Under The Sun

"I still don't know why people get married," Sophie said in her vows, "but I know I feel compelled to publicly and legally declare this love, and if I am not marrying you, it doesn't make sense."

That more or less sums up the whole philosophy behind the wedding of Sophie Lanigan and Max Volfneuk, a day that celebrated the love found inside a 25-year friendship. Sophie (a sculptor and researcher) and Max (who trained in music at NYU before moving into instrument-making and architecture) have spent years making things: installations, environments, a joint presentation at Sculpture by the Sea. So when it came to their wedding, they decided to build a world, and then invited everyone they love to come stand inside it for a day.

The pair had actually met in 2000, at the same junior school in Sydney, although it took another fifteen years and two continents for anything to really happen. The real start was a Friday at the Tate Modern in London where Sophie was living. Max was passing through Copenhagen on his way home. The night started with pizza and piña coladas in Soho, then a walk that went long into the evening. "He made me laugh all night," Sophie tells me. "When we first kissed, I didn't want it to end." Max, for his part, thought she was "really cute and unusual" — a verdict, twenty-plus years on, that remains true. He flew home; she surprised him a few weeks later by turning up in Sydney; then she went back to London just long enough to pack up her life and leave. On the wedding day, their 2000 school photo hung in the entrance of the reception house, a special acknowledgement that sometimes, things just take a while to arrive.

“I still don't know why people get married, but I know I feel compelled to publicly and legally declare this love.”

The ceremony was at McKell Park in Darling Point, small and green and right on the harbour, under what Sophie describes as a perfect Sydney summer sky. From there, guests boarded a restored 1970s wooden ferry with a hand-sewn "Just Married" banner strung across it, Perrier-Jouët in hand, for the crossing to Watsons Bay, where a bagpiper met them at the wharf and everyone stopped to dance on the sand before the reception had even properly begun.

The reception itself was held at Max's family home, an Italian-style house in Watsons Bay that became the emotional set for the entire night. Florist and friend Honey Long filled the rooms with dense, painterly arrangements, while oversized papier-mâché flowers Sophie had made by hand softened the staircases and doorways. The ceremony's chuppah — a golden sun with swirling stars, hand-painted by Sophie's mother Fiona — got a second life on the reception terrace wall. Wine that Max's father had been cellaring since 1992, the year Max was born, went around all night. Vintage French and Italian posters from his parents' collection covered the walls, and the pool had a painted shell mural and a line of French poetry inscribed along its edge. There were custom matchboxes printed with a kissing-booth photo of the couple, sitting next to a platter of cigarettes, because why not.

Sophie's brief, in her own words, was "to create a world that captured the best parts of their relationship." She pulled the mood from three films — A Midsummer Night's Dream, Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet, and Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette — landing somewhere between tender and wild, classic romance and necessary mischief. It showed: diamanté sunglasses were passed around the tables, there was a croquembouche instead of a cake, and at one point the groom took his turn to sit down at the piano and play a tune.

Every vendor Sophie chose, she tells me she chose because she trusted them. Catherine Nemanic, a high school acquaintance who now runs a female-led bridal photography practice, shot the day across digital, 35mm film and vintage Polaroids for a look with real texture to it. Honey Long did the florals with what Sophie calls the freedom of a true collaborator. Angela Xu, one of Sophie's former students, illustrated the paper goods (a comic-strip love story, a wedding map, and the lyrics to the sea shanty everyone sang on the ferry). Sophie's mother Fiona hand-lettered all the typography, in the same script she used to write Sophie fairy letters as a kid. Catering came from Mishy's of Surry Hills, generous and unfussy, and at midnight groomsman Ned Long showed up from Bilpin Farms with a ceremonial ham, Iggy's rolls and a wheel of D'Affinois — the second wind that carried the party through to sunrise.

Sophie wore two dresses. For the ceremony, a secondhand Rabanne gown found at Trading in Style in Bondi Beach and fitted by textile artist Marianne Close, with earrings borrowed from her maid of honour. For the reception, she changed into feathers and sequins by Rachel Gilbert. Her ring came from Melbourne jeweller Seb Brown, and her bouquet had its own last-minute plot twist: of the twelve red roses Max sent her that morning, she carried just one down the aisle, while her father wore its twin in his lapel. Max wore a custom P. Johnson suit, tailored in Sydney, paired with a guayabera shirt he had bought the year before in San Miguel de Allende and his father-in-law's cufflinks. His ring was from Greene & Greene, Sophie's favourite antique dealer on Queen Street. The bridesmaids were in ice blue Bec & Bridge, and Sophie's mother arrived in chartreuse Scanlon & Theodore, the same colour, it turns out, she wore at her own wedding.

“Of the twelve red roses Max sent her that morning, she carried just one down the aisle, while her father wore its twin in his lapel.”

When I ask Sophie for a favourite moment, she gives two. The first: standing under the golden sun canopy with her bridal party around her, looking out at guests in feathers, butterfly brooches, sequins, fruity headbands, wigs and genuinely extravagant hats, and realising they'd all shown up in character. "There was already a sense that people were meeting us in our world," she says. Even their vows carried the couple’s own quiet running joke — that the most serious promises between them have always been sealed with a pinky, so that's how they married each other, pinkies linked, while Sebastien (Max's best friend) officiated.

The second moment came right after the groomsmen's speeches, when Max and Ned sat down at the piano and opened with "Dancing in the Moonlight" (Sophie's favourite song) and within seconds the whole reception was singing along. "I love to see Max play music and have fun," she says. "It was the best moment I've ever had."

By 6:30am the last guests had finally gone. Sophie and Max didn't go inside. They walked to The Shop, their favourite café, and sat down (Sophie still barefoot in her wedding dress, Max still in his suit) and shared a hot chocolate while the sun came up over the water. It was the same feeling that had kept them out talking all night in London, all those years ago.

Their vows had their own quiet running joke — that the most serious promises between them have always been sealed with a pinky, so that's how they married each other, pinkies linked, while Sebastien (Max's best friend, and once, long ago, Sophie's regular pizza delivery boy) officiated.