With This Ring

Well here’s something that you don’t do every day. The Boy and I made our wedding rings this afternoon. Thats right. Made. As in we didn’t walk into a jewellers and go ooohh, they’re nice, I’ll just whip out my fantastic plastic so if you could just charge them to my spendings account, that would be great. No. We just started out with two short rods of precious metal and ended up with three rings. Now I know convention would tell you that there should really only be two at the most (cause what – you’re actually planning on having a third person in the marriage somewhere?) but I am apparently one of those women who doesn’t do anything by halves. I want two rings for myself. Or maybe that should be I do actually do things by halves as each ring could be considered as one half of the whole. The two bands were designed to sit either side of my engagement ring and will both be given to me during the wedding ceremony. Whichever way you look at it however, they did end up being more work for The Boy. My job was much easier. His ring wasn’t half as fiddly and I only had to do everything once.

The whole exercise was actually a lot of fun. We turned up at the jeweller’s workshop just before lunch and confirmed the styles of rings that we were making that afternoon. Of course, there were inevitably things that we realised should have been contemplated previously. We therefore had a few moments where we stared at each other blankly going do you want a comfort fit? Do I want a comfort fit?? But we sorted that out soon enough. Our Artisenne then put us to work rolling out the gold to get it to the desired width, length and thickness etc. She had one of those spiffy digital vernier things to tell how far along we were to our goal as well. It could give you measurements to a couple of decimal places which I imagine would not necessarily be extremely useful in my day to day life but could be fun nonetheless. It was quite useful in making the rings however as the whole process was done by hand. There was no pouring of molten metals into a perfectly sized mould or anything like that. There was some naked flame involved in the soldering process but the rest of the afternoon was spent with various other machines and tools, not least of which were the hammers and the saws. And with that many implements of destruction, someone had to get hurt and it was me that ended up claiming the idiot prize.

To be perfectly honest, it really wasn’t much of an injury at all. It would be generous to say that I actually sliced my finger with the saw blade. It was more of a nick really. About 3mm in length worth of laceration but just like some paper cuts which are so totally not at all life threatening either, it stung like nobody’s business at the time and has been inconveniencing me ever since. And it was my own fault which sort of adds insult to injury really. We were warned about keeping our fingers out of the way when we were sawing through the metal to make the rings join in a circle. Since I’m not used to that sort of work though, I was obviously having a few issues holding the metal in such a way as to keep myself completely out of the way. Sadistically however, I was kind of glad to hear later that The Boy had a few difficulties when he was buffing my rings. With bucket loads of friction, small pieces of metal get very hot very fast and he was evidently feeling it. On the whole through, it wasn’t exactly a difficult process to make the rings and pretty much anyone can do it. We were guided through each individual step and our Artisenne even told us that she had previously instructed a blind man on how to make a ring for his partner. Due to his lack of sight, it wasn’t really safe for him to use the buffer apparently but he was able to accomplish everything else.

So we happily spent our afternoon muddling through each of the processes involved in making our bands. Lunch and refreshments were provided by the company, as was a digital camera on the day for us to document the entire project as we wished (although snap happy as I am I also brought my own “baby” as The Boy referred to it). Champagne upon the completion of the finished product was provided to celebrate as well and the wedding rings we finally ended up with looked really professional. Not that I had any doubts that they would look otherwise of course but its still pretty cool to see something that you would have been happy to pay good money for in a shop and know that you made it yourself. Or at least most of it. Because it does help that you get assistance along the way...

As much as we were able to, we completed each of the steps involved ourselves but when something was just that touch too fiddly or seemed to require a bit of a ‘knack’, our Artisenne stepped in to help us out and make sure we ended up with something that looked great. If we happened to have wanted any stones set in the rings then they would have actually taken care of that for us but we stayed “fairly” simple. They look after all the engraving if theres something you want carved into your band as well and we have actually been thinking about this option. We don’t want our names or the wedding date or anything like that though so we need to come up with another idea. The Boy did have the thought that we could use the words from the title of the sermon that will be given at our wedding, ie. Grace and Holiness which I think is kinda nice. It would be fitting and meaningful for The Boy to have Holiness in his ring and for me to have Grace in mine so we might do that. Its also probably a whole lot simpler to accomplish than using ‘With This Ring...’and’...I Thee Wed’ which was my other idea too.

Take V

Well I figured if I wrote a speech using song lyrics and another using movies lines then I may as well write one using poetry. I have after all seen a couple of examples of bridal speeches where poems are recited in lieu of, well, a speech really. Normally I am not such a fan of poetry but I did come across something written by Roy Croft though that just seemed to fit.

“Firstly, I would like to start my speech by saying a few small thankyous. A lot of the main ones have already been covered or are ones that The Boy and I would still like to make personally but there are a couple of other heroes who should not remain unsung. It would be remiss of me not to offer our thanks for example to The Boy’s workplace and to mine for the internet access so crucial in planning our day. Many a lunch time was spent pouring over pictures and sourcing vendors so that we could bring everything together today. I should also thank our neighbours for the same reason but I don’t really want to introduce myself and explain that they never secured their home network. Another thank you I have is for all of our friends who so conveniently got married before we did. Their weddings provided a great chance to see firsthand how different ideas worked and allowed us to pinch only the ones we liked. And I think they worked out pretty well on the whole.

Apart from my thankyous though, there were a couple of other things I wanted to say in my speech. When I was researching to find out what was traditional or required for a brides speech the overwhelming consensus appeared to be that there were no rules whatsoever. General opinion seemed to dictate that I firstly offer our appreciation for persons not yet mentioned and then talk about the groom or share a funny story about our courtship. I realised that I don’t have any of those that I can repeat however so I decided to go with talking about The Boy instead. Stubborn, irrational, pedantic, argumentative and just plain bitchy are all words that have been used to describe me at some point in time and this man I have married gets to see every one of those traits on a somewhat regular basis. The fact that he has happily committed his life to me today just goes to show how patient, tolerant and understanding he really is. The fact that he can see through or put up with all of the bad stuff to get to the good demonstrates that he is definitely a diamond in the rough and this is part of the reason that I am happy to call myself his wife.

My aunt asked me a question a couple of years ago in the first weeks that The Boy and I were dating. She asked if I could see us having a future together and settling down to get married. The idea unnerved me a little bit at the time (as it might after only a couple of weeks) and I think I said that I couldn’t not see a future for us. I wasn’t sure at the time what the future would hold but I didn’t think there was no possibility that we might end up here today. Now as I stand here, I can still see those two futures that I saw then, one with The Boy and one not, the difference being that now I don’t want to see my future without The Boy. He is a major part of my life and I know that I am a better person for knowing him. I hope that I can be that same partner in life to him that he is for me and I am looking forward to us spending our future together.

The Boy knows that I do not always openly express my feelings and that sometimes I don’t take enough time to say the important things in life but I recently found a poem that I thought pretty much summed up a lot of things that I could say right now so therefore;

‘I love you,
Not only for what you are,
But for what I am
When I am with you.

I love you,
Not only for what
You have made of yourself,
But for what
You are making of me.
I love you
For the part of me
That you bring out;
I love you
For putting your hand
Into my heaped-up heart
And passing over
All the foolish, weak things
That you can’t help
Dimly seeing there,
And for drawing outInto the light
All the beautiful belongings
That no one else had looked
Quite far enough to find.

I love you because you
Are helping me to make
Of the lumber of my life
Not a tavernBut a temple;
Out of the works
Of my every day
Not a reproach
But a song.
I love you
Because you have done
More than any creed
Could have done
To make me good
And more than any fate
Could have done
To make me happy.
You have done it
Without a touch,
Without a word,
Without a sign.
You have done it
By being yourself.
Perhaps that is what
Being a friend means,
After all.’

So please everyone, join with me and raise your glasses in a toast to the best friend that is my husband and to the future.”

Take IV

Well I thought it was about time that I took another shot at the wedding speech. I sort of stuck it on the back burner for a while when life started getting in the way but it is still on the to-do list of things that need to be completed. Preferably before the big day. As I was looking for inspiration though and ideas that would befit our momentous event, I started thinking about other productions and the ability of some people to put things far better than I. Like the screen writers whose primary purpose is to find just the right words to say. The fashioning of a moment to move an audience and evoke an emotional response. That is what I would like to be able to do. Those are the things I’d like to be able to say. Maybe I should just borrow...?

“So I have been thinking long and hard about my speech. I have come up with version after version as I try to find the right words to express just what this day has meant to me and the ideal phrases to convey how important this man I have married is in my life. It would seem somehow fitting to say something both eloquent and poetic about what we share together. To speak about what we feel for each other or some of the reasons we have chosen to be wed today. I have looked for inspiration in poetry and prose but I keep circling back to all those so called perfect moments in the movies over the last decade or so. Moments that are perhaps romantic or dramatic or even funny but that all seem to sum up in a small way at least one aspect of what I wanted to talk about here tonight.

From Jerry McGuire’s “You complete me” to Mark Darcy’s “I love you, just as you are”, the simple concept of acceptance really needs no further words. For me, they carry with them the idea that a person can be a home as much as a place may be and that in and of themselves, if you’re lucky enough as I have been to find that person, they are ‘enough’. These words express a love like those which were borrowed by Patch Adams. “I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way than this: where I does not exist, nor you, so close that your hand on my chest is my hand, so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep”. A love that is perhaps as difficult to explain as it is simple in nature. But we still try to express if not what this love is for each of us, then why it is all we have.

To paraphrase from The Notebook, “The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more, that plants a fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds and thats what has been given to me. I am nothing special; just a common person with common thoughts, and I’ve led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me, and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who’s ever lived: I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul and to me, this has always been enough”. It is thoughts such as these that I believe we take into our marriage because we know that together we can be better and stronger than we ever could be apart. As the lines that were given to Susan Sarandon, “We need a witness to our lives. Theres a billion people on the planet. I mean, what does any one life mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things. All of it, all the time, every day. You’re saying ‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go unwitnessed because I will be your witness’”.

It was said in The Bachelor “Its a wonderful thing, as time goes by, to be with someone who looks into your face when you’ve gotten old, and still sees what you think you look like”. I think The Boy and I have both been lucky enough to find in each other someone who will want to stay through the good times and the bad. Who will promise to stand as a witness, support, encourage and counsel as the need arises. Neither of us always finds it easy to have surrendered so much of ourselves to be who we are together but it is a commitment that we have both made freely. We have a genuine desire to see as many tomorrows as we can together and to be able to look back on all our yesterdays fondly. There really aren’t words enough to express everything I feel about being married to The Boy but if I might borrow from Robbie Hart with sincere apologies, “Wanna make you smile whenever you’re sad / Help you around when your arthritis is bad / All I wanna so is grow old with you / I’ll get your medicine when your tummy aches / build you a fire if the furnace breaks / oh it could be so nice, growin’ old with you / So let me do the dishes in the kitchen sink / Put you to bed when you’ve had too much to drink / I wanna grow old with you.”.

So when I was thinking about this speech, I was kind of hoping that it might write itself and I guess in a way it has. There really does not seem much more to say other than to actually thank this man for committing to share his life with me and to thank all of you, our guests for coming to celebrate this event with us. And without further ado I’d like to ask you to raise your glasses to love, to laughter and to happy ever after.”

Like A Dream

I had a dream about not being prepared for the wedding last night. It wasn’t a nightmare because it didn’t scare the pants off me or anything like that but it was a little unsettling at the time. It wasn’t about the wedding itself however. I mean I wasn’t going oh my god, I’m getting married today and I don’t have a dress yet but I was feeling dreadfully unprepared for the rest of the day. I know that I was with my parents and a seemingly random dog and that I was quite concerned about making sure I’d be able to have everything that I wanted with me. I was racing around the house (which was not our house, or rather their house but somewhere that seemed a mixture of a few places I know, mostly my Sydney Aunt and Uncle’s) and frantically thinking of all the items I would need because I couldn’t come back for anything forgotten. I think I started writing a list as well, just to make sure I got it covered.

I know I needed my camera. I think I wanted my tripod. Clothes to change into after the wedding and over the weekend when I would be in a hotel were also on the list. I can’t remember anything else though. Now that I think about what possessions I might need in order to get ready and to last a few days without going home, there doesn’t seem an awful lot of other things that would be important. Well, apart from money and keys but they wouldn’t have needed to be ‘gathered’. They just would have been there. The list was growing at about 5 or 6 items however. And I had that feeling you get after you realise you’ve woken up late. You’re focusing as much on the need to rush as you are on the things you need to remember before you leave the house and you just feel like sitting down cause you can’t figure out where to start.

I’m sure you could come up with some sort of Freudian analysis of my dream and say that although I appear to have settled in my decision to marry, I could still be feeling somewhat unprepared for what comes after. The fact that I was not in my own house but rather another disjointed home might suggest that I have some personal unresolved issues or may need to organise my thoughts or my environment more in order to take the time to chill out. Of course, you could also say that the random dog was the one my cousin asked me if The Boy could dogsit last night while we had a girls night out. The house was therefore her home because she and I will travel together to said girls night and the rushed feeling comes from the fact that I was lucid dreaming right before I was woken up late this morning.

I must say though that I am still waiting for the good dream about this wedding. The one where my girlfriend from overseas flies in to surprise me and we have some amazing last minute additions to the day because we win lotto a fortnight before the event. Where the guests decide they’re still in the mood to party after the reception and we all kick on until The Boy and I feel the need to pass out in our very expensive hotel suite which we don’t leave for about 24 hours. We do poke out our heads for a small gathering of the interstate guests but then abscond back in to opulent luxury before flying off to an exotic location for our honeymoon which includes several foreign countries. I think that would be a much more productive way of spending my sleeping hours if I’m going to remember them afterwards. Plus they do say that positive visualisation can help things come to pass...

Channelling Julie Andrews

We’re up to church music at the moment. After a mammoth weekend of wedding stuff, we are deciding what to play for the processional and the recessional and all the bits in between and its not an easy job. Well, it might be if you were already in love with certain pieces but we pretty much have a list of what we’re not playing at the wedding as opposed to what we are. Air on a G String is out as is Clarkes Trumpet Voluntary. The Wedding March is most definitely not allowed and the Canon in D will not be getting a look in at all. Now before anyone gets upset with me because they had this at their wedding and they thought it was a beautiful piece, I actually like all these pieces. Well, except for The Wedding March, I’m actually not overly partial to that one. The thing is though that given our budget and available resources, we could not have these pieces played as we would wish them to be played at our wedding (namely with a lot of brass) so we would rather opt for something else entirely.

Since we are going to be married in an old church which has a lovely organ, we would like to take advantage of that as well. We could possibly ask friends to provide all the music throughout the service or have the organist play the piano instead but it would seem a shame not to use a grand organ at all if it is available. So we have been surfing the net looking for options and alternatives to the stock standard pieces every experienced wedding musician would have in their repertoire almost by default. I wanted something that sounded happy and upbeat that didn’t remind me of a dirge. Oddly enough, we found recordings of some pieces by the Mormon Church that I quite liked but they didn’t seem quite fitting on the whole. I didn’t mind if it was a contemporary piece or a classical one but seeing as it needed to be played on an organ, the night we were searching started to feel quite drawn out until we hit on a processional that worked.

It will probably both amuse and come as no surprise to some people that the first piece we chose was the Wedding Processional from The Sound Of Music, arguably one of the most famous musicals ever. The movie was a phenomenon in and of itself and at some point in their lives, millions of girls from all different generations wanted to actually be Julie Andrews. I thought what better way to start The Wedding in front of all our guests than to borrow a bit of musical brilliance and well maybe channel a bit of the great lady herself as I walk down the aisle. I did vaguely look at having a bit of Cinderella moment by finding out of there was such a thing as the processional from The Slipper and the Rose (one of my all time favourite movies since I was about 5) but it really wasn’t a feature in the movie. When Cinderella turns up to gatecrash the prince’s wedding they all remove to discuss whether the prince can marry her instead and then they have the main refrain for the two of them I think. She doesn’t get a proper traipse down the aisle.

Now that this has been sorted though, we still actually have all the rest of the pieces to go. There are hymns I believe that are a requirement of us being married in an Anglican church and we need to choose something for the signing of the register while everyone has to sit quietly in their pews and the recessional as we leave the church. Given the somewhat modern (and perhaps girly) piece we have chosen for when I enter the church, the idea appealed to have a modern “boy” sort of piece as we leave the church. It amused us no end to find the Mario Brothers Theme and the Tetris theme played on church organs on You Tube but I somehow think that this would not sit at all well with some of our guests. It is our wedding of course but still, it wouldn’t be meaningful enough for us to go to that effort. I imagine we shall choose some other pieces that fit a little more seamlessly into the ceremony and save the kooky for another time. There is still a whole reception full of music that we can inflict on our guests as the mood takes us.

5th Floor - Domestic Disputes and Bridal Registry...

So I’m a girl right? Who can, at times, be somewhat materialistic. I like to have nice things. I also like them to look good, I want them to last and to actually do the job for which they were bought and not merely kind of suit the purpose for same. That usually means that they don’t come from Hot Dollar although I have learnt never to underestimate the effectiveness of a great bargain. Its not rocket science though. For the most part items either fulfil your requirements or they don’t. Anyway, given my penchant for nice things, you could be forgiven for thinking that when it comes to bridal registries, I would be in seventh heaven. That I’d be overjoyed by having the chance to pick lots of lovely gifts that I intended on giving other people the privilege of buying for us. You would however be wrong. Quite wrong. Oh my God. I’m glad I’m only getting married once because I am never doing that again.

It looks like so much fun in the movies. You get to wander round the store with (what was in our case a pda) scanner that allows you enter items into your list with the press of a button. Everyone looks so carefree as they wander around feeling like they’re shopping with an unlimited credit card. The reality however is somewhat different. Maybe we were just unprepared but at some point or other throughout the three and a half hours The Boy and I spent completing the process, we had a couple of mini domestics in the middle of Myer relating to the size, the brand, the cost, the appearance or the value of just about everything. Ok, so maybe that was a little over exaggerated but thats what it felt like at times. Why do we have to get bath sheets and bath towels? Why does it matter which potato masher we select? Why do we want a food processor and a blender all in one? Why does it make a difference what type of plain high-ball glass tumblers we have?

Some of the simplest decisions just took the longest time. Although it didn’t help either that in order to try and avoid more disharmony throughout the exercise, we were both bending over backwards at various points in order to be non-committal and open to the opinions of the other party first. That just meant that no one seemed to have the guts enough to make a decision which I have to say went down like a tonne of bricks really. I always wanted for us not to be one of those stereotypical couples. You know, where the woman paces around brandishing her list and attacking the whole experience with the tenacity of a pit bull while the bemused partner trundles along several paces behind and tries to run the gamut between appearing both engaged and interested and keeping his mouth shut about why it matters so much what type of tea cups they choose if neither of them drink tea. And we weren’t that couple which was good but neither were we much better.

We bickered. There was sarcasm and frustration. Then there was more sarcasm and frustration. There was also real deliberation over what we could reasonably put down on the list. The plasma didn’t make it. On the whole though, I guess we didn’t come off too badly. The boy is still speaking to me after I dumped a bucket load of attitude on him. Note to self: do not get yourself into a situation where you have a light breakfast and then nothing to eat for 6 hours, you turn into a right cow. We do have a couple of amendments that need to be made to the list such as quantities and preferences but we did manage to get a good range of items. It does make it hard though when the things you really want to put down are the things you haven’t bought yourself for the very reason that you can’t actually afford them. Basically because most of our friends can’t actually afford them either. The registry does make it easier for them to pitch in with each other to get us something major that we really want but still, its not very exciting when a lot of the cheap things on your list are things like spatulas and measuring cups.

It is nice though that whatever is still left on the bridal registry after the wedding, we actually get a chance to buy at 30% off shortly thereafter. Maybe we should put the plasma on there...

Mammoth Friday

(Decoration)
Well Friday was a bit of a marathon. Not so much because I was racing around everywhere frantically but rather that I felt like I had been driving around in circles the whole day by the end of it. Which come to think of it, is not really like a marathon at all and is more like laps. Anyway, the first circle I drove around in was a relatively small one which started before 5am when we had to get up so we could head out to the flower markets. Freedom Lady who is the partner to The Father Of The Groom very kindly offered to assist us by coordinating the floral element of our day and as such, we went out to meet her to look for suppliers and ideas. I’m sure we were a little frustrating as when we got there, we pretty much had no idea what we actually wanted. And a lot of the things we liked were only widely available in pretty much every season but the one we were getting married in ie. Winter.

We looked at lilies and orchids and pussywillow and various forms of foliage. We saw tulips and kangaroo paw and I realised that I was naturally going to be drawn to one of the more expensive flowers there when some imported roses from South America caught my eye. It does amuse me that I always said I didn’t want stupid roses for my bouquet. I felt they were too generic and boring and was favouring the arums and the callas instead. And yes I know they’re the funeral flower but I’m not superstitious about flowers and I think they’re pretty. Anyway, I was not going to have roses. I also know that The Boy had once been talking to a florist and had heard of people who imported the flowers for their wedding in from South America or somewhere exotic like that. At the time The Boy thought that was excessive and was a bit dumbfounded as to why anyone would seriously bother doing that. Then he obviously met me. In my defence though, they are beautiful and we both like them.

The roses that I saw were described as a jaffa or chocolate orange type of colour. They’re not brown or coffee or latte but have a real burnt orange type of tone to them which is unlike anything I’ve seen in the Australian roses. I would only need a couple of bunches to complete a rather modest bouquet and provide a couple of buttonholes so I’m not planning on decking out whole rooms with them or anything. I think we will try and complement the colour with some more latte coloured buds for The Pussycat and then some orchids stems for the centrepieces at the reception. I figure twining one of these around a piece of driftwood with some vine or maybe leaves would look alright. It might sound a bit weird but I think it would work. We do of course have to try a mock bouquet and the centrepiece out first to make sure I’m not insane but hopefully this comes together without too much heartache. Much like my jacket idea has done.

(Dresses)
After the nanna nap I had when I got home from dropping The Boy at work, The Mother Of The Bride and I went to a fitting for my jacket. Which didn’t seem like much of a fitting really because I only tried on a readymade jacket in the style that I wanted and the couturier took a few extra measurements as I have apparently lost a little weight since I saw her last. It was a chance for me to actually see a jacket with the dress however and show my mother that it was not some weird idea The Boy and I had concocted in our minds. The dress and the jacket would look good together. Actually, I think they looked better than good. I think the jacket looked hot in an elegant kind of way if thats possible and it gave a different dynamic to the dress which is pretty impressive by itself. Its also nice to think that I will be able to walk down the aisle and actually surprise some people because so far I have managed to share pictures of me in my dress with just about everybody I know. Except Naughty M who expressly forbade me telling her anything about the dress whatsoever. I happen to keep a picture and a swatch of fabric with me wherever I go though which is quite useful when talking to vendors and apparently anyone else within arms length as well. Honestly, I didn’t set out to show all and sundry but by now, a good proportion of my friends have already seen it and some of The Boys’ have too so it would be nice if when I walked down the aisle, the majority of the church wasn’t thinking “I knew she was going to look like that”.

So yeah, I had a fitting for my outfit and then we went to sort out some fabric for the Mother Of The Bride outfit. Which we managed to pull off without too much drama. Especially since I think The Mother Of The Bride has changed her mind on what she wanted to wear to The Wedding as many times as I did. There was the floor length jacket idea, the knee length jacket idea, the thigh length jacket idea and then the hip length jacket idea. And what went under the jacket seemed to go from skirts to dresses back to skirts again. Basically though, we did have a rough idea of what we were looking for when we went out and I think we found some real options. We wanted suit material in a light grape sort of colour to take back to the dress maker who unfortunately has no qualms about voicing exactly what you can’t do or what she doesn’t like about what you want. You can’t for example wear a jacket over a beaded top. Excuse me, but who made you queen of the castle? And she figures that no one should actually want a peplum anymore because they are so out of fashion these days but I have news for her. If she want to mess with the bride, bring it on I say. Even if peplums were out of fashion, I’m damn well bringing them back in myself so she can pipe down. And as for wearing jackets over beaded tops, she doesn’t have to like it, she just has to do what she’s being paid to do or politely decline the commission.

So anyway, after we had finished our couple of errands, we doubled back to pick up The Boy from work and then headed back into the city to check out another fabric store which as it turned out wasn’t all the productive at the time as The Mother Of The Bride was already sold on what she’s seen and The Boy and I were tired and hungry so we headed home for about an hour before we drove back into the city for dinner.

(Dinner)
We had a menu tasting on that evening which came about after no small amount of phone calls and emails in relation to same. Basically this was because we weren’t sure if we were going to have issues with the menu. When we first booked the venue, the sample menu had five dishes in each course, the majority of which I would have had no trouble nominating for the wedding. When it came to organise the tasting dinner however, I was emailed the new updated menu which held very little that I could actually eat and almost nothing at all that I wanted. The only thing that looked any good to me was the Chocolate Fondant Pudding with Sour Cream Ice Cream. Which, if you can only fit one course in because you are constricted by your dress, would be a pretty good dish to have but I still want to maintain the pretence that I’m going to eat the full three courses that we’re paying for on the night. So I wanted food that I liked.

As it turned out however, the kitchens were prepared to serve the meals from the old menu and when one of the Parentals came in to town for business, The Boy and I figured we’d include The Mother Of The Bride in on the action. This turned out to be rather fortunate as it meant we got a chance to sample three dishes in each course instead of only two. Something that definitely made the difference in the selection of dishes for the entree as the ravioli which sounded so nice on paper turned out to be almost as salty as the harbour we sat dining beside. Initially I was a bit disappointed that we only were allowed to order one entree, main and dessert each as some places that you go offer tasting nights where they make the whole menu available for you to try. Since we basically got a choice between the old menu and the new by selecting individual dishes for each person though, this worked in our favour.

The three of us happily shared the dishes around which much have looked a little weird to the people sitting beside us. Within a couple of minutes of us sitting down, bread and sparkling wine were brought out without us apparently having ordered anything. Then the food and white wine started coming and the plates got passed around the table every couple of bites taken. When the mains and red wine arrived, the same thing occurred as we discussed the merits of having either two salmon dishes on the night or two red meat dishes in the same course. I have no idea whether there is some sort of etiquette that says you should have at least one white meat and one dark meat in your entree and main or one seafood and one meat dish providing that there is adequate variation but its our wedding so we’re having cured salmon followed by cooked salmon unless you opt for the vegetarian frittata and the beef. If you’re somewhat fussy though and none of those options actually float your boat, you can hold out for the dessert and the wedding cake which is yet to be decided. We don’t see the cake lady till Tuesday week.

The Making Of The Wedding

Its wonderful what you can now find on the internet. Quite by accident sometimes you stumble over flashes of brilliance that might leave you in awe or perhaps inspire you to go forth and create all on your own. I have recently been prompted into one of those inspirational phases which would be fantastic except I still haven’t quite figured out where to go with it yet. My new fountain of ideas has sprung up in relation to the videoing of The Wedding. The Boy and I have previously discussed the merits of actually getting a videographer for our wedding but up until now we have been a bit undecided. Apart from the very real benefit of being able to see how we naturally moved and sounded at the time, there are some fairly decent drawbacks.

Aside from the fact that a lot of people seem to want your first born for the privilege, wedding videos are just so boring! Ceremonies are often quite serious (or tedious) and the entertaining bits of women getting their hair done or the bridal party standing around posing for photos can be very few and far between. Even at receptions, the chatter around the table might make for fantastic company but its not usually something you want to watch hours of after the fact. Or even during the fact for that matter. Because in order to get around and see everything, some poor bugger has to be behind the lens the whole time. So we were a bit stumped until I saw this TOTALLY AWESOME VIDEO by the Lockdown Projects. I have no idea whether we could actually pull something like that off without taking on a second job or selling a kidney but I sat there thinking holy cow, if I have a wedding video I want it to be like that.

Of course, if you are going to shamelessly rip off someone else’s idea then you really ought to change it just a little bit at least first. So I figured that instead of getting our guests to mime the words to Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now to make a music video, I’d have them mime Love Cats by The Cure. I got pictures in my head of a few friends in particular hissing directly into the camera and others prancing around to this, I don’t even know what to call it – pop classic? The line “we’re so wonderfully wonderfully wonderfully wonderfully pretty!” just lends itself perfectly to a dolled up bride and groom as well. Getting the guests to go along with this however is another matter. It takes a lot of effort and energy to make people do something that may make them feel a little silly and a splash charisma too. I think I could probably do it but by all accounts, I’m going to be a trifle busy all day long so really, I’m out. If all else fails though, I do have a plan B.

Seeing as everyone who is there on the day (including us) would have seen it all before, having a straight replay on video would not seem all that exciting. To anyone. I figured what people might like to see or know afterwards though are things they didn’t actually expect. After a little further consideration on the fact that we have turned our wedding into “The Wedding”, a one show only production, I thought what better thing to do with lots of random footage than to piece it all together and create a “making of” video? A sort of mockumentary if you will on The Wedding with voiceovers discussing the casting, the props, the challenges, the dramas and anything else silly or strange that we can come up with when we edit it all together. I think I might actually want to look at something like that in a few years time. And if it was short and sweet, it might be something that anyone who couldn’t make it to The Wedding was happy to watch as well. At least there would be somewhat more to it than people just going about their business. Even if it is a significant occasion. This is what home movies should be like.

Pulling Teeth

Just quietly, how long does it take to complete minor repairs and courier a damn dress? I know other people who have had perfectly pleasant experiences while arranging to purchase special items such as wedding dresses from interstate but I have to say that I’m currently Not Happy Jan. I put the dress on layby knowing that I would need repairs done on the gown and expecting that I would be able to go down in person to get it sorted. Events conspired against me however and I was left managing the whole thing by phone from home and it would seem that because of that, the whole customer service thing went out the window. I swear getting a straight answer out of the salon has been like pulling teeth. More trouble than its worth almost. Everyone was very polite to me on the phone of course but I just got the impression that the exercise of getting people to follow things up for me was as useless as tits on a bull.

I suppose I should have gotten an inkling when I rang up to ask a few questions about the veil. When I realised that the dyed veil was going to look quite horrible with the ivory jacket, I rang up to ask whether I could change my order or possibly remove my order after having put down a deposit. The concept of two separate scenarios was apparently too complex to deal with however causing most of their brain cells to run away and hide so they just deleted the order completely and sent me a new layby slip. As I never asked for this, I figured I could change my mind later if I really wanted so I let it go. Things just got worse when I needed the dress repaired. I needed to know how much the repairs to my dress would cost and in what time frame these could be completed. Namely whether I could fly down have a fitting, stay overnight and fly out with my fixed dress the following evening. If the repairs could not be completed overnight or if I could not fly down in person, I also needed to know how much it would cost to courier the dress. I needed the dress asap and I wanted the cheapest option. What I got was the run around.

You can’t talk to the salon about repairs because they sub-contract the work for their off-the-floor dresses to seamstresses. The seamstresses can’t tell you what needs to be done on your gown because the salon keeps it on site. Seamstresses will only quote on what they are told to so it is a fatal error to simply ask how much it costs to “fix” something. Just as an aside though, you’d think that they’d tack on stuff you didn’t really need to make money when you gave them free reign but that obviously didn’t happen. When they come back to you and you make it clear that you have other concerns regarding the dress, the whole process starts again. After you manage to approve the repairs, you get a new set of problems. You can’t pay the seamstress because she is sub-contracted by the salon. You can’t pay the salon though when they don’t know what the seamstress is charging you. I swear to god this process is driving me insane. I think I have it to the stage where it is almost sorted. It would just be my luck though if I get the dress couriered up here and it gets lost in transit!