I spent the first night of the new year without my wife.
Getting married is the most incredible and powerful thing. It is also really stressful, and the most massively expensive and full on party you will ever throw in your life. But it for us it was one of the best days of our lives. Neither of us are particularly religious and more importantly we both come from families who didn't pressure us to do anything we didn't want to do, or invite people we didn't want to invite. Nobody was screaming at us that that 'isn't how you do things at a wedding'. We were extremely fortunate to be surrounded by supportive, generous, loving and smart friends, families and colleagues who just went into turbo mega-drive for us every step of the way.
The worst things :
The absolute worst thing was doing the guest list. My family is small (there is four of us) but Jordan's is gargantuan (close to 50) and when we sat down to make an initial list it was over 200 before we got out our mobiles to go through those numbers. We knew that this was impossible. We settled on 100 and then had to try and think of reasons to 'cut' people we REALLY wanted to be there to share our day with us. It was completely torturous, hell on earth type stuff. If we invite these guys, then we have to invite all the other people in that group. If we don't invite this person, they will be hurt and upset, etc. The easiest people to cut are people who have been married themselves and have been through it all themselves. Mostly those were the people who gave us a pat on the back and a knowing raised eyebrow. "That's cool! Have a fantastic day." they would say with a distinct flavour of 'been there-understand your pain - we're still all good'. We were advised to assume that 15% of the people we invited wouldn't be able to make it for one reason or another, so invite more than you can cater for. It turns out we both had very passionate invitee's and almost every single person we invited turned up and we were full house in the best possible way. You also tend not to do too much discussing with people why they didn't make the list. It's an unspoken thing, you just hope people realise that it's not a slight or a statement of how much you like or don't like them. It's just logistics and budget constraints.
Surprisingly, the second worst thing about getting married was doing the gift registry. The best gift for us was that over a hundred people that we love would all be in the same place to witness us making what I referred to in our Wedding Invitation Fanzine as 'sincere declarations'. However the convention is that on a day that is all about the two of you, people demonstrate that they hold you in great affection by bringing you stuff that will help set you up for your lives together. In order to not end up with 15 dinner sets or whatever, department stores have the 'Bridal Registry'. The happy couple go into Myer, get a little scanner so they can wander round the store zapping things they'd like to get as gifts, into the registry system. Then their nearest and dearest go to the store and get a 'wish' list of stuff the couple wants and pick what they want to buy for them. Doesn't that sound like fun? What do we want? Zap that. And that. And we'll need four of those. Zap, Zap, Zap, Zap. It would be good if everything matched. Zap, Zap, Zap, Zap. But both times we went to Myer we found ourselves getting tetchy with each other in a way that we never do usually. In fact on the second trip we spend as much time deleting stuff from the first trip as we did adding more stuff. I think for me it was something about the presumptuous nature of telling people to buy us stuff that got under my skin so much. It is terrifying to think that Myer now offer the same service to Kids for Xmas.
We opted for Myer, but also had an on-line 'donation' site to contribute to our house fund. We had it set up so people could buy us a brick or a window or a fire place. This worked really well. People could give us money, but have a nice and tangible feeling of contributing to our future home, brick by brick. There are several of these types of sites on the net. We used Not Another Toaster.Com. The only negative was that is when people pay by credit card, there is a quite hefty surcharge (that doesn't apply if paid by direct bank deposit or cheque). It meant folks would 'buy' us $100 worth of bricks and then be slugged with a $15 fees at the last stage. This was a cause of some embarrassment, because we just didn't know about it. We understood that the 'one-time fee we paid ($150) covered everything. We also gave people the option of donating to KIVA (http://www.kiva.org/) on our behalf. KIVA is an organisation that gives business loans to people in third world countries to help start or maintain businesses in order to become more self sufficient. Which meant some of the wedding money went to help people buy a goat, or raw materials, seeds, etc. And when those projects start making a return, the loan is repaid and we can either withdraw the money or re-invest it in other KIVA projects. So far we have been repaid from a pig farmer in the
The Best Stuff
There was a lot of best stuff. The gathering of the people was amazing. People came from all over the country and beyond in order to be with us on the day. It is wonderful and exciting to have so many people from so many different nooks and crannies of our lives all in the same place, all unified together in a common thing. The two of us were the common thing. The 130 people (yeah the guest list did blow out a bit now you mention it) in attendance were our families, childhood friends, all our besties, our confidants, our mates, friends from jobs we've had, it was like This Is Your Lives doing a special episode on us. It is rare that you are ever in a room with that many people and you REALLY LIKE EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. Every single person there was smart, generous, giving, creative and supportive of us in different ways. It is a bit daunting and humbling to have that many people LOVING AT YOU with such intensity. There's a lot of love in the room at Xmas for instance, but that it spread around in all directions. On your wedding day it is all aimed right at the two of you, like light through a magnifying glass. When we walked into the reception the place went bananas. It's a bit like being a rock star. Everybody is cheering and applauding and it is dizzying. You can understand why people crave fame, in some ways. Every night Pink or whoever, walks on stage and 20,000 people are loving at you for a couple of hours; it must get pretty addictive.
Our ceremony was really special. We wrote the whole thing (plagiarizing a few things along the way), made our vows very personal and realistic. 'I Promise to love you as much as I can, as hard as I can, for as long as I can..'. We both felt very strongly that the current legal wording of marriage being between a Man and a Woman, had to have a caveat to acknowledge the loving partnerships of people of all sexual orientations. It was a decision that was not hard to make, but meant a huge amount to us both and to many of our friends and family members in same-sex relationships. Our readings were not traditional. They were not sickly sweet or full of unrealistic floweryness. There was some gritty stuff. The main reading (read splendidly by our good friend Andrew McClelland) was actually a children’s book called I Like You by Sandol Stoddard Warhurst. It starts off
I like you and I know why.
I like you because you are a good person to like.
I like you because when I tell you something special, you know it's special
And you remember it a long, long time.
You say, Remember when you told me something special
And both of us remember
When I think something is important
you think it's important too
We have good ideas
When I say something funny, you laugh
I think I'm funny and you think I'm funny too
Hah-hah!
I like you because you know where I'm ticklish
And you don't tickle me there except just a little tiny bit sometimes
But if you do, then I know where to tickle you too
You know how to be silly
That's why I like you
Boy are you ever silly
I never met anybody sillier than me till I met you
I like you because you know when it's time to stop being silly
Maybe day after tomorrow
Maybe never
Too late, it's a quarter past silly
Read the whole thing here :
http://ginevra.vox.com/library/post/i-like-you.html
We had our first kiss five years ago in the doorway of Natasha Stott Despoja’s office in Grenfell St. We had been turfed out of the Chocolate Bean at closing time and ended up round in that door way. We were kissing and some guy went past on his way to the The Cranker and yelled ‘HEY DJ IAN – NICE ONE MATE!’. So that doorway became a part of our legend, and whenever we went past that office I would say ‘Thanks Natasha’. When I told that story as part of my speech I got to that line and hit go on the video. Natasha Stott Despoja appeared on the screen saying. “Hi Everybody. My name is Natasha Stott Despoja. I would like to take this opportunity to wish Ian and Jordan all the very best on the occasion of their marriage. I did, however, want to talk to you about this security video from my office from August 2004. Now whilst I can not condone this kind of behaviour, I am kind of glad to have played at least a small part in your budding romance. I hope you have a wonderful night and congratulations”. The reception went crazy and the look on
But the best thing of all was looking into the eyes of the woman I love, and swimming in her love for me, complete and total overwhelming love and trust. We made sure to have some quiet moments together even in the middle of the wedding hurricane that was swirling all around us. To have those very quiet and personal moments together was very special.
Then there was a massive party! We moved the speeches forward by an hour to allow for more dancing and EVERYBODY was dancing their arses off, including us.
It was absolutely perfect in every single respect.
Did I mention the worlds great cup cakes?
So all that said, today was Rowan and Ralph’s perfect day. He looked sharper than normal (no mean feat for the always impeccably well dressed Ralph), and Rowan looked like a Hollywood Star and they both glowed with happiness and joy. The ceremony was warm and wonderful, the reception was fantastic, the speeches – heartfelt, funny, sincere. The DJ was amazing (okay – it was me – but I was terrific!) and the dancefloor was a blitz of people dancing to party favourites and German tunes. It was a long and wonderful day celebrating the union of two people we love very much indeed.
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