Warratina Lavender Farm Wedding Photos
Purple rows on Quayle Road in the Yarra Valley foothills, in flower from mid September through summer
Warratina Lavender Farm is a family-run lavender farm on Quayle Road at Wandin Yallock, in the Yarra Valley at the foot of the Dandenong Ranges, about an hour east of Melbourne. The property is 10 acres, with lavender on around five of them and the densest planting near the tea room, shop and car park. The season runs from mid September into summer; harvest and drying follow in January and February, and the farm closes to visitors over autumn and winter.
The farm hires out as a venue year-round, but for Veri it has mostly been a portrait stop. Calyn and Sham’s Melbourne pre-wedding session moved between Mount Dandenong, the lavender rows here, Webb Bridge at Docklands, the South Wharf promenade and the Old Treasury Building, and the 21 frames from Warratina are the soft, colour-heavy part of that set: two people in a corridor of purple with green hills behind.
Photographing a wedding at Warratina Lavender Farm
Timing is everything with lavender: the rows are at their fullest from late November into December, and by late January the harvest is under way, so check the farm’s own updates before locking a date. Morning light is cleaner here; by mid afternoon the western sun flattens the colour. We shoot low along the rows so the purple stacks up, then step back to the tea room garden for wider frames with the hills. The gallery above is Calyn and Sham’s pre-wedding session.