Stacey & Michael in the gardens

Some couples plan a wedding. Stacey and Michael planned a day out — one with a maze, a miniature train, a chair the size of a small house, and a tea party that would have made Lewis Carroll grin. Their wedding at Hunter Valley Gardens in Pokolbin was not a ceremony-and-reception squeezed into a function room. It was a whole world they let their guests run loose in. And from the first frame to the last, it was one of the most genuinely fun days I have photographed.

I have shot a lot of Hunter Valley weddings, and the ones that stay with me are rarely the most formal. They are the ones where the couple stopped trying to impress people and started trying to give them a good time. This was one of those. Stacey and Michael did not want a wedding that looked like a wedding. They wanted a day that felt like them.

Under the rotunda

The day began where it should — with the two of them saying yes. The ceremony was held at the Lake's Walk Rotunda, the water still beside them and the ten themed gardens stretching out behind. There is something about a garden ceremony that a function room can never quite match: the light moves, the leaves move, and the whole setting breathes with the couple. When Stacey came down the path the gardens seemed to lean in.

Photographically, a setting like Hunter Valley Gardens is a gift that asks for restraint. The place is already doing the work — the rotunda, the water, the Broken Back Range in the distance. My job was to keep out of the way of it. I shot the ceremony wide, letting the gardens frame the couple, and then tight on their faces as the vows landed. Those are the frames a couple will look at in twenty years and remember exactly how the air felt.

Lost in the maze

After the ceremony, we did what any sensible couple would do: we let them loose in the Storybook Garden maze. This is the bit I love about a wedding at Hunter Valley Gardens — the grounds are built for play. Stacey and Michael disappeared into the hedge, found each other, lost each other again, and came out laughing every time. There is no posing that produces a laugh like the one you get from genuinely being lost.

I shot the maze from above where I could — the green geometry of the hedges, the two of them tiny inside it — and then from inside, close, as they rounded a corner into each other. The frames from the maze are the ones their friends will share. They are also the ones that tell you who this couple actually is: two people who would rather play than pose.

All aboard the garden train

Then we rode the train. The Hunter Valley Gardens train loops the whole property, and Stacey and Michael climbed on with their wedding party like a bunch of kids on a school excursion — feet up, waving at nobody, the gardens rolling past. I ran alongside for a stretch and shot back through the carriages. It is the kind of frame you cannot manufacture: a bride and groom in full wedding finery, grinning out of a miniature train.

If you are weighing up a Hunter Valley Gardens wedding, this is the thing to understand. The venue gives you permission to be silly in a way a hotel ballroom never will. The couples who take that permission are the ones whose galleries look like nobody else's.

The big red chair

You cannot get married at Hunter Valley Gardens and not sit in the big red chair. It is an unwritten rule, and Stacey and Michael were not about to break it. The oversized chair in the Storybook Garden turns the two of them into children again — tiny, perched on the edge, the whole garden scaled up around them. It is the most photographed prop on the property for a reason: it is impossible to sit in it and not smile.

I shot it low and wide so the chair did the scaling — the couple small against it, the sky and the gardens behind. It is a frame that only exists at this venue, and it is one of the reasons a Hunter Valley Gardens wedding photographs like no other day in the valley.

The Mad Hatter's Tea Party

Then came the part I had been waiting for. Stacey and Michael had styled a Mad Hatter's Tea Party for their guests — long table, mismatched chairs, teacups everywhere, the whole Storybook Garden leaning in around it. It was playful and a little bit unhinged in exactly the right way, and it gave the canapé hour a centre of gravity that a stand-up drinks reception never has. People sat. People lingered. People put on the hats.

For me this was the easiest section of the day to shoot, because nobody was looking at the camera and nobody needed to. The table did the styling. The hats did the joy. I just moved around the edges and caught it as it happened — the clinking cups, the laughter down the length of the table, the couple at the head of it presiding over the whole beautiful chaos.

A wedding does not have to behave. Sometimes the best thing a couple can do is hand their guests a teacup and a hat and let the garden do the rest.

Live music and a first dance

As the afternoon went gold, the reception found its feet. A live band took over and the dance floor filled almost immediately — the kind of band that does not need warming up, the kind of crowd that does not need asking twice. I love a live-music reception because the light is always changing and the energy is always climbing. You shoot it like a gig: fast, wide open, chasing the moments as they break.

And then the first dance. Stacey and Michael danced under the great gazebo at Hunter Valley Gardens — the large rotunda that holds the evening the way a bandstand holds a tune. The structure framed them from above, the festoon lights caught in the rafters, and the band kept playing as the sky went purple behind the gardens. It was, quietly, one of the most cinematic first-dance setups I have worked with. The gazebo did half my job for me.

About Hunter Valley Gardens

Hunter Valley Gardens is one of the Hunter Valley's most complete wedding venues — a 60-hectare property in Pokolbin built around ten internationally themed gardens. Couples can marry at the Lake's Walk Rotunda, beside the ten-metre waterfall, or in the on-site Wedding Chapel with its views across the gardens to the Broken Back Range. Receptions are held at the Garden Terrace, set overlooking the Oriental Garden, and the whole property opens up for photography in a way few venues can match.

What sets a Hunter Valley Gardens wedding apart is the grounds themselves. The Storybook Garden — with its maze, its big red chair, and the Mad Hatter's Tea Party setting — gives couples a playground that no ballroom can replicate. The garden train loops the property. The great gazebo holds a first dance under the stars. For a couple who want a wedding that feels like an adventure their guests actually go on, it is hard to beat. Stacey and Michael's day leaned into all of it, and it shows in every frame.

You can explore ceremony, reception and package options on the Hunter Valley Gardens weddings page , and browse the full set of frames from this wedding over at Dreams Photography .

A few more frames

See the complete set of frames from Stacey & Michael's day in the full gallery .

Planning a Hunter Valley Gardens wedding?