Roseanna & Sam — Wedding at The Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace

Roseanna and Sam were married on the stage of the Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace in Cremorne, in front of two hundred-odd people sitting in the red velvet seats.

Before anyone walked in, a video played. It was their proposal. Roseanna and Sam are board game people, and the story was that a friend had made a new game and wanted them to playtest it, so of course they filmed the session, to give her feedback. The game had in fact been built from scratch for the two of them, and rigged, so that when Roseanna won, the prize was the ring Sam was proposing with. She had no idea. Two hundred people watched it happen in a cinema before either of them came down the aisle. Which tells you most of what you need to know about the day.

They'd sent me a run sheet beforehand. Most couples send a timeline. This read like a shooting script. Sam would come up through the trapdoor in the stage floor at the Wurlitzer organ, pretending to play it. Roseanna and her dad would come in through a door at the back of the cinema, behind all the guests, and walk down the centre stairs to the stage. A close friend of theirs would marry them. The flowers were by Roseanna's cousin. Both grandmothers would sign the register while Roseanna's mum sang and aunty played the baby grand. At the end, everyone would stay seated while the two of them walked back up the aisle through a shower of popcorn, cut the cake on the mezzanine, and had it served immediately downstairs. Roseanna's note finished: it is occurring to me at this point that this wedding will be quite extra.
It was. And it was absolutely incredible.
Their date had already been moved once, for medical reasons, so this was a day that had been waited for. When it finally came around, none of it was going to be done by halves. Then it rained, which was the one thing nobody could stage. The plan had been to take the wedding party out to Balmoral, and instead we stayed inside, which cost us nothing, because there is not a better building in Sydney to be stuck in. Family photos on the stage, portraits under the Art Deco lights on the stairs, and the two of them alone in an empty auditorium with a box of popcorn each.

Then over to Zest at The Spit in Mosman. Harry and Joseph, a brother each, were MCs. There were surprises coming, which I'd been warned about in the vaguest possible terms sometime between eight and nine, probably musical, nobody would tell me more than that. Speeches, and then Roseanna surprised Sam with a song. She picked up a microphone in front of the band and sang to him in front of everyone. She can really sing. It runs in the family, which by that point in the evening I'd already worked out. Then the party started.

Getting married somewhere unusual? get in touch →.

Vendors:

Ceremony: Hayden Orpheum Picture Palace
Reception venue: The Zest
Make-up: Emma Whitford
Band: The White Tree
Photography: Anetta Kirk