A Chinese- Serbian Wedding with a Lion Dance

Tell us about realizing that you were falling in love with a woman for the first time.

Our relationship has had a few curveballs. I was very confident in my skin. I had come out to my family at a young age and always saw myself as gay. 

This, however, was not the case for Ange. The whole experience was completely foreign to her; these feelings for a woman, let alone her boss at work, were pretty confronting and hard to understand. 

So much so that Ange had a little ‘oh my god’ moment and decided the best thing to do was quit her job and race back to her home in NZ to try and figure out what these feelings were, and perhaps run away from the fact that she was experiencing feelings for a woman. 

I couldn’t let her fall out of my life, and on Christmas Day I called Ange to let her know I’d booked tickets to see her. I needed to know if this was meant to be. I landed a week later. 

Fast forward to countless trips back and forth from Melbourne to Wellington, late nights spending hours on the phone, our love blossomed into a long-distance relationship neither of us expected.

How did you survive a long-distance relationship? And, when did you know it was time for a proposal?

Long distance was never going to work, and I knew I had to put the hard word on Ange and try to convince her to move back to Melbourne so we could ‘try things out’. 

She didn’t need much convincing and after a 7-month hiatus in NZ we found ourselves moving in together in Melbourne. And, that’s when our love story truly began. 

Love blossomed, years passed, and our fur baby French Bulldog was added to the family. 

There comes a point in time in a relationship when you know this is it, this is your human, and you want to spend the rest of your life together, so you better seal the deal and, like Beyonce says, put a ring on it. 

Hours spent secretly exchanging ring ideas and photos with Ange’s cousins and sisters, I had finally settled on a ring. All I needed now was for Melbourne’s covid lockdown to end! 

Thankfully, a few weeks later my wishes came true, and I decided to whisk Ange away for a romantic road trip to the Yarra Valley, a cute little picnic, and a diamond ring to top it off. She said yes, and the rest is history!

Tell us about planning your wedding. What advice do you have for others?

The “bookkeeper” role fell into the hands of Kiki as she had that lovely touch of excel spreadsheets and is slightly less impulsive at spending money than Ange. We approached our wedding budget as if it was more of a long-term investment, the end goal was to reap the rewards of creating priceless memories. 

Whether this can be treated as advice, the mindset we took on going head to head with our budget looked a little like this:

Marry within your means – to us, this meant being conscious and comfortable with our budget. We did our homework and pulled together various quotes to gauge if we were being realistic or delusional about our dream day vision. This shaped our next steps forward and secured our most desired vendors. We had to install good habits of updating our spreadsheet regularly to ensure there weren’t going to be any hidden surprises by the time our expenses were due.

Spend your pennies purposefully – This was about prioritizing what’s most important for both of us. It’s quite frightening how easily and quickly you can exhaust your budget without thinking. We had a good 12 months behind us to put together our wedding. Within those months, there was a bit of time in between to get carried away with our grand ideas. However, we knew we had to reign it in and reevaluate where our money was being placed. We put our attention towards options that would wholeheartedly hold more value, meaning, and significance to us beyond our wedding day.

Invest in your vendors – There was no doubt in our minds we wanted to allocate a healthy portion of our budget towards our vendors. We believed what our extraordinary vendors could provide us was going to be worth its weight in gold. We left no room for regrets, stress (or should we say extra stress), sleepless nights, and all the other crazy stuff in between as our vendors carried so much of the weight for us. If you can find and match yourself with vendors that closely align with you and share the same energy, you can guarantee you won’t be robbed of your dream wedding. They will be your dream team.

How did you approach walking down the wedding aisle as a queer couple?

When it came to figuring out how we would walk down the aisle, we knew we didn’t want to be ruled by traditions or carry out an act that did not resonate with us.

We both wanted to share that sentimental moment of having our fathers walk us down the aisle, so we created a ceremony space where the seating was set up to create two passageways.

We both entered and walked down the aisle in tandem, meeting each other at the end of the aisle. It was simply perfect, scripted by us and not pressured by any traditions for the mere sake of it.

Walk us through the wedding day.

The morning of our wedding was blissful and relaxed. We both stayed together in a luxurious mid-century modern home lending a dreamy ambient space and bucolic atmosphere. It was perfect, just being shared with our main right-hand team and not being overwhelmed by too many people at the property. Hair and makeup didn’t take off until the later hours of the morning, so we had a pleasant wake-up call catching some final beauty sleep and easing into the morning over a delightful breakfast spread.

We didn’t carry out a first look as such; we just slipped into our dresses and strutted out as if it were like a catwalk to reveal our final look – all before popping a lovely bottle of champagne open to really get things flowing. When we arrived at Levantine Hill we couldn’t have asked for a more balmy summer’s day. We just melted into the dreamy natural surroundings and our ceremony space illuminated so magically in the sun. Our vibrant florals fringed the end of the aisle that transcended into the most luscious picturesque backdrop, it was surreal.

We were onsite with our Melbourne Wedding Photographer, Kyra first, so we could move through some group photos and a few cozy intimate ones with each other before our guests arrived. We kept the course of our ceremony short and sweet as we kinda couldn’t wait to get a cocktail in our hand and get the party started, plus we had a secret surprise for our guests unfolding in the background, so we didn’t have too much time on the clock before moving into reception.

And, tell us about incorporating Chinese Lion Dancers, and Serbian traditions into your wedding day. 

Whilst our guests were distracted enjoying the cocktails and canapés outside, we managed to slip away with our bridesmaids and bridesmen, head back up to the pavilion where we met our lion dancers who were going to perform a surprise traditional dance in the spirit of our wedding and Chinese New Year. 

We figured how better to make a reception entry than by joining forces with the lion dancers and march our way into reception, catching our guests off guard. 

Ironically, the timing of our little stunt played out brilliantly as there was traditional Serbian music and dancing erupting out on the deck. So, in order for us to catch the attention of our guests, we had the lion dancers retaliate by intensifying the noise and instruments as we began marching our way down. 

We can indeed say it was a success; our guests were captivated and congregated in a circle to further watch on a mind-blowing dance. It was undeniably the greatest highlight of our evening.

And, how was the reception?

A delightful champagne tower greeted us as we cracked into reception, all before settling into an impeccable dining experience paired with the most exquisite wines. We were whisked away by ‘golden hour’ which rolled around at a pleasingly good time as we were able to catch a moment to ourselves. 

On the other hand, Kyra just had to further endure witnessing two crazy wedded wives frolicking around for the fun of things, as that’s what weddings should be about, right? Just having fun.

Moving into our first dance, we can’t say we put much thought or practice into pulling off a show-stopping performance. The pair of us are just too clumsy and uncoordinated for that kind of business. To our saving grace, we tailored our first dance to a song that we had selected from our DJ’s epic saxophone list ‘Never Tear Us Apart’ by INXS. In true nature of our spontaneous actions, we just jumped in there on the fly sharing a slow, intimate, perhaps silly, freestyled dance before being accompanied by Emily on the saxophone ripping out the most epic chorus. 

Ange managed to plot a last-minute spin to the dance. With the help of Emily, she cut the song to play “In My Feelings” by Drake as the iconic lyrics “Kiki, do you love me?” was fit for the moment and got everyone onto the dance floor.

We carried on dancing into the evening incorporating a ‘power hour’ of Serbian music and dancing. It was such a beautiful moment and plenty of laughter watching our families and friends linking up hand in hand and putting their best foot forward to keep up with the music. As the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. DJ Emily helped close the night off by belting out one last song on the saxophone to “Infinity” by Guru Josh.

Tell us about the food on your wedding day.

A few months out from our wedding day Levantine Hill invited us back for our tasting experience. The chefs had created an exquisite selection that draws into their seasonal Mediterranean-inspired dishes. They curated a tasting menu that consisted of 5 impeccable entrees and mains, wrapped up with the most decadent dessert. Every single dish was perfectly crafted and tasted heavenly, so it was incredibly hard to narrow it down and select 2 options for entree and main.

Much consideration went into selecting our menu as our family and friends had yet had the pleasure of visiting or dining at Levantine Hill. Bringing everyone together for a wedding is exhilarating enough, but we didn’t want it to stop there. We wanted to strap our guests in for one of the most unforgettable culinary experiences they ever had. The chefs made a special exemption for us to allow our guests to select their preferred dish on the night, amplifying the dining experience.

Our final menu consisted of some of the most impeccable dishes the team had recommended us. We selected one of each of the dishes so we could share and savor the flavors once again.

Entree
Yarra Valley gin pork belly, pomegranate, harissa muhammara
Cured Hiramasa kingfish, lemon myrtle, bush tomato, black aleppo

Main Course
Free range charcoal chicken, saffron corn butter, barberry jus gras
Charcoal lamb, red pepper, green olive, juniper honey jus

Dessert
Hazelnut semifreddo, baklava crisp, white chocolate, local strawberries, rose water syrup
(Plus some traditional Serbian cakes made by Kiki’s aunties as it wouldn’t be a wedding without more than one cake in true Serbian tradition)