Planning a Yallingup Wedding

I'm not a wedding planner. I'm a furniture maker who has been on Blythe Rd in Yallingup since 1982, and over those forty years I've watched a lot of couples come down here to get married. Some of them walk into the gallery a year out, ring in the box, looking for a piece of furniture they want to live with for the rest of their lives. Some of them come in the week of, just for a walk. Some come back ten years later with a kid on their hip. So this isn't a planner's guide. It's what I've noticed.

Photo: Michelle Corcoran, CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Yallingup, Dunsborough, Margaret River. Most people lump them together and they shouldn't. They're three different places. Yallingup is the coast and the surf and the bush. Dunsborough is the town. Margaret River is forty minutes south and it's the wineries and the river itself. Where you put your ceremony and where you put your reception will shape the whole day, and the distance between those two things is the thing most couples underestimate.

Flying guests in from Perth or further? Give them a base. Don't ask them to drive between three towns over three days. Pick one. Yallingup for the coast in the photos. Margaret River for the wineries in the photos. Dunsborough for the easiest logistics.

I'm going to name a few. I'm not on a kickback from any of them. I just see the cars and the marquees and hear about the day after.

Aravina Estate wedding venue is in Yallingup, ten minutes from my workshop. It sits in a valley with vines, a lake, and a paddock for a marquee if you want to do it outside. The grounds are well kept. Their kitchen is good. I've delivered furniture to people who held their reception there and then bought a piece of jarrah for the house they were setting up afterwards. The two things tend to go together more often than you'd think.

Voyager Estate weddings are further south, near Margaret River town. Different aesthetic: Cape Dutch architecture, big formal gardens, the rose walk in spring. It's more European in feel. For grand, it does grand without trying too hard.

There are smaller places too. Wills Domain. Cape Lavender. Stella Bella. Some couples I've talked to went the other way and rented a private house on a cliff and did the whole thing for thirty people, catered out of an esky, photographer their cousin. That worked too. There's no right scale here.

Photo: Harry Foley, CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

For accommodation, you have two real choices. Either you put your guests in Dunsborough (the most stock there, hotels, motels, holiday rentals) or you put them in Yallingup, which has a smaller number of better places.

Injidup Spa Retreat is the high end of the Yallingup side. Cliff-top villas, private pools, the lot. It's where couples put themselves on the wedding night, more than the whole guest list. Smiths Beach Resort is the bigger operation: more rooms, family-friendly, walking distance to Smiths Beach. Empire Retreat is another one: small, adults-only, design-led.

For a big group, mix it up. Put the older guests in Dunsborough where there's a lift and a restaurant downstairs. Put the friends in a self-catered house. Put yourselves somewhere quiet.

The South West has four real wedding seasons and they all work for different reasons.

October to early December. Wildflowers are still in the bush, the whales are still going past, the weather is warming up but it's not yet hot. This is the busy window. Book a year out.

February to early April. The water is warm, the long evenings are still here, the harvest is on at the wineries. This is when I get married daughters in the gallery looking for a piece. Autumn is my favourite season anyway. The light changes, the crowds thin out, and you get the place back to yourself. If I were doing it again I'd do it in late March.

Winter. Don't write it off. The South West gets storms and clear days in roughly equal measure between June and August. Hold your nerve and book a venue with a proper indoor option. A winter wedding here is something else. The light through rain on jarrah floorboards: I won't try to describe it. The crowds are gone, accommodation is half the price, and the wineries are putting on long lunches.

Late spring back to October. The shoulder. Weather is unpredictable but the prices are kinder.

The mistake couples make isn't picking the wrong venue. It's planning three towns into one weekend.

I'll be honest about the gallery here, because that's the point of the post. Couples come in for two main reasons around a wedding.

The first is a gift, for each other, or from one family to the other. A jarrah salad bowl, a side table, sometimes a piece I've made years ago that they fell in love with on a walk through the gallery the day before. We've shipped pieces all over Australia after weddings down here, and a few overseas. The customs paperwork on jarrah going to Europe is a story for another day.

The second is the bigger conversation: the table they want to eat at for the next fifty years. A few couples have come back six months after the wedding and commissioned a dining table. The wedding is the start of a house, and the house wants a table. I don't push it. They mention it, I show them the timber, we talk.

If a piece is part of your day, build the visit in early. The gallery is open most days but it's worth checking. Google Maps sometimes misdirects via Wildwood Rd. Stay on Bussell Hwy, turn at the Carbunup store, then Blythe Rd. You'll see the limestone walls.

If you're planning the day already and want to look at heirloom pieces in person, the gallery is on Blythe Rd in Yallingup, eight minutes from the centre of town. Most days I'm in the workshop and Pamela is in the gallery. Walk in. No appointment.

Three things, and I'll keep it short.

One. Pick the photographer first, then the venue. A good photographer down here is worth more than the marquee. The light here is the asset. A photographer who knows it will find frames you didn't know existed. Look for someone based in Dunsborough or Margaret River, not someone driving down from Perth for the day. They'll know where the wind will be at 4pm.

Two. Leave a day on either side. Don't fly in on Friday and out on Sunday. The drive from Perth is three hours minimum and your guests will be tired. Give them Friday to settle in. Give yourselves Sunday morning to walk on the beach before everyone leaves. Smiths Beach at 8am the day after is something nobody who's been to a wedding here forgets.

Photo: Vasse Felix, CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Three. Eat at one of the wineries on a normal night first. Vasse Felix, Lamonts, Clairault Streicker, Wills Domain, whatever appeals. Go and have a proper dinner there as a couple before you book anything. The food and the room will tell you whether it's the place. You can't tell from a website.

It will probably rain at some point. The South West weather is honest about what it is. Any venue worth using here has thought about this and has a plan. Ask them what it is. If they say "we'll see how we go," walk away. If they show you the wet-weather marquee setup and the indoor backup, you're in good hands.

The other thing is wind. The coast is windy more days than it isn't. A ceremony on a cliff in November sounds romantic and it is, but if your celebrant can't be heard over the gust, the romance gets thin quickly. Have a sheltered spot in mind.

The day after, before everyone scatters, I'd send people in different directions. Some to Smiths Beach for a swim. Some up to Cape Naturaliste for the walk to Sugarloaf Rock. Some to the Margaret River Farmers Market on a Saturday morning, the best produce in the South West and a nice slow way to spend an hour. Some down to a long lunch at one of the wineries.

For a couples weekend before or after the wedding, a romantic Yallingup weekend is the route I'd give you. Looking at the gift question seriously? gifts that outlast the occasion goes into the timber side of it more carefully. For the wine side, the local wineries write-up.

Photo: David Stanley, CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

That's about it. I've watched a lot of weddings down here and the ones that work are the ones where the couple stopped trying to fit everything in and let the place do its own work. Pick a corner of it. Sit in that corner. Let your guests see why you wanted to get married here in the first place.

The rest sorts itself out.