Inside the garden wedding of Melbourne designers, Phuong Vo and David Logan

“The wedding day was always set out to be a celebration of not just us as a couple, but all of us… of everyone and the bonds that tie us together.”

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Couple Phuong Vo and David Logan had, in many ways, the perfect Melbourne wedding. It started with a leisurely lunch with friends, family, oysters and wine at Siglo (as Phuong says, Spring Street venues “just typify Melbourne”), followed by a flora-filled ceremony at the Fitzroy Gardens Conservatory. The weather provided the “peak characteristics of each season” in one day, the couple rode an electric scooter and guests partied into the night. Below, Phuong and David give us an intimate glimpse into the day.

How did you meet your partner, and how did the proposal happen?

We met at work, like a lot of sexy love stories. Country Road brought us together. I was working at the Melbourne Central store (in a job that David had just vacated to begin his role in design for Country Road homewares), and that’s why we crossed paths… things kind of took off after I moved to a design role for Trenery menswear, where we shared the same building. It was the early 2010s, so the apps really helped amplify things…

[Now] the proposal. We include friends as our family, and I wanted to share in the moment with them. So I decided to mildly hijack our friend’s Christmas cocktail party (with their permission, of course). It got later into the evening, people were getting wasted and attempting to go home, so I thought it was a better time than ever to launch into a speech about the year that was.

It was the year that marriage equality had been legalised, so worth taking a moment to reflect on. I stood up, the music turned off, and we were lit by just the stars and some fairy lights. I started my speech and spoke to the achievements our friends had made throughout the year, and moved towards marriage equality. I didn’t think I’d ever get married, because I wasn’t allowed to. I talked about how this monumental change made me realise that I was allowed to get married and marry the person I love.

A lot of people in the crowd knew what I was about to do, I could see it on their faces, in their eyes. I started my proposal, took out a ring from my pocket and walked towards David, mouthing “Will you marry me?”. Only to then realise that David wasn’t actually listening, but having a good old yarn with a friend that just rocked up. This was our proposal. Lol. David kind of got the gist of what was happening and exclaimed, “He asked me!”.

What venues did you choose for your wedding, and why?

The one place that I/we were really set on, was for the ceremony to be at the Fitzroy Gardens Conservatory. We had dreams of the wedding itself being a more casual/loose party, so wanted to have the most formal part of the day being a little bit more ceremonial, a little more romantic. What’s more romantic than being surrounded by flora and fauna in a Spanish mission-style conservatory, right? However, the Conservatory is only available from 5.30pm as its public space, so this really made us rethink the sequence of events.

We didn’t want to kick things off at around 6pm, only to finish a few hours later – so we knew we had to rethink things. We decided on starting the day with a welcome lunch, followed by pre-ceremony drinks, then the ceremony and of course the afterparty. The welcome lunch was held at Siglo.

We love all of Spring Street venues, they just typify Melbourne. Siglo was the perfect location, so close to the Conservatory, and has a laidback character to it. Precious Fawcett was our MC for the day, and also our celebrant for the ceremony. For the pre-ceremony drinks, we had grand plans for a garden party on the lawn just beside the Conservatory. Melbourne weather had other plans.

We can only describe the mix of weather as being classically Melbourne, with the peak characteristics of each season combined into one day. We had striped umbrellas and iron lawn furniture, and we had hired the team from Finn’s Bar to serve themed cocktails. Then we had to pivot a couple of days prior. Claire from Black Finn helped us manage the day and was an absolute godsend throughout the process.

Claire helped us re-work from a garden party to gallery cocktails. We moved the pre-ceremony drinks to FortyFiveDownstairs, a stone’s throw away from both Siglo and the Conservatory – it was meant to be. FortyFiveDownstairs had the exact vibe we were after (even though it was a last-minute change). [It’s a] large, open former warehouse, surrounded by incredible art – just how we’d want to live the rest of our lives.

The ceremony itself was quite simple, there’s not much you need to do when the Conservatory is already so beautiful. With our friends and family lining the paths, we entered through the doors to Frank Ocean’s rendition of ‘Moon River’. Here, Precious Fawcett married us.

To celebrate afterwards, we had a party at one of our favourite local bars, Paradise Alley. We had private use of their upstairs bar and boogied the night away until 1am – by which time, we were pooped. What a sesh!

Tell us about the vibe for your big day. What was the vision, and did you take inspiration from anywhere in particular?

The wedding day was always set out to be a celebration of not just us as a couple, but all of us together. A celebration of everyone and the bonds that tie us together. With that, it was always going to be a party; a bit laid back with pops of romance. We didn’t really have a mood board, we just rolled with whatever we liked and it all came together.

Our invitations were like a colourful envelope of tickets, for each part of the day. And nothing says colourful like Jackson Grant (our photographer), so it was a perfect match! Claire from Black Finn really helped us make sure that there was no stone unturned, to make sure the day went exactly how we had hoped – and it only exceeded expectations.

How many guests did you have?

We had 80 guests for lunch and extended the invitation further to about 100 from the pre-ceremony drinks onwards.

Where was your outfit from, and what was the process of sourcing it like?

Ahh yes, the outfit. Being a menswear designer, I was very much drawn to my favourite labels’ runways. Dior and Dunhill were my favourites at the time. Dior had this incredible outfit, and I was desperate for it. After lots of scouring, (yes, even at their stores in Paris) I found out it was only made for the runway. Boo. I mean, if it was good enough for Post Malone on the cover of GQ surely it’d be good for me, right? Anyway, no luck!

I also did love the Dunhill collection, which at the time had a new creative director whose work really resonated with me. From their Spring 2021 collection, I purchased an incredible ivory silk organza blazer, a silk shirt and heavy linen belted carpenter pants. Then I found amazing chunky ivory Chelsea boots from a label called Both.

What about your partner’s outfit?

Hi, it’s David. I was fortunate to have a work trip to Paris and London just before the wedding, so finally had the opportunity after COVID for some luxe Euro retail… but sadly, to no avail. On my panicked return, I went to Masons and immediately fell in love with an oversized black ‘suit’ by OAMC. It was perfect as it was basically a dressed-up version of my daily uniform.

On my way out of the store, I saw a pair of OAMC sneakers that seemed the perfect finale, but when everything came together, the shoes were too small. Hot tip: don’t try it all on together the night before…

The shoes got hidden under such a baggy outfit, so I raced into Prada (if a wedding isn’t a good enough excuse for a new pair of Prada shoes, nothing is) and found a chunky sneaker in black and white that tied in perfectly to the suit.

What did you do to celebrate after the wedding?

We kept it pretty low-key in the days after the wedding. We had a bit of a staycay for a few days at QT Melbourne, where we stayed for the wedding, just to extend the euphoria for that little bit longer.

What kind of food and/or entertainment did you have on the day?

We had a wonderful family-style lunch at Siglo. Oysters, charcuterie, roast. Yum! At the pre-ceremony drinks, the wonderful team at Finn’s Bar catered. They were incredible. Adrian came up with some amazing cocktails and we had an awesome variety of drinks. Everyone was very well-lubricated!

The team at Paradise Alley helped us with the catering, with their resident caterers at the time. We didn’t want our guests completely annihilated yet, we had hours to go! We were incredibly lucky to get Shantan Wantan Ichiban (one of the best party throwers around) to DJ at the afterparty. And boy did we party.