When Mr Bye proposed 11 years ago they never expected a global pandemic would be the perfect opportunity for the intimate wedding of their dreams.
The new Mrs Bye said the costs and their large extended family spread out all over the country had been holding them back.
“Once you start adding in all those factors, it makes it quite difficult to plan,” she said.
“I always wanted to have the same last name as everybody else in the family, it's always been something we wanted but we just never got around to doing it.”
As COVID-19 restrictions limited the number of guests allowed at a wedding, celebrant Jennifer Broadbent and Prue Peters Photography started advertising drive-through weddings — and after all these years the groom knew the time had come.
“We felt that that was the perfect chance to just do it the way we wanted without all the complications of having to do a big wedding,” Mrs Bye said.
With restrictions easing just before the big day they were able to expand the guest list to include their five children, the bride's sister and the groom's parents.
“Initially when we first started planning it we weren't even going to be able to have the kids at the wedding,” Mrs Bye said.
“We did also Zoom it to close family because my parents are actually in Western Australia so it was nice to be able to have them there as well.”
It was busy day organising a family of seven to get to the wedding but Mrs Bye found time to get her hair done before they were pronounced husband and wife in the bush reserve in front of their home, in what will certainly be a story to tell their future grandchildren.
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