Melisa & Paul - Loreto Mandeville Hall Wedding, Toorak

Loreto Mandeville Hall is the girls’ school on Mandeville Crescent in Toorak, and the hall is one of Melbourne’s grand houses. Built in 1869 as a sixteen-room mansion called St Georges, it was bought in 1876 by Joseph Clarke, who enlarged it to thirty rooms in the boom style and renamed it, adding a grand entrance hall, conservatory, oak parlour and Indian room. The Loreto Sisters bought it in 1924; their Chapel of Christ the King held its first Mass in May 1928.

Veri photographed Melisa and Paul’s ceremony in the chapel and their portraits around the hall and grounds, after the bride got ready at an apartment hotel in St Kilda. For couples with a connection to the school it is a rare setting: a private chapel and a Victorian mansion in one place, in a suburb where the streets themselves photograph well.

For Melisa and Paul it was the ceremony and portrait venue; the day also took in The Hamptons Apartments in St Kilda.