The Best Day of My Life. Part one - the ceremonies

On Sunday the 27th of January I married Deseri-Joy. It was the best day of my life, and I am going to describe it in minute detail. There will be little reference to running.

The setting is Camp Breakaway, 20 minutes south of Newcastle. They hold camps for disabled kids and their families and hire out the facilities to raise money to run the place. They have roomed that the guests can hire out, and we had about 50 guests staying the night before. As a result we had many willing volunteers to help us set things up the night before. The atmosphere as this was happening was great - lots of our friends from different circles working together. Unfortunately I had started developing a cold, which I was self medicating as hayfever. As a result I went to bed with a slightly runny nose and no chance of sleeping.

This turned out OK because in the morning the adrenaline kicked in, and Des and I started organising things. At seven o'clock I had started to feel the pinch and I was really starting to regret not taking my espresso machine up. This is when Des said to me:



"Darling, this is your surprise: at 8:15 a coffee van will arrive and serve coffees to all of our guests for two hours"

My girl knows how to look after me.

After the van arrived I gathered with the guests under the trees at the front of Camp Breakaway and chatted, played guitar and waited for the girls.

A little after 9:00AM there was excitement as the girls started to make their way up from the cabins. Firstly the flower girls with the two junior bridesmaids (Emily and Brielle) and then Des and her two best friends, Sharon and Katie.

Now I already happen to think that Des is the most beautiful girl in the world (yes Bruce - I'll agree to disagree), but on this particular occasion she brought tears to my eyes - she looked like a goddess. And she was about to marry me.

There was never any thought that the wedding was ever going to be anything other than extremely casual. I was wearing hemp pants, a woven cotton t shirt and no shoes, as were my best man and groomsman, Marlz and my brother Clint. Des found her dress by googling "hippy wedding dress".

So with our guests sitting on picnic rugs and camp chairs or standing the ceremony started. We had an idea that we'd like the celebrant to do only the parts she was legally required to do and my mum conducting the rest of the ceremony. The celebrant wasn't keen to give that much up, and my mum is not a confident public speaker. The result was that we had short vows and a long reading that was "vow like" by my mum.

We didn't have the opportunity to have a rehearsal, and there were two aspects of the ceremony where this showed. Firstly, every time the celebrant said "Deseri" she mispronounced it. Secondly, when the celebrant asked us to move closer together we took it as the "kiss the bride" moment - and we hooked into each other to the cries of "not yet!" from the celebrant.

The wedding ceremony was followed by a short ceremony for John's naming day, in which we asked all grand parents, great grandparents, uncles, aunties, godparents (Sharon & Marlon) and Em and Bop to read a verse from a poem.

With the end of the ceremony we headed inside for the breakfast reception.

Stay tuned for the reception, but for a sneak preview, look here.