04.04.04

It was three years ago today that Mark and I stood up in front of our nearest and dearest, and publicly affirmed our love and commitment to each other.  Marriage* has had a bad rap over the years, but both my parents and Marks parents are still together – and still seem to like each other.  We have high standards to emulate.

It’s rather a pity I didn’t start this blog until after the wedding, because it was a very interesting time of my life.  We decided to get married in a fairly spontaneous manner, and decided to do it quickly.  I can’t remember the reasoning at the time, but it had something to do with Uni holidays for Mark.  Or something.  We quickly found a celebrant – the only one in Sydney that had a website, and didn’t seem to take himself too seriously (he was prepared to dress up as Elvis and sing, but that cost extra), hired a park ($165 for the rotunda, or $4000 for a marquee, we took the rotunda), and found a vegetarian restaurant.  Andrew recommended a great seamstress (I often found her passed out on the floor when I arrived for a fitting, but you get that), and my aunt made a beautiful cake that was perfect for the day.

The best mans father supplied the wedding car.  It was to be a Jaguar XK120, but the brakes failed the week before the wedding, and they had to get parts from the UK to fix it.  So we ended up with a 1970’s Porsche.  Not my favourite, but the colour was great with my dress.

The shoes came from Target, as did the fluffy slippers I slipped into for the reception.  The tiara was borrowed from a friend (and she has since given it to charity which is a pity).

The flowers were bought from the Sydney Flower Markets the day before the wedding – you have to be there well before 6am to get the best stuff, and I bought roses for all the (13) bridesmaids, and dahlias for my bouquet.  Can’t recommend dahlias for a bouquet – they stink, but the photographs look interesting with my big floral cricket bat.

Miriam, Christine, Andrew and I spent a fun evening glittering some ikea glassware for tealight candle holders, and a shipload of mirror balls were purchased at a DJ shop – this and some leftover rose petals provided all the decoration we needed for the reception.

A few cases of champagne were purchased for pre and post wedding park drinks, the hotel supplied a table and some chairs for the oldies, and aside from a few more details that everyone pitched in to help with – we had a wedding.

I’m about to post our vows – in case anyone is interested.

*Back in 2004, the Australian marriage laws weren’t as explicitly exclusionary as they are now.  We were married in April, the laws changed in August.  If we had done the traditional thing, and had a long engagement, we probably wouldn’t be married today.  In August, the law was changed so that the words of the monitum (the official words a celebrant must say to make the ceremony legal in Australia) must now state that marriage unites “a man and a woman”.  I know most people wouldn’t be upset by those words, but I would.  Having known many people who would be excluded by this statement, i would see this as devaluing marriage.  I might have held a “Commitment Ceremony”, but it doesn’t have the same seriousness as marriage.  A commitment ceremony doesn’t ask as much of you as a marriage does.