Wedding Day Fun

After all of the dramas leading up to our wedding, I lost count of the number of people the night before who promised that this would surely mean the big day would be drama free. However, turns out the fun was just beginning!

For a start - it's (supposedly) the middle of summer. The Wednesday? Gorgeous. The Friday? Incredible. Our wedding day? Can anyone say gale force winds with a dash of icy cold thrown in?

We arrive at the reception. I'm wondering around chatting to people when I suddenly get the feeling that something is missing. After a few seconds of pondering I realise what it is... the string quartet who we paid $600 to play during the drinks and canapes while we had our photographs? Never showed up.

We're sitting at our table eating dinner when I notice the lights on the left hand chandelier above flickering and then going out. Then I watch (and apparently scream but I don't remember that) as the entire 25kg (about 50lb) thing collapses off the ceiling and falls straight for the head of one of Josh's cousins who is holding his three year old son.

I'll talk about that one in detail in another post because it's an absolute miracle that no one was killed or seriously injured.

Finally, we make it to the end of the reception. The food is amazing, the speeches are brilliant, the dancing burns up the dance floor and Josh and I leave just before midnight. And there is only one really big thing left that can go wrong...

We're back at our place, Josh is busy extracting about 40 bobby pins out of my head when my cell phone rings. It's Josh's Mum. The bus that we've arranged to take the Australians back to their hotel? Yup, you guessed it, never showed up.

So, in a fitting reflection of their first night in Wellington, it's 1am and there are 50 Australians shivering on the side of the road in gale force winds with no way to get back to their hotels. After trying to get hold of the bus company (and getting another "you have reached us out of office hours" message) I manage to arrange a whole stack of cabs to go and pick them up, along with my lifesaver of a sister-in-law who deserves a bridesmaid of the year award.

BUT, the upside of all this, is that we're quite possibly the only couple of wedding history who are getting almost as much in refunds after their wedding, as having to pay out without some massive "ruining the wedding" disaster (e.g. every guest being food poisoned). And, despite all of these, we still had the most amazing day ever!

No one was killed or hurt by the chandelier (of course there could be no refund that could possibly compensate if someone had been), no one actually missed the string quartet, the bus incident, while traumatic at the time, has now turned into one of those "remember the night when" stories back in Sydney and as for the wind? While we're going to have some amazing photos because of it!