Over 8 months ago I photographed the gorgeous Neil & Melanie’s wedding at Sylvan Glen.

Mel loved her photos and talked about doing a bridal down the track. They both live up in Cairns, so when Mel suggested we shoot the bridal up in Cairns I loved the idea! I turned the shoot into a mini-holiday and they were super kind to let me hang with them for the week. We had a great time and I had a much needed break in some lovely warm weather. It was actually really hard to come back to temperature half of what we had there! Cairns was gorgeous. I’ve even entertained thoughts of shooting weddings in Cairns in our off-season.

Naomi visited Cairns as a kid, and we chatted about a year ago about this amazing location – Paronella Park outside of Cairns. We even looked it up on the net and agreed it would be fantastic to shoot there one day. When Mel suggested Paronella for her bridal I was barely able to contain my excitement! Paronella is essentially a rundown spanish theme park which was created by one incredible man, Joe Panorella back in the 1920′s-’30′s. It was one of the earliest theme parks in the world, even before Disneyland was ever created. They frequently have weddings there and many use it for their location photos.

Here is a couple from Paronella and a few at the end at Mel’s local beach…

these buildings were unbelievable…

Paronella was kind enough to leave us a remote control for the lights at night so we could continue shooting after it got dark and they were running Japanese tourist groups through…

I can’t thank Neil + Mel enough for their hospitality, love and awesome company for the week!

This entry was posted on Friday, July 16th, 2010 at 11:11 pm and is filed under Bridal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.