[Jem]

We arrived on the Gold Coast to horrible cold, windy and rainy weather, only 4 days before our wedding day. And even though I braved the weather in order to do some much needed shopping (I hadn't seen a shopping centre in 4 months!) and told everyone that I wasn't worried, I was secretly petrified that the weather wouldn't let up for us. My mum had religeously been checking the weather channel and assured me that it was a "big sun" on the Sunday, not even cloudy!
Anyway, after a few hiccups with my inlaws and guests and cancelling and then coming at the last minute the day arrived.
Everything was perfect and I was totally calm. My makeup lady's car broke down on the way to my house and she ended up being over an hour late, and even that wasn't enough to make me stress on the big day. In fact, I decided that it was even better because our makeup was as fresh as it could possibly be!
I arrived at our venue about 30minutes before our guests as I wanted to check the way that everything was set up (I'm a bit of a control freak), and was pleasently surprised to find that it looked unbelievable! The chapel, gardens and reception area looked better than I could of imagined.
Our ceremony lasted about 45minutes and was very "us". It was touching and honest, but not too mushy. Looking into my groom's eyes as he was sqeezing my hands at the end of the alter as our celebrant spoke is a feeling that I will never forget.
Directly after our ceremony, we had a full group shot on the beach and then signed our register. This was great as it kept the guests in one place in order to do the group shot and then it didn't matter. Once we signed our certificate and were pronounced Mr and Mrs it was time for photos. Our photographer was wonderful and did any group family or friends photos that we wanted. And they all turned out fantastic! It was then just the bride and groom shots. One of the reason I loved our venue was because of all the different photo opportunities. We were married in a chapel (so there are those photos), our family shots (and a couple bridal party ones) were done in the gardens and then the rest were done beach side with a bush background and also beach ones with water background and others with us on the jetty.
Our whole reception went off without a hitch, my brother was our MC and he introduced us into the room, and then the venue's staff took over. They organised everyone to go the buffet, told my brother when to introduce the speaches and then once the speaches were over, by bro ushered everyone outside for our first dance. We had requested that after about 30seconds our bridal party join us and then our parents. As soon as we steped on stage our MC's job was over and the band took over precedings. They were unbelievable! When it was time for the garter and bouquet toss they subtly gave us hints to make it a bit more of a "show" and it certainly ended up that way! The band even got everyone up to do some games and dances like Nutbush city limits.
All too soon it was time for us to board the boat and head back to Seaworld. This was one of the best parts of the night. As we had a 45minute boat ride ahead of us, it gave us a chance to go to each guest and have a little chat and thank them for coming.
We then retired to The Moroccan in Surfers Paradise for 3 nights and then Brampton Is for 5 nights, and lastly the Sheraton Mirage on the Gold Coast for one night before flying home. Unfortunately we only checked into the Sheraton at 9.30pm last night and our limo transfer to the airport picked us up at 4.45am this morning, so we didn't even get to enjoy (or even see) it in the daylight! But inside the room was certainly lovely!

Our wedding was fantastic! As most of you know, I had the easiest time organising it, so I was sure that the disaster would happen on the day, but everything was perfect. I couldn't count the number of guests that complented us on such a fun wedding. And that's exactly what it was. There was no stress or organising on the day, so all that was left to do was relax and have fun!

Feel free to ask any questions and I'm sorry, but i'm too impatient to load the photos onto photobucket so i'll just link them and if they're not clear enough as thumbnails, you'll need to enlarge them. I have to make the file size smaller, so I'll do that now and post in a separate thread.

I'll also be doing reviews on ALL my suppliers as they were all wonderful and not one dissapointed me!