Helena & Arnie

How did you meet?

Arnie and I met at work. We both worked at Jetstar at the time. I worked in the Finance team supporting the Engineering team that he worked for. Arnie apparently used to see me walking around the office, though I had never noticed him (oops). We had never spoken when Arnie decided one night at work drinks to send me a message on Facebook (drunk text of course!) complimenting the outfit I had on that day. I was taken aback by the comment and kind of brushed it off without trying to be awkward and he of course regretted it the next day – so much so that it took him a whole year to talk to me at the Christmas party! So after lots of awkward moments avoiding me in the tea room and around the office, Arnie finally worked up the courage to apologise for the drunk text and ask me out on a date.

What are your three favourite attributes of your partner?

My three favourite attributes of Arnie’s are; his huge smile that always reaches his eyes. The way he is so considerate and looks after me always, from the cup of tea that he will make for me each night, to making sure if I am working late (which is often) that i always have dinner waiting when I’m done, or even that he will clean the bathrooms cos he knows that’s my least favourite job around the house haha! Lastly I love that he loves me so openly, I never doubt how he feels about me, he always shows it (he is definitely the romantic one in this relationship!).

I knew Arnie was the one so quickly. Our first date ran for 5 hours, they had to kick us out of the restaurant because they were closing! All of our subsequent dates were the same, we just clicked and had so much to talk about always. Within 6 months he was basically living with me and we were talking about kids and marriage. We just knew in our hearts that this was really going somewhere.

Who proposed and how?

Arnie proposed to me on his birthday. I had taken him out for a fancy dinner at Ezard and was happily working my way through each course snapping pics of my plate. After around the 5th course I was tired of taking pics and just wanted to dig in! At that point Arnie said “well aren’t you going to take a pic of that one too??” so I turned away from him to fish my phone out of my bag to take the pic and when i turned around he had the ring box in his hand. Of course I was speechless and could barely say yes! It was very sneaky of him to propose in this way as we had been browsing rings not long before so I was sort of expecting a proposal at some point, but never would I have thought that he had the ring already and that he would propose at his birthday dinner. The cherry on top was that he had already asked for my parents’ permission – I just thought that was a nice touch.

What was the best moment for you at the wedding?

The best moment for me at the wedding was walking out of the church as husband and wife to all of our waiting friends and family. After the year we had with COVID – having to postpone our wedding twice before actually tying the knot – there was just this overwhelming feeling of joy and celebration from everyone there and just this feeling of “We did it!” . In that moment we were just so happy to be finally married.

Where did you fall in love with your dress and why?

I booked a trial at the Malvern MWL store. I had 4 dresses shortlisted in my mind to try on, the Stevie dress being one of them. I tried Stevie on first and just fell in love instantly. I never expected to choose a dress that had a nude base to it, my dream dress was always ivory. But the way Stevie fit my curves, and the way it sat so comfortably – well the other dresses just couldn’t compete, I felt like I was in my own fairytale. Once i had the Holly veil on my head i just knew that I had found “the one”. I was so excited to wear a dress that was so beautifully different, unique and so far away from what everyone would have expected me to be wearing. I was so excited about surprising Arnie and everyone else at the wedding with my choice of dress.

What advice would you tell other brides?

The biggest piece of advice I would give to brides is to try and enjoy the process. Don’t get caught up stressing about the planning, because on the day no one is going to notice that the flowers weren’t exactly what you wanted or that the napkins were duck egg blue and not white! Seriously these are things I was stressing about prior to the event but on the day it didn’t make one bit of difference. What mattered was that we were having a good time celebrating our love and that our guests were enjoying themselves also. The minor details will never matter in the scheme of things, focus on being present and sharing the day with those closest to you and your partner of course!

What was one thing you did differently for your wedding?

I think the biggest thing we did differently was that we planned everything together – so it never felt like I was having to do it all on my own and then the day was exactly how WE wanted it. Especially during the year that was 2020 it was special that we got to do it together. We had also decided that November 8th was going to be our day no matter how it looked and we ended up being so blessed that we were able to have everything and almost everyone we wanted present. For those who couldn’t attend we streamed via a instagram account and invited those interstate & overseas to still dress up, have dinner on us and celebrate as though they were right there with us. We got some amazing pictures of our friends watching and having a great night together which was very special.