Incredible Wild Winter Wedding in Iceland: Amy & Simon

Wild Winter Wedding in Iceland

We struggled to find a wedding location. All the places we looked at in Australia weren’t for us and didn’t feel right. With my family all in Perth and Simons in Hobart, we spent many months looking at venues in each state and in between.

We lived in Sweden for a few years prior to our engagement and loved the Nordic history, values and way of life. We wanted our wild winter wedding in Iceland to be an experience for everyone. We adored Iceland when we visited a few years ago. We drove all the way around the island in winter (we are winter people) and had the best time.

Words by Amy Jane & Tony Iskra from Iskra Photography

Intimate Wedding

So why not share a magical place with our families? We fell in love with the pictures we saw of the Black Church in Budir and knew we had to get married there in that stunning landscape. I couldn’t think of anything worse and more unlike as getting married in Australia in January during peak summer- no thankyou!

Our wedding was very small, we invited a few family and friends but knew the commitment to travel from Australia to Iceland in January was a big ask. We are both not ones to lap up the attention, so we wanted the wedding to be about everyone and what better way than to make a holiday out of it. Although the official ceremony was one day, we had a week full of exploring and sightseeing all over Iceland- we even saw the aurora one night from our guesthouse!

It ended up being perfect as both sets of parents and Simon’s Gran travelled from Australia and our friends from Sweden and Lithuania came to join us. It was actually in Iceland where our parents met for the first time too (like 4 days before the wedding), everyone got on so well and we still all talk about our holiday in Iceland.

Our Wedding Photographers

We really liked all of Jane and Tony’s our wedding photographers’ work- we were especially drawn to how natural all their photos are. We wanted our wedding photos to be moments captured throughout the day, not staged and posed photos.

My Wedding Dress

I really wanted a wedding dress that suited the context and location of our wedding. I secretly always wanted a black wedding dress too!

It took me a long time to find a white wedding dress that was unique. I just loved the Alex Perry gown as soon as I saw it. I wanted something full length so it could move around in the snow. I also needed to do a shoe change between the church and being outside so no one would know.

The embossed fabric meant it travelled in my suitcase perfectly and survived our month-long holiday in Europe before the wedding.

I found the unlabeled black lace gown in a high-end second-hand store and just had to have it. I absolutely froze in it and got soaked but it was worth it!

Most Memorable Moment

The weather! We were an hour late to the church because the blizzard kept growing during the 2-hour drive. We even drove past many car accidents which scared us a little. The weather was like nothing we had experienced before and for our families from Australia they were in awe.

When we returned to the guest house in the evening I got phone reception for the first time all day and had missed calls and messages from our wedding planner saying the storm is severe, don’t travel to the church! Oops! We registered all our travel plans with Government body TravelSafe Iceland so, if something happened it would be known where we were.

Such an incredible wild wedding! Absolutely love it. Are you planning a wild elopement? Let me know in the comments below.

Credits

Photographers: Jane & Tony Iskra from Iskra Photography / Planning: Pink Iceland / Church: Budir Church, Snaefellsness Peninsula, Iceland / Dinner: Kiðafell Guesthouse, Hvalfjordur, Iceland / Florists: Floral Favourites