One down, one to go

Doug and I had our US cere­mony last night (it’s not the legal one; that will be Aus­tralia for vari­ous weird visa reas­ons I’m not going to go into). It was really lovely and we were thrilled to see so many of our friends here on such short notice. People left quite a bit earlier than we expec­ted but we under­stand some of them had to get up early and work (we espe­cially appre­ci­ated that when we went to grab a cubano this morn­ing at the little cof­fee­house that could and two of our guests were there work­ing hard and had been for hours!). We were very sad that Doug’s daugh­ters were both unable to make it, but pleased that his sister, her daugh­ter and her hus­band were there. 

It rained yes­ter­day for the first time in about five months, which was lovely. 

goldfish42

was down from Olympia for the cere­mony and she stayed here Friday night and helped clean the house and pre­pare food (utter angel!). We had a very silly time trying to make a pavlova. I told every­one it was a Clayton’s Pavlova, but of course, that joke does­n’t really work here either. We made lots of salads and Doug piled melon balls and rasp­ber­ries into the water­melon shell and we put all the mead on ice.

I went and got my hair done (I wasn’t going to, but it needed a cut des­per­ately, so why not get it styled while I was at it?). I won’t go through the sil­li­ness of the next bit except to say when get­ting wed­ding hair done, always wear some­thing that unbut­tons so you can get it off without dis­turb­ing the do.

Back home, more inter­state guests already there (hi,

puzzle­fox

!) and into the merlot silk chif­fon dress. Merlot nails to match: check. Amber engage­ment neck­lace: check. Bur­gundy Flue­vog shoes to match: check. Garnet ear­rings and red paua shell brace­let from Matt to match: com­pletely forgot until 11pm. Ah well. Doug changed into his red silk Chinese jacket and bur­gundy sarong.

Laid out nib­blies. More guests. Looks like the rain has gone so we will walk down to the park for the cere­mony. Just as the sun is set­ting, gor­geous skies, the air smells fresh and reju­ven­ated. Mum had said to me that it was Yom Kippur, but of course, with the sun set, it wasn’t any more and in fact, exactly the right time to be having a big feast.

The cere­mony was lovely. I think I might post it here later when I have photos… And the food for the recep­tion was incred­ible!
 Thank you so much, Lars, for the unbe­liev­ably amaz­ing mojito pork. Yum! (Yes, I have *com­pletely* fallen off the veget­arian wagon over here.) There was so much mead. And the cake! Oh. My. God. Gluten-free chocol­ate bour­bon cake with rasp­berry butter cream and fond­ant. It tasted like cake! And I told Doug that he had to be care­ful not to hit the bottom when he cut the cake or he’d have to kiss the nearest boy (it’s an old thing from when I was a teen­ager at birth­day parties…) so, he hit bottom, turned to 

puzzle­fox

‘s part­ner Bruce and they had a good old snog. Lars checked his watch and said, “One hour, 52 minutes’ and every­body laughed. 

Sabine and Doug’s sister Linda and Kate from Bare­foot *cleaned the kit­chen* while I wasn’t look­ing which was amaz­ing. Sabine says I have to pay it forward.

Every­one was gone by half past mid­night so we went to bed and had a delight­ful time. 

This morn­ing we had the inter­staters over for cheese plat­ter which never got put out (mmm, taleggio and pear; mmm, edam and quince paste) and mimo­sas and smoked salmon omelettes which Doug whipped up. And then, Doug and I took a lovely lazy drive over Mount Hamilton to Stone City to help a little with the Mabon fest­iv­it­ies and lay a couple of stones in their new labyrinth, since the second day after we met, we walked the labyrinth near our place in Melbourne.

Sorry for the brev­ity of this, but my delight­ful love awaits me in the bed­room and the week­end has been some­what exhausting.