COVER STORY
Annabelle and Daniel Commissioned Their Wedding Gown to Live on Their Wall as a permanent artwork after their Sydney Celebrationn
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The Bridal Journey
The dress began with a single image. Not a mood board or a magazine tear sheet, but one specific look from John Galliano’s Christian Dior Haute Couture Autumn Winter 1997–98 collection: a sculptural emerald corseted figure with iridescent, wing-like structures emerging from the shoulders. Part woman, part mythic creature, part living ornament. For Annabelle Webb, it didn’t read as fashion. It read as a transformation captured in form. The idea lodged itself quietly and then refused to leave: that a gown could feel grown rather than made. That it could be something a body inhabits rather than something a body wears.
From that starting point, she went to Olivia Deur.
The base is heavy satin crepe, high sheen, weighty, grounding, quieted by a layer of silk chiffon that softens the gloss without extinguishing it. A rare 1940s-vintage French veiling in black with soft-pink flocking forms the foundation. Above it: laser-cut tulle in teardrop shapes standing in for leaves, the tips of black ostrich feathers finishing the edges, and three-dimensional silk organza flowers in burgundy, mauve, pale pink and blush, chosen deliberately against the palette of traditional bridal florals. The colours were calibrated to complement Annabelle’s striking features and vibrant red hair, to add depth without overpowering. The flowers themselves were custom-made through a remote collaboration between Olivia and Adam at M&S Schmalberg, the legendary New York flower maker, a process that involved many late nights refining styles, colours and sizes across opposite sides of the world. A cathedral-length veil in the softest black Italian tulle completed the look.
“The experience felt less like putting on a dress and more like stepping into a character,” Annabelle says. “Something powerful, romantic and slightly otherworldly.”
ANNABELLE AND DANIEL
The gown was always intended to outlast the occasion. After the ceremony, it will be framed and mounted in their home as a permanent artwork: not archived, not preserved in tissue paper, but displayed. This was not a retrospective decision. It was designed that way from the beginning, as a reflection of how Annabelle and Daniel Klug have always approached their life together: as people for whom art is not decorative but essential, and for whom meaningful objects should remain visible.
Their home is already full of them: artwork, considered pieces, a growing number of black cats. The gown will simply join them on the wall.
Annabelle and Daniel met, as they put it, “technically on Bumble.” In the years since, they discovered an almost comical number of mutual connections, friends, family, and overlapping circles, that made the origin story feel less like chance and more like inevitability. Their first date was at a small bar the night before Valentine’s Day. “There was a naturalness to it that neither of us questioned,” they say. “Looking back now, it felt less like the beginning of something uncertain and more like recognising something that had quietly been waiting to happen.”
By the time they married, they had been a family for some time. Their son Magnus, then two years old, was at the centre of everything: the planning, the scale, the decision about where and how to celebrate. “The most profound step in our lives together had already happened before the wedding: the birth of our son,” they say. “In that sense, the wedding felt less like the beginning of something and more like a celebration of something already deeply formed.”
This understanding shaped every decision they made. The ceremony took place in their backyard in Sydney, with around thirty guests, a small, deliberate gathering of the people most genuinely part of their world. Beneath a chuppah lovingly made by a close friend, Annabelle and Daniel walked down the aisle side by side, Magnus carried between them. It was the clearest possible articulation of what the day actually meant: not a couple becoming a family, but a family pausing to mark itself.
Jewish traditions formed the ceremonial backbone: the chuppah, the breaking of the glass, and, later, the dancing. But both Annabelle and Daniel approached tradition with openness rather than formality. “We wanted the ceremony to feel alive and authentic rather than overly structured,” they say. That balance, between ritual and spontaneity, between meaning and lightness, proved very true to them. There was even a moment of levity when they briefly realised they’d forgotten the glass for the breaking ceremony. “That mixture of laughter and emotion felt very true to who we are.”
The timing was significant in ways they couldn’t have engineered. The wedding fell during Hanukkah, a week of gathering and light, at a moment when many in their community were seeking comfort in closeness. The lighting of the menorah carried an emotional weight that surpassed anything planned. “Having our community there for that moment is something we’ll never forget.”
Daniel’s attire followed the same logic of restraint and intention that governed Annabelle’s gown. A bespoke P. Johnson tuxedo and bow tie, worn with a champagne silk shirt by Ali Khalouf and pearl cuff details, a silhouette designed to complement the sculptural drama across the aisle without competing with it. Classically proportioned. Quietly considered.
By evening, the celebration expanded. Around seventy guests gathered at La Riviera, an intimate Italian restaurant in Sydney that the couple had long loved: a room that felt, despite the scale, warm and domestic. Less a wedding venue, more a dinner with friends. The hora was electric; the chair lifting became one of the defining images of the night. Annabelle had spent considerable time curating the music, atmospheric, nostalgic, built for both feeling and dancing, and DJ Levi Birks shaped the flow across the evening with precision. The speeches, delivered by their siblings, brought the room together in a way no choreography could have produced. And then Annabelle spoke for herself. Loosely planned, ultimately abandoned in favour of saying what she actually meant. It became, by all accounts, one of the most beautiful moments of the night.
They arrived home together just before midnight, already looking forward to waking with Magnus the next morning.
ANNABELLE & DANIEL
There is something quietly radical about a wedding that ends not in spectacle but in ordinary devotion. Annabelle and Daniel did not design a departure from their lives; they Commissioned an extension of them. A celebration that reflected, rather than suspended, who they actually are: creative, family-centred, deeply connected to the people around them, and committed to building a life filled with meaning, art and intention.
The gown will hang on their wall. Their son will grow up beneath it. The life they were already living continued, with a little more ceremony and a great deal more dancing.
“Joy,” Annabelle says, when asked to distil the day into a single feeling. “A quiet, deeply shared joy.”
Vendor Credits
Photography: Peter Karlstrom @peterkarlstrom.weddings
Videography: Feeling House Films @feelinghousefilms
Ceremony venue: Private residence, Sydney
Reception venue: La Riviera @larivieradining.sydney
Styling: Love Stone Styling @lovestonestyling
Bridal gown: Olivia Deur @oliviadeurcouture
Florals: Grandiflora Sydney @grandiflora_sydney
Rings: Jeff Einstein Jewellery @jeffeinsteinjewellery / Natasha Schweitzer @natashaschweitzer
Hair: Dom Pelli @dompellihair / The Salon by Ash Crocker @thesalonbyashcrocker
Makeup: Amy Hanneman @amyhanneman_makeupartist
Nails: @nailsbykumi
Groom’s tuxedo: P. Johnson @pjohnson
Groom’s shirt: Ali Khalouf @thetailorkhallouf
Celebrant: Nicky Solomon @nicky_solomon_celebrant
Catering: La Riviera @larivieradining.sydney
Cake: By Gigi Cakes @by.gigi
Entertainment: Levi Birks @levibirks
