Tumbling Waters Retreat | The Ultimate Sydney Wedding Venue!
Nestled on a cliff edge surrounded by nature, ocean views and a waterfall is a beautiful yet hidden wedding venue in Sydney… Honestly one of my favourite… Tumbling Waters Retreat is perfect for couples seeking a dreamlike wedding experience. This hidden gem offers a magical backdrop that transforms your special day into an unforgettable celebration of love.
Having photographed here a few times, the venue itself is all you need for images, however if you want to duck down to the beach, run down an old abandonded train tunnel or get deep in the bush, you’re surrounded by amazing spots. I have a few little secret spots of my own there!
If clients tell me they’re chasing a chilled wedding venue in Sydney, Tumbling Waters Retreat is my go to suggestion! It’s a 50 minute drive from the heart of the city yet has the peace and quiet of a small coastal wedding venue. Perfection!
Check out real wedding images below for Tumbling Waters Retreat.
A few benefits of a pre-wedding shoot below...
Get to know your photographer!
Have a general fun day with your lover somewhere deep in nature!
Get some experience in front of the camera before your wedding day!
Awesome, natural photos without the stress of your wedding day!
Reduced wedding day stress!
You can display the photos at your wedding day which is super nice imo!
Pre-wedding shoot not only help you relieve your wedding day nerves in regards to photos, but you can learn what’s involved in taking a good photo, how to pose, your best angles and generally how your photographer works before your wedding day. A pre-wedding shoot is also a great way to test your wedding photographer to see if they’re the photographer for you! You might totally vibe with them or find that they’re not suited to you and your partner.
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Waldara Wedding | Southern Highlands Wedding Photographer
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Wine, sunsets and vinyards at the always amazing Crooked River Wines - Southern Highlands
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Thinking of having a wedding in the middle of Covid? Have a read!
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Thinking of eloping? Have a read!
How to plan your wedding day | The ultimate guide for 2020/2021 written by a professional wedding photographer based in Wollongong, NSW.
5 Steps on making your wedding day awesome!
Getting Married in the Southern Highlands? You need to read this!
THE TOP 10 WEDDING VENUES IN SYDNEY!
G’day Mates!
Joel here! Your favourite NSW wedding photographer bloke wanting to offer you some epic insights for my top wedding venues in Sydney, Australia!
Over the last 7 years or so I’ve shot all around the globe/Internationally and I feel like I know what makes a wedding venue EPIC, so below is a list of my 5 Favourite Sydney Wedding Venues and what makes them awesome! Let’s go!
Drum roll, please…
10. Doltone House - Jone's Bay Wharf - Darling Harbour - Hyde Park
The always amazing Doltone House. A very modern pick for your wedding day. If you’re a fan of amazing city views, very elegant designs and high roof to hang a zillion floral designs from, Doltone is the venue for you!
Only an hour from Sydney CBD, Gledswood Homestead & Winery is a little slice of the old timer country vibes in Sydney!
When I’m doing research on wedding venues, i always make sure they have potential inside the venue, and within 20 minutes of the venue! Gledwood is a big, beautiful property surrounded by old woodern barns and little cottages, but it also has a ton of amazing natural areas nearby to capture some epic sunset shots!
Horizons Beach Venue was one of the first locations I ever photographed and what I remember from it is alot of blue skies, white sand, and boho/hamptons style vibes! If you’re a beach lover and you want your wedding to be like a corona ad, Horizions Beach Venue, Sydney is for you!
A wedding venue that’s literally a frisbee throw away from my home (Probalby couldn’t reach it with a tennis ball, haha!) venue, summersalt has a ton of great benefits that alot of locations in Sydney don’t have!
First of all, it’s the only wedding venue that has 2 epic national parks within 10 - 20 minutes drive which leads you to a world of natural oppertunities when it comes to wedding photos!
You’re right on the always amazing Cronulla Beach which is usually pretty easy going when it comes to beach go-ers and tourists. You’ll have the beach to yourself which is always nice when it comes to getting images taken. Nobody wants random in the background of their wedding photos!
6. Icebergs Bondi
Bondi Icebergs pretty much speaks for itself in real life and images. With one of the best views in Sydney if you’re a beach bum like myself, this is the palce for you if you’re keen to open your wallet and splurge quite a bit on your big day!
It’s always a good time with a ton of tourists and smiling faces when you go for a walk down the beach!
A hot tip for Icebergs is check the swell or there’s no chance of going down on the rocks or down by the pool!
Taronga Zoo, Giraffes, City views and freaking meerkats! How can you go wrong?
A hot tip if you love nature! Head down Bradley’s Head Road. On the east side near the ligthouse, theres a set of stairs, walk down them and you’ll be on your own private little beach in the city!
A really quaint, beachy vibe where you’re literally 10 steps away from Cronulla Beach and the water.
It also is a great choice if you’re a beach bum, love some sun and want beach photographs/shots on the rocks!
Like Summersalt above, you’re also close to so much nature with The Royal National Park and Kurnell National Park just around the corner!
The Deckhouse, Woolwich, Sydney! Effy & Tom at Sunset!
Some amazing clients of mine at the always epic Deckhouse, Woolwich, Sydney going for an adventure!
The Deckhouse is one of Australia’s oldest boatyards still running to this day! With overgrown vine walls, CBD views and amazing food, this is a solid pick for your big day!
Dana & Martin having a quiet moment under the floral arch at The Grounds of Alexandria on their wedding day!
The Grounds of Alexandria always remind me of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Facotry with their big old brick chimneys in the background, twists and turns inside the venue and a bunch of quiry items like old phone booths, overgrown utes full of flowers and lanesways full of plants!
An amazing choice if you’re a city fan who loves the quirky venues!
The Communinal Showers at Qstation! Perfect for Dark and Moody Wedding Images!
The Glasshouse at Qstation, Manly
And the winner, Ladies & Gentleman! Qstation, Manly!
Why does Qstation win the Top 10 wedding venues in Sydney do you ask? It was originally a quarantine station and is supposedly haunted with a ton of creepy buildings around property, all with super interesting, some scary stories and history!
The unique venue in the heart of Sydney is a wedding photographers paradise with at on of unique buildings to use from glasshouses, old communical bathrooms to city views on the old wharf!
If you’re into a dark and moody vibe when it comes to wedding photography, or some bright and airy tones, Qstation is for you!
Check them out here!
https://www.qstation.com.au/
LET'S CHAT ABOUT YOUR WEDDING DAY!
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Cheap Sydney Wedding Venues!
Zimzala Wedding Venue
Zimala is one of my favourite cheap wedding venues in Sydney beacuse of the chilled vibes. Weddings can be chaotic as heck, and to me, i’m not a huge fan of that. I would personally want my wedding day to be as easy and stress free as possible, and that happens when you choose a location close to everything (Morning prep, photography locations, ceremony, reception etc.). Zimzala is 5 minutes from national parks, literally on the beach and is surrounded by epic hotels that don’t break the bank such as Rydges or Northies!
Check out a recent Zimzala Wedding I shot here! https://www.joelquinnphotography.com/blog/daniandjason
Hunter & Barell
A chilled out, urban vibe in the heart of the CBD in Darling Harbour. Alot of wood, amazing views and the meat, oh baby the meat!
Qstation Manly
Qstation is my favourite wedding venue in Sydney! Why might you ask? Heck, ghost tours the night before your wedding, amazing nature and really unique and quirky building to name just a few reasons! Oh, and did I mention the light here always seems to be PERFECT!
I photographers Ben & Chris’s Wedding here, and far out, Qstation didn’t dissapoint!
6/5 stars for Qstation!
QSTATION!
1908 Cronulla
A Beautiful beachside reception venue for smaller, i’d say under 30 guest weddings.
The beach is a huge thing to me and if I was getting married, I know it would have to be on or near the surf!
Camellia gardens wedding
A little hidden treasure in the heart of the Southerland Shire! A maze full of flowers and ducks!
If you haven’t checked it out, head to Caringbah for the day with your partner or little one, feed the ducks, check out the 10,000 bats and enjoy an awesome little day!
Not getting married in Sydney?
Check out my Top 10 Wedding Venues In The Southern Highlands
GETTING MARRIED SOON?
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Top 5 Southern Highlands Wedding Venues | NSW
My friends! If you’re here reading, you’re either an owner of a venue, or you’re getting freaking married! Congratulations!
So, first off, I want you to know that these sources for the top 5 weddings in the Southern Highlands, NSW are my opinion and purely that. It’s best to grab and air B&B, stay down the Highlands for a few days and check out a ton of these venues yourself. Everyone has different taste, and these are mine!
So, before we dive in, who the hell am I to give wedding photography venue advice? Well, I’ve photographed 100’s of freaking awesome newlyweds all around NSW and these are just my personal favourite wedding venues in the Southern Highlands. I like to think I know what makes a wedding fun and unique. Nobody wants to attend a basic, typical and boring wedding, so here are 5 venues that ARE NOT THAT!
I like to think my favourite wedding venues are unique for a reason… And that reason is, i’m insanely picky, haha! I hate boring locations. I’m not a fan of the typical. I like uniqueness, and with that, Let’s do this, mates!
5. Bendooley Estate, you bloody Southern Highlands legends!
It took me 4 bloody years to book a wedding at Bendooley. Being eager to shoot at the location was an understatement! The old, rustic vibes of the buildings. The unique book shelves inside the super large reception area that could easily squeeze in 150 guests if needed for your wedding reception with enough room for a live band!
What I really personally loved about the venue however was the combination of nature and history. With a 2 minute walk you can be in a large, open paddock with their local resident farm dog and a gang of kangaroos hanging out, and next you can be inside what looks like a scene from The Great Gatsby, and did I mention the Vine Wall surrounding the homestay? It’s AMAZING!
Bendooley’s amazing library reception. Probably my favourite reception venue in NSW!
Southern Highlands in all it’s glory!
4. Jaspers, Berry
Jaspers is like the little sister of Jay Gatsby’s Mansion! Chandelliers, golden tea sets, hell, they even play Frank Sinatra on their website and I love that!
To me, what makes a great wedding venue is a location that has nearby potential to work with as honestly, it’s nice to duck out of venues from time to time for an hour or so and mix up your photography game! Japsers has this too! Why not head to the little local pub for a beer and some shots in the little, chilled out town!
3. The Robertson Hotel
Honestly, I feel bad putting this place 4th as they were AMAZING to me. As a wedding photographer, you sort of get exiled into a corner at wedding venues… Not at The Robertson hotel, Southern Highlands. They treated me like a king!
What I personally love about The Robertson is it’s dark, moody, castle vibe. It’s just this big moody building full of almost eeriness and beauty at the same time. There’s a bunch of amazing spots to shoot around the venue from old train tracks, a ton of overgrown gardens that are perfect if you like that dark and moody photography style and inside the hotel has large fireplaces, huge staircases, beautifiul cielings. This place has it all!
So, I’ve never shot here! Honestly i’ve never even had an inquiry for Willow Farm for some reason, but all I can say it WOW. I’ve been here before and it is AMAZING! 150 Acres of freaking paradise!
The Tree - Willow Farm, berry has this gigantic old, dead tree in the middle of a paddock where, if you’re getting married, you NEED TO USE THIS! So many people get married elsewhere on the property, but don’t! Trust me, everyone has seen couples get married next to a fountain or on some grass near a house. USE THE DAMN DEAD TREE! Haha!
The overgrown vine cottage… This little place is addorable and makes for amazing sunset photos. The Southern Highlands just has that golden glow of greens and reds that no other place in Australia has. Getting married at Willow Farm? Use the cottage!
The Countryside glass house - This is also bloody amazing! With golden floorboards, open skies and the opperunity to deck the place out and turn it into the most amazing reception is the way to do it in my opinion! Careful but, glasshouses get bloody hot in summer!
Geese - There’s Geese… Geese scare me…If you hire me, let’s not shoot the geese… Haha!
Willow Farm, you’re that bloody unique and awesome, a huge thumbs up your ways!
1. Centennial Vineyards - You legends are the winners!
I don’t know what it is about Centennial Vineyards that gets me going, but far out, it’s epic.
Let’s dig deeper as to why i chose it.
First of all, the freaking huge vinyards - These aren’t your typical Southern Highlands Vinyards, oh no, these vinyards roll up a little hill and when you get to the top, it’s just this epic, epic view of greenery and color with the sun backlighting the whole location! This is the light us photographers dream of!
The light - The light here is INSANE, inside and out. With the area where the reception is situation, you get this really beautiful natural light falling through the windows that lights up the countryside/rustic reception venue.
There’s also a little secret that most photographers don’t know about this place. if you jump a fence, you end up in an amazing forest that looks like it’s from lord of the rings or something! I perosnally love little things like this. It just makes the day super fun! You gotta break some rules on your wedding day!
Here’s Centennial Vinyard and it’s regular natural light in all it’s glory!
So yeah! That’s it for my top 5 venues in the Southern Highlands, legends! Jump over to my blog and have a peep at more of my images as there’s plenty of images there from these location to check out!
Cheers for reading!
Joel
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A beautiful winter wedding at the always amazing and historic Raventhorpe, Albion Park.
Sydney weddings usually aren’t super high on my list of shooting locations, unless they’re deep in the Royal National Park (And 5 minutes from my house in Cronulla which is bloody amazing as i’m so used to 4 hour drives to locations!) with two bloody legends like Lauren & Dean.
The Royal National park offers so many bloody awesome landscape locations from little cool hiking trails to the waterways that run through it… The Royal National Park also has geese… lots of scary, horrible, freaky geese which this couple NEEDED to have a shot off, haha! I set my fear aside but and got them the shot they wanted and I personally think it turned out pretty awesome, even if it did result in 5 huge geese chasing us out of their territory.
Thank you two so much for having me capture your beautiful Audley Wedding guys! I had a blast and you’ve made me super keen on more Sydney weddings for the year!
Tracey & Thierry’s Blue Mountain’s Wedding at Dantosa Blue mountains Retreat!
A huge thank you to these two absolute legends for having me capture their wedding day! It was such a good time and they were such cruisers!
First we started at Dantosa house, capturing a confident Thierry and a little more nervous Tracey who, i didn’t say this, but may or may not have been peaking outside the window while Thierry was getting his morning photos! Haha. From there we had a beautiful ceremony down on the water. It was super pretty!
We cruised back up to the lunch and alcohol trucks and everyone smash Tracey & Thierry’s custom made T&T cocktails! They were a hit!
While everyone was drinking, I saw some beautiful light just a few meters away, grabbed the two newlyweds and got some shots of them being super cute in some beautiful, natural light.
Then it was on to my favorite location in the blue mountains! Lincon’’s Rock! We got some epic shots, hung out and I got the drone up for some beautiful aerial images (Coming soon!).
The reception was really beautiful with freaking AMAZING Brazilian BBQ! This is exactly what I love in a client. They don’t do the usual, they do things at weddings that they want, and the two wanted Brazilian BBQ and it was a hit! I left so bloody full and tired after an amazing feed, haha!
Thank you so much too these two for being so cruise-y on their wedding day and allowing me to take part and capture you images that will last you a life time. It’s honestly an honor!
Cheers Legends!
Joel
Haleh & Ashkan’s beautiful Taronga Zoo/ Taronga Centre Wedding, Sydney!
When you think of a Taronga Zoo Wedding, you think of the typical giraffe shot, city landscapes and all the rest, but not for these two. They loved the zoo but wanted natural, nature shots, so we found a really wild little remote beach in the Sydney Harbour National park and went for a little adventure!
From there it turned into a really beautiful wedding ceremony set up by the two newly-weds! I love it when my clients get in their and set up their own wedding decor. It just shows the passion and ‘real them’, if that makes sense!
It was such a beautiful ceremony/reception with 180 degree city and zoo views, wild dancing and being my first Persian wedding, it was so awesome and I’m thankful for the opportunity!
Thank you Haleh, Ashkan, Taronga Zoo Taronga Centre and Sydney Harbour National Park for making the wedding day so easy! I had a beautiful time!
Have a great week,
Joel Quinn
P.S. That desert made by Ashkan’s Mother was AMAZING! I need the recipe! Haha!
G’day G’day! Joel here with one of my favorite, and last weddings of 2018!
From Dan ending up having to get his head glued together in the early morning of his wedding day, Allison trying to cut her eyebrows with kitchen scissors 20 minutes before her ceremony because her lash fell off 😂, to Dan's groomsmen getting staunched in the middle of nature (Where the hell did that bloke even come from, haha!) by the real-life Neville Bartos from the movie Chopper, I knew this was going to be a freaking hilariously awesome day, but here's a calm before the storm type of shot of these two newlyweds being pretty freaking cute!
If you were a guest at the wedding, have a scroll and hopefully you’re in a shot or two! I tried to include a bunch of mates!
So often you’ll find me travelling around Sydney, Wollongong and the Southern Highlands for weddings each week, but when I get the pleasure of cruising down the South Coast of NSW for a Culburra Wedding, I literally don’t want to drive home!
Allison & Dan! It was a freaking awesome day and a bloody absolute pleasure and honor capturing your wedding day images! Cheers for having me along to your wedding!
My absolute favorite wedding images from my 2018 business year! Locations are all around Sydney, Wollongong, Bowral, Hunter Valley, Kiama and the list goes on! Basically if you’re somewhere wild in NSW on the weekend, you may find me!
Rebecca & Corey’s Cronulla Wedding IS NOW LIVE!
Cronulla weddings people! I need more Cronulla weddings! Do you know how nice it is to literally live a stones throw to every location on the day! Usually I’m running around like a headless chook Down past Wollongong or I’m deep in the Sydney CBD, but not on this day!
Bec & Corey’s wedding was a refreshing one! That’s short for the weather was freaking freezing and it was bucketing rain about 15 minutes before the ceremony kicked off, but as soon as it did, and you’ll see in the photos, the sun opened up and gave us amazing light, a beautiful sun shower and the perfect breeze for a ceremony! All the elements came together which worked perfectly for me to get some beautiful shots of them tying the knot!
From here we ducked down to Kurnell National Park. A few months before this a huge fire broke out in the whole park and lit it up. I watched from a far, and thought the only some what good thing about it would be photos, and I got my chance with these two brave ones.
We cruise off and went for a little walk into the brunt down bush, found a rock so we didn’t all get covered in charcoal (not a lot anyways, haha), and we caught some really pretty light and images!
From there we strolled over to the window cliffs of Cape Solander, I sat them on the edge and we got some wicked shots as the sun went down.
Thanks so much for having me along to capture your day legends! I looooved it, and I was home in time for dinner which NEVER happens! Haha.
