Francesca & Jeremy

Backyard Beach Wedding // Coromandel, New Zealand

One thing I truly love about photographing weddings is getting to witness the coming together of families. Francesca and Jeremy’s backyard beach wedding was the epitome of this narrative with both family and friends joining forces to create such a kick ass day that even the expertly timed spring showers couldn’t taint it.

This wedding was a complete family affair.  The day’s festivities took place at Francesca’s family bach in Whiritoa.  The bach, bought by her grandparents, really feels like an extended family home where countless New Zealand summers have been spent and enjoyed by family and friends alike. It is a pretty special thing to be married in a place with such significant family history and it really was the perfect backdrop to their wildly authentic day.

Both sides pitched in to set up the backyard marque, adorned with stunning floral arrangement by the mother of the groom, Margie who also designed the girls gorgeous bouquets and wedding flowers. Jeremy’s sister was responsible for the delicious cupcake tower cake and Francesca’s two sisters and bestie as bridesmaids, wore dress crafted by her sisters boyfriends mum! The girls even formed their own hair and make-up tag team which made the getting ready that much more intimate. Francesca wore the earrings her mum got married in, did her own hair styling and looking effortlessly beautiful in her Rue de Seine dress, enjoyed a precious first look moment with her Dad before kicking things off.

Their ceremony was a complete punch in the face of beautiful, genuine emotion. Francesca’s ridiculously talented sisters sung her down the isle to not a dry eye in the house. Standing under that marquee in the backyard with the forgotten rain falling softly in the background, surrounded by this overwhelmingly mutual feeling that these two people were truly each others’ soul mates, is something I will never forget.

And to top it all off, the whole bridal crew were such troupers they all came down for a frolic on the beach with me!! Seriously! Nothing was dampening this day. We returned from the beach to an array of fantastic, heart warming speeches, expertly smoked salmon and danced the night away to a legit live band made up of old school friends.

Special thanks to the amazing Kay Buchanan for her second pair of eyes on the day.

Happy scrolling peps!