We fell hard for this festival-style bohemian wedding in Australia

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The Offbeat Bride: Heather, High School English Teacher

Her offbeat partner: Macca (or Tom), Boutique Chocolate Salesman

Date and location of wedding: Fair Harvest Permaculture Farm, Margaret River, Western Australia - December 19, 2015

Our offbeat wedding at a glance:

Fun, love, and colour were our goals. The invite asked guests to wear something they love and they did, from ponchos to velvet dresses, and Converse shoes to silk magenta op-shop numbers.

Tell us about the ceremony:

Our celebrant, Anita Revel, was amazing - she totally got us. The ceremony was really relaxed. Our friend Pip read The Invitation, by Oriah Mountain Dreamer.

I walked down the aisle to "Handle With Care" by The Traveling Wilburys. my family used to dance around the living room to that song when I was a child. We were married under a wooden arch that my friends (on whose property we were married) built for us. The aisle was made out of flowers from my garden that I had dried with a dehydrator.

Tell us about your reception:

We wanted a big music festival-style party. We had wood-fired pizzas, a vintage caravan wine bar, and a local Combi Coffee van pumping out espresso martinis. We had a bouncy castle, hula hoops, and hacky sacks.

Everything was colourful: the picnic rugs, the cushions I covered in recycled saris, and the flowers from our garden in different coloured glass jars. People sat around and talked and laughed and then danced until well after midnight.

Many of our friends performed as their gift to us. We prioritised supporting local businesses as much as possible. We live in a small town and we knew that if we were going to be spending the kind of money it takes to have a big wedding, that we wanted as much of that to go back into our local economy as possible.

What was your most important lesson learned?

Budget DIY weddings are really hard to pull-off. My mum made my dress and the cake, I did all the decorations, we handmade our favours (sun catchers), we had "festival style" catering which was way less expensive, etc. It was a huge cost-saving undertaking.

The best life-saver I can recommend is having people organised to set up on the day that you know you can trust and who understand what you are trying to do. I had the most amazing set-up helpers: my dad, my brother and two ex-students. They knew what to do and how to do it and I didn't have to worry about anything.