Surprise – we got married!!!!

Yup, that’s right.  Some of you will have received an email invitation to a BBQ/pizza night at our house on the 18th Oct.  Well, it was all a cunning plan to get the people we care about at our wedding.  We got nearly everybody here.  Obviously those interstate and international friends and family couldn’t all make it but we appreciate the efforts made by Cameron and my mum and dad and best friend, Robyn to make it over (inspite of the video effort by Rob). 

So, to give you a bit of history about how it all came about.  We had some friends from Canberra staying with us in September.  Sue and I were talking (and complaining a little) about how we had never received flowers from our respective partners.  Dale’s comeback was that at least when I got flowers I would know it was significant and would mean more.  Anyway, they left on the Friday morning and on Friday afternoon the doorbell rings and the florist is standing there with a delivery of flowers for me.  They were absolutely gorgeous with lilliums (my favourite) and some roses (see the photo). 

 I was a little confused about who they could be from (silly me) and so had a read of the card.  It said “ Saturday 18th October at sunset, I have booked the celebrant.  Will you and the boys be there?  Love you TTMAB” and so I rang Dale straight away and said yes, we would definitely all be there. 

Then came the major operation of getting it all organised, telling family and keeping it secret from the rest of the world.   The keeping it secret was actually the hardest part.  We made up a number of reasons, fibs, about why Cameron, Robyn and my folks were coming over and how it managed to coincide with our pizza night/housewarming.  It got a bit complicated a few times but we got there. 

So, when most people had got to the house, for the housewarming, Dale got everybody’s attention, and let everybody know what was happening before handing out some maps.  Those that weren’t there yet very quickly knew where they had to go due to the magic of mobile phones.  Everybody headed up to the beach carpark and we locked up the house and hopped in the car to head up as well.  Well, we tried to head up to our wedding, but somebody had parked us in in the driveway (thanks Keith).  After a 100 point turn, and few nudges of the van on the wall of the garage and Keiths car (we think) we managed to get out of the garage and up to our venue.  What a drama, late to our own wedding, I thought that was only meant to be the bride not the whole wedding party. 

Dale’s best friend, Cheralee guessed what was going on, whcih was kind of handy cos she was Dale’s witness and a few people said they thought something was going on, after we made the announcement.  Hindsight is a wonderful thing.  Cameron isn’t actually old enough to be a legal witness but we asked the celebrant to include him and she was able to make us up a separate certificate for him to sign.  The celebrant was great and very helpful and accommodating the whole way through. 

We had a great service and if it was a bit cold and windy I think everybody coped.  We both had the opportunity to say some special words to the other and both of got a bit emotional.  I did mine off the cuff and so forgot half of what I wanted to say but Dale was organised and had his written out. 

All in all a great evening and night and thank you to everybody who was part of it. 

So, that was our big surprise.  Here are a few photos of the event and also some of the boys with there big brother and Grandma (my mum) and Grandad (my dad). 

Enjoy.