed’ to have into having a wedding that depicted the people we were.
This led to some discussions with people about ‘Oh but you need to do this’ or ‘You need to have that’ or ‘You need to wear this’ well my response was simply ‘No, no, and no this is our wedding and it will be the way we dreamt it and it will be perfect’. As much as we would have loved to have our special day at our home, our little slice of heaven being 300km out of town on dirt roads made it a little harder with the amount of interstate guests invited, so we began our search to find the perfect location for ceremony and venue for the reception in town. The problem being as soon as you search wedding venue everything you get is frilly, white or lacy, and all super fancy! My apologies to some of the wedding venues that got offended when I walked in to one look around and said ‘Sorry, nope, way too flash for us’ . . . it just was the vibe we wanted we wanted, a relaxed vibe about the whole thing.
Well in the end the reception wasn’t too hard to find we found a wonderful restaurant that was set up country and western themed inside with the big wine barrels as tables up around the bar, Akubras hanging from the walls – it was perfect and we snapped that up right away.
As for the ceremony that was a drama after originally booking a garden with a waterfall because they have had lots of weddings there it just didn’t feel quite right the whole feel was green and tropical our station home is desert spinifex and red rock and well certainly no waterfalls . . . we are lucky to see rain! Being so far from town its hard to duck in and out all the time so I sent a friend on a mission to find our perfect location it had to be natural and mimic the station. Well I have a fabulous friend who found the perfect spot at a local lake and no, we didn’t have it by the lake where most people had weddings. It was in a cutting off the road of bushland and it was absolutely gorgeous to top it off the lake made some awesome photos in the end but we still got our bush ceremony.
The dress is normally the big thing in a wedding the hardest and one of the more expensive wedding items well I am proud to say my wedding shoes cost three times the price of the dress and they are far more practical and I can use them again.
The next thing we were told Dusty has to wear a suit! Hahah Dusty in a suit? Nope I didn’t meet a man in a suit, I didn’t fall in love with a man in a suit, I sure as hell wasn’t going to marry a man in a suit I couldn’t think of anything sillier why on earth would I want to change the person I loved, on the most important day of our lives? My preference was sleeveless shirt and jeans but Dusty went with his ‘fancy’ look a shirt with sleeves and brand new jeans.
This brought us to the hat discussion of course no question about it we were to be married in hats but new hats or old hats? Well a hat is very personal to station folk and everyone’s hat tells a story and it was for this reason it was very very important to me our old hats were worn. Our hats we bought together not long after we met – those hats carry every story of our relationship, have travelled the country with us, and wear the scars of our many adventures. Now many people have commented on our hats at our wedding and I’m sure a lot of people think we were being cheap . . . but those that truly know us know our hats are a part of who we are.
Limos, Mercs, and classic cars all your typical wedding cars and yep you guessed it we certainly didn’t have any one of those. Our bridal party arrived in style on the back of a ute and the bride having to arrive in a truly special car I had as my special chariot – our bore ute complete with crane and diesel tank on the back but it did have a wash before the day. Our original plan for the bride’s wedding car was in fact our F-truck however that unexpectedly went in for repairs and was not ready in time but I must say the land cruiser filled the role perfectly and yes I got some strange looks driving to the car park for the ceremony in a hat, white dress, and boots sitting on a diesel tank in the back of a land cruiser ute!!
I pretty sure most people would have described our day as a bit of a ‘hick’ wedding but it was perfect for us and depicted us perfectly. I wasn’t too phased if things didn’t go to plan . . . not even forgetting music to walk down the aisle and walking down the aisle with two mates humming the wedding march.
A good friend’s son said ‘this is the first wedding I’ve been to that I can remember I love, this wedding is great’ and his mum simply replied ‘and you know what I don’t think you will ever go to another wedding like this ever again’ well I think that pretty much sums up our day that’s exactly what it was Jodie and Dusty’s day not just another wedding.
