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Our wedding took place on Saturday, 3 March 2007 . It was 2 ½ years in the making.

The proposal on a grey, wintry day was not the most romantic. Aaron was really nervous about proposing and romance was the last thing on his mind.  The day he proposed I was off work with a cold.  Under protest he made me leave the house looking incredibly frumpy and drove me down to Devonport beach. After a brief walk we sat on a park bench and he uttered the immortal words "I think it's about time I gave you this". Presenting me with a ring was an incredibly nerve-wracking experience for him, because I hardly ever wore jewellery and didn't like rings.  When he went ring shopping he asked to be shown an engagement ring suitable for someone who didn't like rings. He chose one of 2 suggested to him and lucky for him I loved it as soon as I saw it.

It wasn't a traditional wedding but then we aren't the most traditional of people.  We didn't spend months planning, I didn't turn into a Bridezilla, we didn't remortgage our house and at 36 I had no illusions of or even a desire to be a princess.

We agreed right from the start that it would be a garden wedding, we wanted celebrations to be over an entire weekend and we wanted to invite as many people as possible. As for the garden, well it had to be our garden. There was just one problem, at that stage we didn't own much of a garden. 

After many months of looking we purchased a block of land in Kaiwaka. At the time of purchase it was 7 acres of weed covered hills and 3 acres of native bush. There was absolutely nothing on it.   So we put in a driveway and power and built our dream home , moving from Auckland to Kaiwaka in August 2006.

Late 2005 my sister Jo hooked us up on www.weddingannouncer.com, enabling us to create our own wedding website for free.  We were not only able to keep guests up-to-date with wedding plans but we could also upload continually updated photos of our house and garden as they took shape.

Because we wanted a wedding with a relaxed feel we decided on keeping the wedding party small. My youngest sister Sarah was the bridesmaid and Aaron's youngest brother Troy was the best man.

The planning of the wedding was sporadic as much of our time and energy was focused on other things like house-building, landscaping, getting new jobs, etc.  During 2006 we had several substantial financial knock backs and by December 2006 our wedding budget became virtually non-existent. We resolved to spend as little as possible and created a priority list. At the top of the list were guests, food and drink. Near the bottom of the list were the dress, the cake, the photographer and flowers. In the end our decision to be thrifty proved to be a good one as 2 weeks before the wedding I was told I was being made redundant.

At the start of December Aaron and I created a week by week plan of everything we needed to get done in the 3 months leading up to the wedding. It became quickly obvious that we could either focus on landscaping or wedding stuff but not both. We chose the garden and my sister Jo offered to be our wedding planner. She was planning her own January wedding at the time but she felt she could plan both with not too much extra stress. 

I told Jo our desire was to have a non-formal wedding that embraced our love of nature and friendship. Then I told her we were aiming to do it all on a budget of approximately $4000.  With a love of budgeting and hunting out bargains, Jo accepted the challenge.

We decided that the service and reception would all take place on the verandah and patio area at the back of our home.  We worked out we could seat 80 people comfortably and this decided our guest numbers.

Once we'd decided who to invite, Aaron and I designed the wedding invitation. We designed it on the laptop, using pictures of native plants for the background. My mother printed the invitations in colour on some heavy grade, glossy white paper. My sister Jo then sourced some very cheap, beautiful jade green envelopes. 

Finding outfits was our next priority. The wedding party needed to be dressed for under $1000.  The traditional wedding dress didn't reflect our theme, so Jo found a ballgown design on Trade Me that would be made to order.  It was romantic in style without being over the top. Despite having to make a decision based on a small photo I bit the bullet, ordered it in a medium gold and hoped like hell it would look okay on me. 

Aaron then decided that if I would not show him my outfit then he would not show me his. As fashion sense is not a strength of Aaron's I was initially hesitant. However, after thinking about it I decided to take it a step further and told Aaron, the best man and the bridesmaid not to show me their outfits until the wedding day. I had 4 conditions though, the outfits had to be of an autumn hue, they must be $200 or less each, they must be suitable for wearing after the wedding and my sister Jo must approve them before purchase. 

We allowed a half day of shopping in Auckland to find the outfits and accessories.  Jo accompanied everyone and in the end all 4 outfits, including shoes and jewellery, came to a total of $800.

As far as decorations went, budget was a big factor. Neither Aaron nor I are into flowers so, over a 2-month period I regularly went into our bush to collect leaves, seeds, and bark. From friends' properties I collected stalks of flax seed heads. I bought 2 large pieces of Hessian, one natural and the other chocolate and a large roll of dark green twine. I also bought some small cacti and succulents for our garden, which I thought we could use for decorating purposes before planting. In February Sarah and my cousin spent a day creating table and patio decorations.

As far as seating went, we already owned 2 octagonal bbq tables and had planned to buy more over a period of 2 to 3 years so we could place them in various spots around the property. So we just bit the bullet and bought 7 more in kitset form in February.

In January I came across a sale on some brown, round table cloths.  For less than $100 we had a way smarten up our bbq tables. For less than $300 we bought an old billboard skin off Trade Me and this was used as a tarpaulin to cover the entire patio area.

The catering was the easy part. This was handled by myself, my sister Jo and my mum.  We all love to cook, so apart from the logistics of catering for a large number of people over a 24 hour period, it was relatively easy.  We used 2 spits for the lamb and pork and a bbq for the venison.  Luckily for us, we had access to specialty cheeses, crayfish, venison, salami, watercress, juice and alcohol at minimal cost. 

Taking inspiration from a wedding we had attended a couple of years prior, I decided to make and decorate the cake myself. Ditching the bridal theme I instead decorated it loosely on our property and instead of a bride & groom I sculpted our 2 dogs and our sheep.

As all our guests were of legal drinking age we wanted to make sure we catered for everyone. I myself only drink spirits but as Aaron and I brew our own spirits and liqueurs this kept costs down. Over a 24-hour period our guests managed to consume over 600 cans of beer, 65 bottles of wine, 12 bottles of champagne, 20 litres of strawberry daiquiris and a few litres worth of rum and bourbon. For the sober drivers there was also a large quantity of non-alcoholic beverages

Writing the ceremony was probably the hardest and most time consuming of all the tasks we had. We'd both observed too many weddings where the ceremony seemed boring or impersonal. We searched the Internet for a good ceremony but nothing came close to reflecting us or our values. In the end we used the format of my sister Jo's wedding ceremony and then wrote the entire thing ourselves. We were determined that it had to be funny but without lacking seriousness. After hours and hours of writing and rewriting we finally finished.

Initially we dismissed the idea of a reading as it seemed a bit naff. However, Jo had asked me to write a humourous piece that I could read at her wedding. It was such a success that a week before my own wedding I decided that I would surprise Aaron by writing a humourous poem for us as well. My bridesmaid read it at our ceremony and it also proved to be a hit.

My mother and sister Jo came to stay on the Thursday and Friday before the wedding and the 3 of us focused on food preparation.

On the Friday we had about 15 guests on site. Tents were erected in the bottom field and then people pitched in and helped wherever they could. One of them even gave me the most fantastic foot rub! On Saturday morning more guests turned up and everyone just pitched in where help was needed.

On the day

11:00 am the photographers arrived. My sister found photographer Catherine Trumper on Trade Me 6 months prior to the wedding. Catherine wanted to build up a wedding photography portfolio and was offering to take photos for free in return for the experience. 3 weeks before the wedding Catherine asked if her friend Louise Panther could also come along for the same reason. I said yes and the result was several hundred digital photos, many of them as good as I would expect if I'd paid for them.

12:00 pm we started getting ready. Jo did our hair and we did our own make-up.

12:45 pm we made our bouquets and buttonholes. Instead of flowers Sarah and I bunched together kauri leaves, sprigs of rimu and silver fern, we wrapped these in hessian and lashed them together with green twine.

1:00 pm The official photos were all taken on our block. With 10 acres of land comprising bush, stream, paddocks and various other interesting features we didn't have to leave the property.

2:00 pm the guests were served platters of specialty cheeses, crackers and venison salami. Wine and beer was served in the bar.

3:00 pm The official photos were over. We asked the photographers to get shots of food being prepared and guests mingling. Aaron and Troy headed straight to the bar and Sarah and I went back to the master bedroom. I could hear our guests having a good time and with the ceremony not until 4 I decided Sarah and I should also be having a good time so we went out and mingled, much to the surprise of our guests.

About 3:50 pm Sarah and I grabbed dad and headed back to the bedroom. I donned a veil and we chatted until we heard the ceremony music start.

We chose 2 songs to be played while guests took their seats – The Wedding Song by Tracey Chapman and Falling In Love With You by Gary Moore. Aaron and Troy then took their places as "You'll Never Walk Alone" was played. With Aaron being a Liverpool Football Club supporter and several of our guests supporting other clubs it helped capture people's attention.

Aaron is also a big Led Zeppelin fan so the next song to play was "Thank you". The final song was "Your song" by Elton John and that was the queue for dad to walk me down the aisle.

We walked out the front door down the side of the house and up onto the verandah. Our celebrant was a local woman, Lenore Donaldson. She did a wonderful job and very lucky for us volunteers her services as a celebrant.

The ceremony lasted about 30 minutes. There was a lot of laughter, some good natured heckling and a few tears. Knowing our guests enjoyed the ceremony meant a lot to us.

The signing of the registry was done atop a wine barrel on the side of the verandah and to keep the mood upbeat we played "I'm a Believer" sung by Eddie Murphy.

On the advice of our photographers we kept the friends and family photos brief, taking only a few full group shots and immediate family shots.

5:00 pm the full bar opened and platters of hors d'ouvres were served to guests. We served spring rolls, samosas, prunes wrapped in bacon, cocktail sticks of salami with pickles and cheese, crayfish mornay vol au vents, and spinach and feta filo parcels.

6:30 pm dinner was ready. Each table had a name and we asked the MC to put the names in a hat and draw them out to decide in which order people would go to the buffet table. The head table ended up going second to last. To make things easier on us we decided to order all our plates and cutlery from PotatoPak. These are all completely biodegradable so as soon as guests had finished eating they scraped their meat scraps into a bucket and put everything else in the compost

The dinner was spit roasted pork and lamb and barbecued venison steaks. Accompanying that were a Mediterranean pasta salad, a watercress pasta salad and a green salad, plus a mountain of rolls and bread.

7:30 pm The speeches started. At that point most of us were somewhat inebriated and we hadn't actually decided who would speak. No speeches had been prepared either. It was in theory a recipe for disaster, however, they were all really good. Unknown to us at the time Jo's husband filmed the speeches. When we watched them a week later we agreed they were some of the best speeches we'd heard.

8:00 pm Dessert was served. We had lemon tartlets, tiramisu tartlets, chocolate mousse in brandy baskets and custard filled caramel profiteroles.

8:30 pm The cake was brought out and we had the ceremonial cutting. Unfortunately I was so proud of my creation I wouldn't let anyone cut it up. It wasn't until a couple of days later it occurred to me that Aaron and I don't really like cake so in the end, much to the horror of some friends and family, I threw it in the compost.

Straight after the cake cutting we started the dance party. I had 8 hours worth of dance music on CD and our MC made sure these were played in the required order. The dancing took place on the verandah and proved to be ample enough room.

11:00 pm The Aftermath party started in our shed down the hill. Aaron is a huge heavy metal fan and many of the boys and some of the girls were more comfortable rocking it out to hardcore metal. The party effectively split in two at this point and partying carried on until about 4am.

7:00 am I got up to feed and walk the dogs. Myself and a couple of guests cleared the BBQ tables and kitchen ready for breakfast.

9:30 am Myself and one of the guests cooked breakfast and about 20 guests piled their plates with eggs, bacon, toast and hash browns. This was all washed down with freshly brewed coffee.

During the day at least half our guests helped with the clean up, many of them staying until Sunday evening.

For the entire weekend we had fabulous weather. Despite our property being based in an extreme wind-zone there was barely a breath of wind all weekend. Well over half our guests contributed in some way to the wedding, from helping us with landscaping to helping us on the day with cooking food, walking the dogs, serving drinks, etc, and then helping with the big clean up afterwards. As we don't have recycling in Kaiwaka our MC filled up the back of his ute with all our recyclables and took these back to Auckland.

Six of our guests brought digital cameras and took numerous photos of the entire day. Now we have hundreds of photos not only of us but of everyone who attended.

Due to the help we had received from so many people and the fact that everyone had to travel to the venue we insisted that our guests honour us with their presence and not their presents. A few guests insisted they would buy gifts so we told them to buy Farmers or Furniture City vouchers.

Embarrassingly everyone gave us a gift, mostly vouchers, and 2 weeks later we had a brand new lounge and dining suite.

Looking back there is little we would have changed. We both had a fantastic time and asking people to spend the weekend with us meant we could spend quality time talking to people, especially the guests who had flown in from Europe and Australia . The fact that so many of our guests helped in some way meant that they felt personally involved and I think this contributed greatly to the relaxed and happy atmosphere.

In the end we did go slightly over budget, spending just over $5000. We didn't have the money to indulge in a honeymoon so we just took a couple of days off work instead.

For anyone wanting a great wedding on a small budget we're proof it can be done. Just give yourself plenty of time, involve friends and family and think outside the square.