Wedding Diary
12 August 1999
For the wedding and reception we gave Ashleigh a disposable camera to keep her busy, and lo and behold, some of her photos came out quite well. One of the photography lecturers here said he liked the perspective (ie, the photos were very obviously taken from two feet above the ground) For the purposes of easy downloading, from two feet above the ground) For the purposes of easy downloading, I cropped all the sky out on these ones.
Ash's photo's page 1
31 July 1999
Well, it only took me 21 days to finally make an entry...In my defence I was on my honeymoon for 7 of those, and I still haven't actually unpacked my computer at home!
The wedding was just perfect! Ashleigh looked great and walked up the aisle beautifully, Monique was just STUNNING! The service went very well, with extra special thanks to the musicians who managed to come together with, like, an hour's practice.
The drivers and photographers were great, we had a fun afternoon doing the photo stuff around the place (we don't have the photos yet) and the reception was just marvellous (I drank lots of Guinness, which was a bonus).
We had a lovely honeymoon, Ash stayed at Bron (the Maid of honour)'s house, and Mon and I went to the Grampians, in a cabin with a spa, open fireplace, fresh bread delivered every morning and plunger coffee provided. [The place was Mackey's Peak Cabins or something, in Hall's Gap, comes highly recommended by us :)]
Anyway, I'll write some more next week after I've had a chance to scan in some more photos...
Post Wedding (By Mark)
It's well past the start of the wedding, and Monique was late, under instructions.
And for a number of reasons..
- Some of the guests were not at the church yet. (thank goodness for mobile phones, but cringe waiting for the bills).
- Jason's hair was still wet (somebody buy Bron a hair dryer).
- Jason had lost his wallet, though he wasn't overly panicked about it. (some nice lady found it, rang us while we were out the front of the church and actually dropped it off at the church [thank you who ever you are])
- just because she was going to be late anyway.
There are some nice photos Bernie took here(note this page is largish)
25 June 1999
What? 14 days? When did that happen? Well, we're in the final stages now aren't we? The groomsmen's shirts are made (by my Mum - Angie) and Ash's coat is nearly done (by my Mum - Sue). Our bed was delivered today, our couch tonight and our fridge tomorrow. We are going up to Wodonga on Sunday to pick up some more stuff we left behind. Oh yeah, we have a house to put it all in!
Searching for a house was a ^%$#ing nightmare. Monique arrives home latish in the evenings and I work Saturdays, leaving Sunday the only day to look for a house. Of course Property Managers don't work Sundays, so we looked at the outsides of a lot of houses together.
After about four weeks and thirty odd houses, we still hadn't found even one that suited our stringent criteria, so we trimmed our thirty point checklist down to just a couple of items - three bedrooms, and a backyard that the dog won't actually escape from. Immediately we found three houses that fitted most of our original checklist.
Filling in the forms was another joy. My best personal reference is also my landlord and is also my superior at work...looked a bit suspect, even to me. The prize winner for strange requests came from LJ Hooker I think...Does your pet have a reference? Would that be personal or professional???
31 May 1999
Monique and her two bridesmaids went shopping in the city for shoes on
Saturday...and Sunday. Moaning and groaning, with aching legs they
crawled home exhausted on Saturday afternoon, with shoes for Mon's sister
but not for her or the other bridesmaid. Like battle weary soldiers, they
reluctantly headed out to Chadstone (Chadstone is the footwear Mecca of
Melbourne, or so I am led to believe) At Two O'Clock on Sunday, the
warriors returned triumphant, carrying the enemy's head on a...no wait,
sorry, carrying not only shoes for the prospective bride, but also a
gorgeous pair for the Flower Girl (aka Ash).
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21 May 1999
I don't really have a new diary entry today, but if you look a little higher on
the page, you can see a countdown to the wedding, thanks to a slightly modified
perl script from Matt's Script Archive. A stylish tip of the hat to
Kram Llens, who, as the system
administrator, was kind enough to direct me to the Apache Web Server manual
:P Just jokes, he also helped nut out enough Linux to make this work.
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8 May 1999
Monique and Ashleigh went up to Wodonga (where the wedding will be) Last week,
for hair and make-up trials. Monique's comments, after the event - "Remind me
to take lots of shampoo to get all this crap out of my hair"..."We have to
make sure Ashleigh looks like she's 4 and not 25"..."My eyelashes are STILL
stuck together". Mon usually wears a bit of lipstick and a quick swish of
mascara, but for some reason wedding makeup tends to be more of a Sparky the
Clown affair. Surely most women are the same. I wonder how many guys have
lifted the veil to kiss the bride and gone "Hey, who are you? Something's
wrong here, my girlfriend doesn't have a plastic head!" Imagine a hot
summer's day...half an hour in the sun taking photos, and the bride's face
would be melted like a Star Wars figure in the microwave.
When they went to organise the flowers, Mon left the two bridesmaids
talking to the florist to chase after Ashleigh. She returned a few
moments later to find the three of them intently discussing a flower about
this shade of orange. When they
finally got her down from the ceiling they explained that the florist was
just showing them the size of the flowers, but Monique's nerves
haven't quite been the same since.
Meanwhile, I had to work that day so I missed out on this adventure.
*disappointment*
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23 April 1999
Out of the blue, I received a dinner invitation the other day. I was sitting at work, and, bingley bingley beep, some email arrived, virtual greeting card with a dinner invite in it. It _was_ from Monique by the way! It was great, we left Ash with Mon's parents,
and trundled off to Lygon St. We decided not to actually do anything, just hang out and have dinner, so we walked up Lygon St until we got hungry, and we went to a rather rustic pasta restaurant, called, oddly enough, Ristorante Pasta Rustica.
We just sat and talked, it was wonderful, the food was delicious, and there was so much of it (although the waiter did make us finish all of it before he would take the plate, which was a little disturbing) then we went to a patisserie and got dessert,
mmmmm, chocolate.
It was so good to just sit and talk: between our jobs, living in seperate houses and trying to organise the wedding, we don't seem to get much time for ourselves at the moment, and I was starting to miss her!!!
On the wedding planning front, we sent the draft of the mass booklet off to the priest this week, and a few other odds and ends, but the major chaos is over (I think!!)
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10 April 1999
Oops, wow, Monique actually liked the Queen song...that's cool, 'cos I preferred it, it's more, well, weddingish. Now I gotta make it longer. I have a friend with a sequencer and stuff that says he can probably do it, so it should be ok. Invitations
have gone out, flooding the Australian Postal service for a day or two. Good thing we didn't email them *thinks about Melissa virus*.
Bridal registry is a little difficult. We didn't like Myer's, cos they snubbed us once when we went in in our scruffy weekend clothes, plus all the stuff is expensive and ugly. Target did have a gift registry, but the computer system didn't work,
so they stopped doing it. If you want something done properly, you gotta do it yourself, so off we went to Target with a pen and a notepad, and we are making our mothers run the registry.
Oh, and we've picked and booked a location for our honeymoon...somewhere quiet with no Ashleighs!.
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23 March 1999
We had something of a disagreement over the wedding planning the other night. Mostly 'cos I wasn't doing any of it. So armed with my readjusted attitude, I have rung a suit place (better have what I want!), organised my assorted certificates, and
I think I've found a song for the entrance. I wanted Procession, an old Queen instrumental, which would've been perfect if we had a small church, but it's not going to be long enough to walk up that gigantic aisle.
So I'll suggest Melon Collie by Smashing Pumpkins, and stamp my influence on proceedings that way.
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2 March 1999
Hehe, a whole month, I'm doing well aren't I? Well, we've booked the reception, it will be at the Lake Hume Resort, hem hem, about 20km out of Wodonga.
Back to the tie thing. Monique has a problem in that she wants me to look different to the groomsmen (who will be Mike my brother, and Mark my best mate). I told her that people would know who I was by the look of sheer terror on my face. I think I've
come up with something workable though, if the groomsmen have plain vests and I have a pattern or a gold trim or something. If anyone has any other ideas please email me.
The guest list is up to about 200,000 now, as Monique's parents thought of a few family friends they felt they should invite, my parents pointed out a few people I had forgotten, and a few of my people went and got girl/boyfriends, how inconsiderate :) We're moving the reception to the MCG!
Remembered a story. Mon's Mum and Dad have kindly offered to pay the ridiculous amounts of money involved (good thing too or we'd all be having sausages and bread in Mark's backyard). At one point, discussing the massive logistical endeavour ahead of us,
her Dad suggested that he just give us x thousand dollars and we elope. Everyone laughed, except me, I thought "Beauty, that's a deposit on a house and we can all have sausages and bread in Mark's backyard!!"
Anyway, that's it for now, hopefully less than a month to the next one :)
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4 February 1999
Well, here is the first entry. We've decided to get married good and soon, before either of us can chicken out.
At this stage the 10th of June looks like D-Day, or W-Day anyway.
Given my distaste for anything normal, the whole planning thing gets pretty difficult. I think I've managed to get out of wearing a tie, by going for a suit with a collarless shirt. Several people have come up with practical problems in this, but I have
exercised my problem solving skills successfully up to this point.
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The Soppy Proposal Story
We had discussed the idea for a while, but more in a way of making conversation than plans. So a month before Christmas I took Monique's best friend and flatmate, Bron, shopping, and we bought a ring. For Monique, that is, not for her! My love and I
had planned a trip to Port Macquarie after Christmas, and I thought that would be a great time and place. Also because Mon had asked me when I was gonna finally get around to proposing to her, and I had said "I dunno, definitely before the end of this year
though" just to stop her bugging me. The end of the year had suddenly come quite close.
For a whole month the ring burned a hole in my pocket and Bron's discretion. New Year's Eve arrived and I still hadn't found a proper time and place to propose. The night dragged on and I couldn't get her away from where we were, without her getting
suspicious. 12 o'clock ticked over, oops, and we finally headed off into town. She seemed strangely quiet (like, I wonder why) so I suggested a walk by the river, feigning ignorance. And there as we stood by the river, I fumbled the ring from my pocket and
handed it to her.
When the shock and surprise had subsided, milady said "So, aren't you going to ask me? Don't think you'll get away with just handing it to me!" So like the woman I love :P
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Background
Here's a bit of background story to get you started. Monique and I first met seven years ago, first went out about 5 years ago I think. Maybe six...hmmm. Anyway, then we broke up about the same time Monique found out she was pregnant, then got back
together after Ashleigh was born, and spent six months or so making each others lives an absolute hell. Ahh, those sweet days of screaming and throwingor so making each others lives an absolute hell. Ahh, those sweet days of screaming and throwing stuff.
Fortunately, good sense prevailed, and we broke up for a few years, the events of which don't bear remembering. More enlightened for the experience, we got back together in April last year, two weeks before I moved to Melbourne, duh!
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