Elsie and Darcy did not meet on an app or through mutual friends. They met at a sheep and wool show, and their love story began with a handwritten letter addressed to a stranger with green eyes.
The couple’s autumnal wedding at Maldon Botanic Gardens, featured by Polka Dot Wedding, was a full celebration of community and DIY, with handmade details throughout and most vendors old friends, including their photographer, Angelica James Photography.
A Chance Meeting at the Wool Show
It was the Bendigo Sheep and Wool Show that first introduced Elsie and Darcy, but it was their handwritten letters that truly brought them together.
“It was a cold and wet day in July; we needed to get out of the house. Darcy was selling gin at the show,” Elsie recalled. She and her mother tried all the gins, and based on the wonderful time they had the previous year, they went back to the show again.
“This time Darcy and I talked a little. It was top-rate customer service,” Elsie said. She left without any way to follow up with him, since she did not have Facebook at the time and honestly was not interested in it.
The Letter That Changed Everything
So Elsie sent a letter, a handwritten letter addressed to the boy with green eyes and dark curly hair who worked at Original Gin Co. She did not actually know his name at that point.
“I figured that even if he never got back to me, it would be a fun story,” Elsie said, and after a couple of weeks of not hearing anything, she started telling it as a silly story about something she did that was very much analogue in a world of digital technology.
Little did she know Darcy had actually written her back. “I remember meeting Elsie at the second wool and sheep show; she was the cute girl in the white coat,” Darcy said, “and I was more than happy to keep chatting with her, even if it meant ignoring any other customers.”
Their wedding, set against Maldon Botanic Gardens with handmade details found throughout, made sure the couple were surrounded by their favourite people from start to finish, and the rest of their vendors quickly became new friends.
In an age of swipes and instant messages, Elsie and Darcy’s story is a gentle reminder that a handwritten letter, sent to a stranger with green eyes, can still lead to a lifetime.
