Stephanie & Nicholas - Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne Wedding, Melbourne

The Royal Botanic Gardens run along Birdwood Avenue on the south side of the Yarra, 38 hectares laid out from 1846 and reshaped from the 1870s by William Guilfoyle into the lake, lawns and winding paths you walk today. For weddings there are three ways in: a lawn hire for an outdoor ceremony, Gardens House, the 1854 director’s residence with its own private garden, and The Terrace, a pavilion looking over the Ornamental Lake that seats 150 or holds 300 for cocktails.

Veri photographed Frances and Tim here, married at Gardens House with the reception at The Terrace, and has filmed weddings at Garden House, The Terrace and Jardin Tan. The Gardens hand you a new backdrop every fifty metres. We drifted from the oak lawn to the lake edge as the light lengthened, and the skyline appeared over Frances’s shoulder right when we wanted it.