When Your Celebration Becomes Everyone Else's
- 17 Mar, 2025
Thereâs a strange alchemy that happens the moment you decide to get married in Brisbane. Suddenly, what was a deeply personal commitment morphs into something that seemingly belongs to everyone. Your mum has opinions on whether you should book that South Bank venue, your best mate is adamant about the playlist (and insists on including Powderfinger), and your cousin has already mentally picked out her outfit for your Mt Coot-tha ceremony.
Iâve stood with thousands of Brisbane couples as theyâve navigated these waters. Some sail through smoothly like a CityCat on the Brisbane River; others arrive at their ceremony looking like theyâve just survived a summer storm. And in many ways, they have.
Your Day, Your Rules (Sort Of)
Hereâs the truth: a Brisbane wedding is fundamentally an event that you and your partner are hosting. Youâre inviting people to witness your marriage and celebrate with you. This isnât some colonial ceremony where youâre being âpresented to societyâ â youâre grown adults making a life-changing commitment under the Queensland sun.
But weddings donât exist in a vacuum. They happen within relationships, family structures, and financial realities. The modern Brisbane wedding involves a complex dance of expectations, traditions (both kept and broken), and compromises that would challenge even the most diplomatic Brisbanite.
The Great Expectation Game
Every Brisbane wedding carries its own unique set of expectations. Some come from within â the vision youâve been nurturing since you first typed âBrisbane wedding venuesâ into Pinterest. Others come from without â cultural traditions, family expectations (like your father-in-lawâs insistence on that Newstead brewery reception), and the endless scroll of perfectly curated Instagram celebrations from Howard Smith Wharves to Kangaroo Point.
The task before you isnât eliminating these expectations but rather deciding which ones matter to you and your partner. Because at the end of the day, the people who experience the consequences should make the decisions.
Youâll live with the memories of your wedding forever. If your mum insists on inviting her entire Paddington book club, youâre the one whoâll spend your celebration making small talk with strangers instead of celebrating with people you love.
The Magic Formula (That Doesnât Exist)
I wish I could offer a perfect formula for creating a Brisbane wedding that pleases everyone while remaining true to yourselves. After fifteen years of marrying couples across South East Queensland, I can confidently say that such a formula doesnât exist.
What does exist is the opportunity to approach your planning with intention, clarity, and kindness â both to yourselves and to those who care about your celebration, whether youâre planning a small gathering at New Farm Park or a grand affair at Victoria Park.
The couples who find the most joy in their Brisbane wedding day are rarely those with the biggest budgets or the most elaborate details. Theyâre the ones who remained anchored in their âwhyâ â the reason theyâre getting married in the first place, regardless of whether itâs happening in a Brisbane CBD hotel or a backyard in The Gap.
The Beginning Sets the Tone
How you navigate wedding planning establishes patterns for your married life in Brisbane. The boundaries you set (or donât), the compromises you make (or refuse), and the communication styles you adopt will likely follow you into your marriage, long after youâve settled into your Brisbane home.
This isnât about rebellion for its own sake. Itâs about thoughtfully establishing that your marriage is its own sovereign entity while maintaining loving connections with family and community â something particularly important in Queenslandâs close-knit communities.
A Way Forward
Hereâs my advice, distilled from watching thousands of Brisbane couples navigate these waters:
- Decide what you want to achieve with your Brisbane wedding celebration.
- Try different approaches to achieving it until you find what works for your Queensland circumstances.
- Do more of what works and less of what doesnât.
- Donât abandon your vision until it genuinely stops working for you, even when faced with Brisbaneâs unpredictable summer weather.
It really is both this simple and this hard.
The most beautiful Brisbane weddings Iâve been part of werenât necessarily the most expensive or Pinterest-perfect. They were celebrations where everyone â couple, guests, vendors â felt their role in a ceremony that remained true to the coupleâs story, whether under the jacarandas in New Farm or against the cityscape from Mt Coot-tha.
Your Brisbane wedding marks the beginning of your marriage. Thatâs the prize worth keeping your eyes on. Not the perfect lighting at the Powerhouse or the ideal cake flavour from that Fortitude Valley bakery, but the relationship youâre committing to and celebrating.
A wedding lasts a day. A marriage, if weâre lucky, lasts a lifetime. Plan accordingly, Brisbane.