HAYLEY + AARON :: WINTER ROMANCE AT SUMMERGROVE ESTATE

Hayley and Aaron’s picture-perfect Summergrove Estate day just goes to show how stunning a winter wedding can be!

These two travelled down from Townsville for a destination wedding and mini vacation all in one, joined by an intimate group of friends and family. After attending the Summergrove Open Day, it was love at first sight, with Hayley and Aaron locking everything down on the day.

We think you’ll agree these guys (and their epic team of local suppliers) did a stellar job bringing everything together from afar – from the sweet chapel ceremony to the bohemian-inspired blooms and romantic barn reception. And if your dream wedding includes stunning scenery, whimsical styling details and a blush pink palette, you’ll find plenty of wedding styling inspo below.

Keep scrolling for an inside look at this intimate winter wedding on the Tweed Coast (beautifully captured by Pineapple Images) as Hayley and Aaron share their must-read tips on planning a destination event – from choosing your suppliers to communicating your vision and staying organised throughout the process.

ABOUT THE DAY //

Our wedding was something very exciting for the both of us (obviously)! But it was also really exciting for us because it was a destination wedding, with us leaving Townsville and having our big day down at Summergrove Estate in Carool, New South Wales!

Because it was a destination wedding, we decided to make a mini vacay out of it and spend the week before the wedding with our guests in Kingscliff and Casuarina. These places are incredibly beautiful and I’m certain that by the end of our stay Aaron and I wanted to live there forever!

Planning an away wedding was stressful, well so they say… we actually found it quite simple because our vendors were so easy to work with. Note: pick vendors that are always happy to have a chat and email, call or text! This made it so easy for us. But the hardest part was picking vendors that we had never heard of before, because we don’t live there and no one we know lives there to help us. We were on our own completely… so we thought!

After stalking Instagram and stranger’s wedding videos, we stumbled across Summergrove Estate and decided that this was definitely going to be our wedding venue. We ended up flying down for the Summergrove Estate Open Day in 2018 to suss it all out, and by the end of the day we had locked it all in.

We booked for July 2020 but a few months later the girls at Summergrove contacted us to ask us if we wanted to get married earlier in 2019 on a Sunday! So we brought the wedding forward an entire year and it was definitely the best decision. I quickly realised that I went from having 18 months to plan, to a very short 8 months to plan! Rest assured I had it all planned in the first 2 months haha.

ABOUT THE STYLE //

I actually hated this question when people would ask me this as I was trying on potential wedding dresses – only because I didn’t think we really had a style. My response was always “Our style… like blush pinks and nudes… just a romantic, whimsical style”. It most likely wasn’t the answer anyone was looking for but hey, looking back at our photos now, I think my “style” description was pretty much on point!

We wanted it to be up in the mountains in winter because we hate sweating… we do that enough in North Queensland. I had stalked a million Pinterest pictures, Instagram posts from wedding companies, bought out News Agency’s stocks of wedding magazines and watched so many stranger’s wedding videos to try and source some inspiration. But, the overall look wasn’t what I had pictured in my own mind. I ended up scrapbooking and selecting certain colours, textures, dress and suit colours and styles. All in the meantime, by hubby to be was being my ‘yes’ or ‘no….but okay’ man. I used these photos for ideas and communicated them very explicitly with our vendors so they knew exactly what ‘style’ we were after.

Important tip: For your vendors, especially hair and makeup and flowers… send those vendors photos of your wedding dress, bridesmaids dresses, grooms suit and groomsmen’s suits so they can get the overall colour scheme of your wedding. I think that’s why our whole ‘style’ really came together for us and I wanted the groomsmen’s pink suits to work in with the bridesmaids and flowers!

CEREMONY SONG //

We were lucky enough to have our own acoustic guitarist and singer, Benny Hanna, who sang all of our important songs.

Our aisle song was his own acoustic version of ‘In Case You Didn’t Know’ by Brett Young.

We both heard this song in the car driving to Airlie Beach and we fell in love with it straight away! We chose this song because of the beautiful lyrics. It resonated with us because in this world we get so busy with life that we sometimes don’t always get the chance to tell that special person how much we love and appreciate them as often as we would like. This song was perfect at expressing how much we love and appreciate each other.

FIRST DANCE SONG //

Benny Hanna played his version of ‘Say You Won’t Let Go’ by James Arthur for our first dance.

We chose this song because let’s be honest, it’s just perfection for a romantic wedding song!

The lyrics really connected with us because marriage is all about going through the wild ride of life together and being by each other’s side until the very end, and this song expresses that journey so perfectly. It was just such a beautiful song about growing together and it was so special to dance together to this song.

DIY PROJECTS //

This was a destination wedding for us, so any chance to do DIY projects (which are totally my thing) were out of the picture. However, I did manage to squeeze two DIY projects into the wedding! The first was our yummy guest favours. We made cello bags of pretzels with personalised wedding ‘thank you’ stickers on each. Our guests loved them as a little treat and they finished our table decorations off perfectly.

The second DIY items were the soft blush pink napkins from Kmart! I bought them in Townsville and my beautiful mum ironed every single one of them and travelled with them down to Casuarina from Airlie Beach. We gave them to our stylists, JJ Style & Co to decorate on our tables. Safe to say Kmart really pulled through with these beauties!

FAVOURITE MOMENT //

Our favourite moment of the day was….. THE WHOLE THING! It’s so hard to just pick one single moment, but we both really enjoyed going off together with the photographers and videographers to take our post ceremony photos. It was a moment together where we could finally breathe and take in the ceremony and what had actually just happened. It was so nice to be in each other’s arms and really live in the moment together as husband and wife! Our photographers and videographers were so incredible that they made everything feel so natural and relaxed for us so we could just really be ourselves the whole time.

The ceremony was our other most favourite part of our wedding day! It went by so quickly for me but Aaron will tell you that it wasn’t like that for him at all haha. It was such a wonderful whirlwind of emotion that we want to relive every single day. Our celebrant, Vanessa from Butterfly Ceremonies, made the whole ceremony so natural and fun, whilst getting us through the vows without breaking into blubbering messes!

NUMBER ONE TIP //

This will be the one day of your life that will seriously be the best day of your life! So, don’t sweat the small stuff. Breathe, smile, laugh and be kind to your friends, family and vendors even when you’re feeling that your inner Bridezilla is about to make an appearance! The wedding planning will be stressful to an extent but my god it’s so much fun! So much fun actually, that I wanted to quit my job and become a full time wedding planner!

Be organised. Always. Make an excel spreadsheet and hyperlink all of your vendor’s websites into it so you can go straight to their website. Also, make a wedding folder in your Mailbox that you can drag and drop all wedding-related emails into – it seriously saved me way too many times.

I know money can be tight, but please really consider having a videographer! We received ours back and it’s our favourite thing to watch because it brings back all of those butterfly, lovey and happy feelings that you both were feeling on the day! We will treasure our videos FOREVER and we can’t wait to show our kids one day!

I could ramble on forever about advice but I’ll save you the spiel and let you google it like I did haha.