The Australian Outback Vintage Wedding of Graham and Alison Bell

Vintage Wedding. My husband Graham comes from a small rural town in Western Queensland, Australia called Clifton. The Bell family have raised four generations in the town! Clifton was first settled by Europeans in the 1840s and the age of the town gave me the idea to incorporate a historical theme into our wedding day. Initially we were going to wear 'regular' wedding outfits but my darling husband came up with the idea that it would be a whole lot more fun if the wedding party dressed in Victorian style clothing. Once we had the theme set everything else just fell into place.

A friend recommended I look to the fabulous Wardrobe Shop for my dress - and I looked no further! My dress, my sister's dresses and one of our guests all wore gowns from the Nataya Titantic range and my crowd-stopping hat, the fashion hit of the day was a Butterfly Dreams Hat.

To extend the historical theme and our quest to provide a unique heritage experience for our guests we hired three carriages on the Southern Downs Steam Railway to transport the guests to and from Clifton. Musician friends provided fantastic acoustic music in each carriage, champagne flowed and hors d'oeuvres were served! It was very special. The steam railway volunteers decorated the train for us and the local Clifton Historical society who maintain the railway station at Clifton dressed up the platform with blooms and balloons and presented me with some crocheted wedding bells, which I carried with my floral bouquet. We were married in the Rose Garden of the Clifton Senior Citizens Centre and our wedding lunch was held at the Club Hotel which was built in 1889. The whole day was an Australian outback vintage dream come true.