Wedding | Angel & Sean

Tell us a little about yourselves!

Both from country towns growing up without much and moved to Melbourne as teenagers to find something, if not ourselves.

Sean has been a chef for over 15 years, working in top restaurants all over Melbourne before becoming the head chef, then owner of our reception venue Taquito. 

Angel worked as an illustrator for her whole twenties before recently moving on to cooking as well. She had a greeting card company and designed every aspect of the wedding, including stationary. We fell in love very quickly after circling a similar social circle for years. We met officially for an impromptu date at midnight, where Angel could see Sean’s nervousness and offered him a hug, one that would calm him then, and every time since.

On our 6 month anniversary, I told Angel I was going to marry her and she said “Why not get tattoos instead?”, so as a promise, we tattooed our initials on our ring fingers.

I proposed to Angel on the exact minute we had met, 10:07pm, exactly one year prior. In my nervousness, I completely forgot to get down on one knee!

Why did you decide to get married where you did?

The Altar Electric was a venue that Angel had been following for quite some time and it was the absolute perfect choice.

As for Taquito, we wanted a big space to transform into what we had envisioned and what better space than the restaurant I owned, which could seat exactly 90 people comfortably?

I take a lot of pride in owning my restaurant and it's almost like our second home and it seemed fitting to have it there, especially being closed on a Sunday. Realistically, it might have not been the best choice financially, as we had to provide literally everything, but I wouldn't change it for a thing.

How many guests did you have?

84.

What was your budget? 

Our budget was about $40k but we ended up spending about $90k for a wedding that looked very DIY (which was the goal, we wanted a Vegas prom but we didn’t anticipate blowing through ALL our savings). The problem was we just had a lot of ideas and each idea cost us a thousand dollars; rented arcade games, giant disco balls, thousands of balloons, we bought all the glassware from op shops and glued on bows but that ended up costing more than renting… (we made a lot of mistakes), giant posters on the walls of all our guests, huge streamers, and we stuffed our tables with vintage playboys, pearls, rented brass candelabras, custom matchboxes and playing cards, bottled cocktails, and vodka cruisers (ha!) 

Tell us about your outfits.

I had my dress made by the most amazing costume designer, her name is Tamara and she is the best costume designer for drag queens in all of Australia, she works with a lot of celebrities and happens to be friends with some friends of mine so when I reached out, I was so stoked she took me on. 

I had an idea of a pretty simple 60’s style courthouse dress but without the jacket and I wanted a big detachable bow on the back and on the shoulders. I dress pretty silly in my day to day life and don’t have one particular style, so on our wedding day I just wanted to look like me, too much blush and a dress slightly too short for a formal occasion. 

Sean is baby girl and was sure he wanted to wear pink, he found something cheap and adorned it with his emo bands pins from his youth and then spent a tonne on these suede pink Jordan 1s.

What was the most important aspect for you, in terms of planning your wedding? 

Our wedding was really only young (ish) people say 25-45, we are both only children and sadly we both have lost our parents and have other parents who are poorly, so we made the decision to have just our closest friends. This wedding was a love letter not just to each other but to our friends who are not only our family but the time keepers and trail markers of our lives. We are ever so lucky to have the best ones and we just planned this day around the idea, ‘what is everything you would want at a wedding’

Sean decided to write the menu based on all the restaurants that we went to and fell in love with. Also, some other places where we saw dishes that inspired us, especially Sean as a chef. 

The menu was a very serious part of the wedding as Angel is a vegetarian. We wanted a table spread, family style dinner and we wanted everyone to not even notice the lack of meat. There was one raw fish dish and besides that the rest was vegetarian. Sean made all the food himself and had help from his chef friends to help prepare it for serving on the night. He was actually there fixing the plumbing of his venue hours before the ceremony.

Were there any elements that were important for you to incorporate?

There were a lot of things that we wanted to incorporate however, unfortunately our wedding planner for the day called in sick and we had someone try and take the reigns. We missed out on doing a lot of things that we were meant to do in the whirlwind of the day such as; serving the wedding cake, we only cut it, throwing of the bouquet, certain dances and champagne towers getting toppled over at the end of the day. We realised the small things are superfluous and as long as we are happy, no one knew what we wanted to do, just what we did. The important part is that we both had each other.

Any tips for couples getting married?

Sean: Don't DIY! Truly, we did it in 5 months and although we both truly believe in the idea that you shouldn't wait to get married (hell we’ve only been together 2.5 years as of writing this), we had such little time for ourselves getting ready for the wedding, we made everything, every glass, every tablescape, everything. I was in the restaurant cooking on a Saturday until 11pm, trying to kick customers out of my own restaurant so we could set it up. We had friends, bridesmaids and ourselves setting the venue up until 4am for 6am, apply makeup and then back in the kitchen. Take time, other people can help and they want to, but the roller coaster is fun if you’re a masochist. But seriously, don’t DIY 100%, 60% maybe, there are professionals.

Due to the fact we did everything ourselves, I would like to shout out our friends, our bridesmaids and groomsmen, the people who helped us until 4am, the people who helped us fold every napkin, pick up everything we needed from all over Melbourne at random times of the day during random times of the week. We couldn’t have done it without them. Sammy from Erye Film was also a legend and captured us and the wedding perfectly.

Photographer & Videographer: Erye Film @erye.film | Ceremony Location: The Altar Electric @thealtarelectric | Reception Location: Taquito @taquito.bar | Makeup: Valeria @makeupartist.valeria | Hair: Daria Medko @daria_medko | Dress: Tamara Keane @tamaraclaire | Shoes: Roger Vivier @rogervivier | Necklace: Swarovski @swarovski