Planz schmanz – Wedding plans revisited (the celebrant) September 2, 2009
Posted by themarchingjester in Observations, Wedding.Tags: carey walden, celebrant, lunchboxes, school, the quat quatta, Wedding, wedding album
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Hi there,
May I know which celebrant you use and how much did you pay for it? I am planning for my wedding and the ones that I have seen are either too enthusiastic or too expensive.
Thanks
Mel
That’s Mel, a casual reader who found my blog through WordPress tags. We corresponded a little and I gave her details of our wonderful celebrant Carey Walden, who just so happens to be a dear friend of mine.
I just got off the phone with Carey and she told me Mel had hired her services for her wedding, and what do you know, also decided to get married in our reception venue this November.
I definitely didn’t plan on marketing The Quat Quatta. I’m only blogging to record a bit of history; after all this is my family and time flies when you’re married. Before I know it I’ll be packing my kids’ lunchboxes to school!
I’m just glad somebody enjoyed reading my enthusiastic posts (pre-wedding, that is) and found Carey to be such a wonderful person. Speaking of pre-wedding, Michele and I have been really busy post-wedding with the wedding photo album. As I speak, the album is almost ready and we both can’t wait to see how it looks.
Watch this space.
And congratulations Mel. I hope your wedding is every bit as beautiful and memorable as ours.
New addition to the family! August 17, 2009
Posted by themarchingjester in Life At Home, To Start Off With, Wedding.Tags: australian, best man, bodyguard, brisbane, cereals, chick magnet, life, melbourne, mexico, nomad, refund, suburb, teaching english
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Hello all, I hope you have all been well.
Michele and I are proud to announce a new addition into our family. An able participant, that is. No, it’s not what you excited readers are thinking. It’s a full grown man. :O
When in July, we fully comply. August 2, 2009
Posted by themarchingjester in Life At Home, Michele, Wedding.Tags: baby bonus, driving instructor, driving lessons, driving test, hazard perception test, hungarian, L's, MIL, mother in law, photography, top ten, vicroads, wedding album, wedding anniversary, zita kiss
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Hello everybody. I hope you are all well.
My mother-in-law (MIL), who calls us very too often, casually congratulated Michele and me on our fourth month anniversary while speaking with Michele last month. What do you know, the people who really ought to be keeping tabs on the relationship i.e us completely forgot our special day.
It’s perfectly within reason to understand how parents remember little things like these but I had to laugh at MIL’s timing. Four month anniversary? If an award was given out to Silliest but Cute Anniversary Reminder this would be somewhere in the Top Ten.
But it also serves to remind Michele and me how time just passed us by and the hustle and bustle of the 12 months leading up to our special day is now truly behind us. So much so I kind of miss it. But don’t tell anyone I said that. :O
Post-Wedding trauma? April 24, 2009
Posted by themarchingjester in Life At Home, Michele, To Start Off With, Wedding.Tags: Baby, marriage, married, post-wedding trauma, wedding ring
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Hello, hope you are all well.
Many friends and relos have asked me, with all good intentions, if married life has changed me or if I felt the difference in day-to-day life. I think I might have surprised them a little when I suggested I was glad to have just gotten married, as I’m never doing it again!
I followed that with a joke that was made out of my personal experience and my journey with Michele. Every white hair, stress and cent we put into our happy day wasn’t only worth the hassle, but also a testament to the power of love.
However, should our marriage break down over the years (let’s rubbish those naysayers!), there’s no chance in hell I’d file for a divorce as the thought of remarrying and the excess baggage that is stress and unnecessary money spent simply isn’t worth half a day of happiness!
Jokes aside, marriage really hasn’t changed the way Michele and me live. We’re very simple people, with relatively simple needs (though Michele might have something to say about that!) and we proved last year that we could get by with absolutely zero shopping, no outdoor dinings or instant gratifications in the form of movies, DVDs and expensive non-essentials. We’ve proved that we could live rather frugally and be contented with what we have.
That said, we only lived this way as every cent that didn’t go towards our mortgage, bills or groceries went towards our wedding fund. With the wedding out of the way, we could afford to relax our purse strings. Just a little bit though.
Planz schmanz – Bridal Shower (my ‘guest’ appearance) February 16, 2009
Posted by themarchingjester in Michele, Wedding.Tags: bridal shower, real mccoy
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Unbeknown to me, a clone of myself made a ‘guest’ appearance at Michele’s bridal shower yesterday afternoon. As far as I’m concerned, the Real McCoy spent the whole day at home, mucking around with house chores, computer games and napping like the lazy man he is.
I mean, had I known I was spotted across town in the company of beautiful women, I knew my alibi would be perfect. After all, 19 women couldn’t be wrong. I should went out instead and gone on a crime wave, stealing people’s cars or something stupid like that. But don’t worry. I wasn’t there! I was with beautiful women! Stealing cars, what?
Michele came home with a bevy of gifts, a big grin across her face and lots of well wishes. Suffice to say, she has a lot of support and love from family and friends who genuinely care for her and are rapt to be involved in her special day.
I just want to thank the maid-of-honour Kayleen, Michele’s sister Crystal and good friend Sarah for all the effort you guys put into the bridal shower. Looking at the pictures and the amount of work you guys put into arts & crafts and doing up the place was amazing. Michele is truly lucky to have people like you.
20km in two minutes – Death & Life February 13, 2009
Posted by themarchingjester in Michele, Observations, Wedding.Tags: melbourne, family, marriage, celine dion, victorian, firestorms, fire, disastrous, catastrophic, human interest stories, tear, life, doomed, communities, death, destruction, metropolitan, minutes, drag race, racing car, survival, victims, juxtapose, sam, david tree, koala
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The image that launched a worldwide bushfire appeal. I can imagine a mad rush of foreign tourists visiting Australia in the aftermath of the fire.
These last few nights, while plugging away at paperwork and singing Celine Dion as badly as I can, I’ve kept my eyes glued to the disastrous and catastrophic Victorian firestorms that has quickly become a horror story many magnitudes over.
Readers risk a whole gamut of emotions reading the human interest stories. I shed a few tears as I read the triumphant stories of life, felt nauseous as I visualized the last moments of a doomed family and turned pale as I thought how quickly those fires enveloped and engulfed entire communities.
Sadness turned to anger. A tragic loss of life, and nothing could be done to prevent it.
How can I, sitting here in the comfort of my own room in the comforts of metropolitan Melbourne, possibly grasp the scale of destruction and death?.
No, I can’t. The fires, in any direction, are over an hour away from most Melburnians. But you’d be a savage not to feel any emotions at all.
It’s truly frightening. Those fires travelled 20km in two minutes. Unless you’re in a drag race or fitted in a specially-built racing car, your chances of survival are zero.
Victims would not have saw or heard it coming. At that speed, I hope their torment was brief.
Acts of madness and the throbbing veins of fun might sound like a fun ride, but murder is what those arseholes have committed. If caught, they deserve to rot in jail forever.
Juxtapose the death and destruction with my impending marriage, and I can’t help but feel I’ve been taking the wedding – the planning bits at least – too seriously.
At the end of the day, it’s not how much money Michele and me have spent or how much effort we’ve put into making sure everything goes smoothly.
It’s all about having one another, being there for each other and realising life is short. Treasure what we have and what we have had. Good things don’t last forever as they can be taken from you as quickly as those fires.
I love you Michele, and I can’t wait to spend my life with you. The big day can’t come soon enough.
Image from The Age.
Blogkeeping February 9, 2009
Posted by themarchingjester in Life At Home, Michele, To Start Off With, Wedding.Tags: big man, bonbonneries, conniving, europe, greenhouse, groomsmen, health, maid-of-h, maid-of-honour, melbourne, photographer, stress, the marching jester, the marching k, videographer, weather, Wedding
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Does that word even exist? Well, I guess it does when it’s relative to The Marching Jester. You can probably throw in ridiculous Melbourne weather and all wedding-related stress. Might as well, seeing how the Big Man up there likes to keep me on my toes.
I sit here in my room, on the 9th of February, in the cool of a 19 degree weather. The window is open, there’s a very cool breeze bouncing off my skin and everyone is happy.
Can’t say the same 48 hours ago, when it was 46 degrees in the day, and a greenhouse 32 degrees at night. Oh how you mock us with your fickle temper, Mr Melbourne Weather.
A girlfriend of mine has just returned from Europe, surprising me as I had not planned on her returning so quickly. I’ve got to muster an emergency wedding invite to her.
Michele and I have just about sorted most of the wedding stuff out. Over the weekend we’ve bought the groomsmen shirts, ties and picked up the suits. I also found out, rather unwittingly, that the Bride’s beautiful dress sits pretty in the Maid-of-Honour’s home. Oh how fitting. This coming from my mother-in-law and her conniving daughter, who conspire against me, insisting the wedding dress is somewhere in OUR home. Right.
This week, we’ll sit down and plan out our order of service, and draw out an in-depth itinerary for our videographer and photographer. They need to know who to visit first (as I’m putting up with the boys in a hotel room), what the order of the day is and when to arrive at the reception.
The next weeks will be spent touching base with the rest of wedding entities – the bonbonneries, the above-mentioned video and photo folks, our celebrant, our DJ and other stuff that’s probably-important-but-I-be-stuffed-thinking-about-right-now to do.
I tell ya, am I glad marriage is only once. The stress and health-related degradation simply isn’t worth the hassle.
Health-related? Yes. I think I’ve copped the mother of all health-related stresses. Watch this space.
What a week! January 30, 2009
Posted by themarchingjester in Life At Home, Michele, Observations, To Start Off With, Wedding.Tags: melbourne, Wedding, heat wave, celebrant, darcy freeman, brain dead, connex, transport, repurcussions, kelpie, brindle, council, rangers
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Different year, same heat. My family going through the cooling motions in the summer of 06/07.
It’s been a long hard week for Michele and me. But first, some good news.
We met up with our celebrant earlier in the week and registered our intent to marry. We wrote and signed into a big, hard-covered book and discussed what had to be done on the wedding day itself. We’ve not decided how our Order of Service should look. It’s something we’ve to decide really soon.
And then the bad news. As if tackling a Melbourne 40+ Degrees heatwave for three days in a row wasn’t enough, we both had to tackle different challenges from work.
A tragedy can occur in all forms. Yesterday evening Michele came home relatively depressed, having witnessed the death of a girl after she was rushed to the department Michele works in. Although she’s seen death several times throughout her career, it’s still hard to take. Michele told me her team – together with others from other departments – tried valiantly to save her but she was pronounced brain dead within minutes.
Planz schmanz – Wedding (the invites) January 28, 2009
Posted by themarchingjester in Wedding.Tags: address, asia, australia, ballpark, beseech, cardprints, carte blanche, chinese customs, comedy, diablo 3, drama, dramedy, el diablo, English, europe, fed-ex, greeks, international comedy festival, knock down prices, maid-of-honour, marriage, marrying, melbourne, overseas, pedantic, philippines, pinay, relos, rsvp, scurbs, singapore, sri lanka, stand-up, wedding invites, zach braff
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The non-Australian invites were sent out this week. Legible handwriting, much?
If there’s any reason to rethink your marriage to your partner and you’re even contemplating marrying again, I beseech you to reconsider that crazy notion. That’ll mean you’ve to spend many hours speaking to relos you’ve not spoken to for many years (or care), asking in pedantic details what their bloody address is. This is followed by more hours of explaining why I’m getting married (eh, ‘coz I’m in love?), why I’m not marrying in Singapore (Australia is home), yelling at my folks after they’ve still not gotten around to acquiring *insert relo’s name here* address.
Had I known writing our relos addresses and finding out their actual names was that tedious, I’d have second-thought my decision to get married. Until last week, I didn’t think six-line addresses still existed. Where the hell do these people live?
Planz schmanz – Wedding (the reception) January 19, 2009
Posted by themarchingjester in Wedding.Tags: 10%, aristocratic, cheaper, church, courtyard, dearer, DJ, expensive, gargoyles, grandeur, hunky-dory, instinct, jouting, leonda by the yarra, limousine, loot, lyrebird falls, melbourne, nappies, new south wales victoria, onion, pompous, preparations, quat quatta, queensland, reception, scratch the surface, servants, stained glass, tall trees, tasmania, the ascot house, the gables, the willows, triumphant arch, Wedding, wedding caterer of the year, witchmount estate
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Without giving too much away, some stellar sights from the Quat Quatta. Stained glass, the beautiful courtyard and tall trees, complete with a triumphant arch!
Here’s a secret – Michele and I paid the deposit on our reception back in April 2008. That’s almost a full year before our wedding. I remember back then, we didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into, what with the wedding preparations looking like a portfolio of ‘What to do’ and ‘What not to do’. It’s almost the end of the journey now, but looking back, it almost looks like a one year project.
It was like we were peeling an onion. Scratch the surface, and we got more surface. And with each new surface, a new problem.
Of course, we knew we had to decided on a reception before we even started looking at anything else. It wouldn’t have made any sense to make rushed arrangements to walk in, view and chit chat with the management while we’re stressing about the flowers, the DJ, the car or any other facet of the wedding that you could possibly think of.
Before we discovered Quat Quatta, we had made the usual rounds around the more popular reception venues. Off the top of my head I can think of Leonda by the Yarra, The Ascot House, Lyrebird Falls, The Willows, Witchmount Estate and the The Gables. Kind of reads like a who’s who of Melbourne receptions doesn’t it? Terry, a good mate of mine commented how ‘upperty’ my wedding plans are looking, what with the expensive tastes and fancy frills. Well mate, you only get married once!
You know that little instinct you have, when you walk into a place, you get that ‘vibe’? With the other places, while there are many distinct and memorable parts of the reception that I definitely can’t praise enough, there was always a caveat that kinda gave the game away. I could stand in the reception for hours and still couldn’t envisage Michele and me getting married there, in spite of the venue’s strong selling points.
