Getting married is a little hectic. The day itself has visitors flying through doors at the drop of hat, hugging, messing your makeup, touching your dress and generally getting all teary-eyed at you even though you’re the one that everybody is going to look at. It appears to be, well, a little overwhelming…
As a guest at a wedding, and a destination wedding at that, it’s nothing but frivolity. There’s champagne in the morning, leisurely swims, a late breakfast and a bunch of your friends in a room doing hair and make-up together while dancing to the 90s best rhythms on the hotel television.
In Sydney, in December, all of those worlds collided and it nearly spun off its axis. Dancing in hotel rooms, champagne and petit-four morning teas, hair straighteners and hunts for wrapping paper that ended up with two of us on Oxford Street finding studded bra tops in a cheap shop couldn’t be further from the stress of what was happening upstairs. The morning was fun – it was spent with love and laughter, with a bride that was part of our tribe and by that afternoon we were going to see it grow by one. There wasn’t anything that could go wrong.
Billie and Gareth were getting married. I was going to marry them and the wedding was filled with people that we all loved. There was absolutely nothing to be nervous about. Standing in the foyer of a very fancy hotel we waited for a cab. It was taking a while, but it’s Sydney. That’s ok, plenty of time to spare. Standing on the footpath with our tribe of seven plus a mini, we watched the sky blacken and the wind whistle through the trees of Hyde Park.
The wedding was in the Botanic Gardens, under the trees and meant to be in the glorious Sydney sun. With a wedding at three and a radar that looked dangerously like the white caps of an angry Pacific ocean, this wedding had to be fast. I got nervous.
Rain on your wedding day is apparently an ominous sign. Many an outdoor ceremony has been thwarted because the fluffy whites have turned to angry black clouds in the blink of an eye. A cab ride later and the sky is still threatening to pour at any minute. “How fast can you talk?” Gareth asks. Not fast enough I think.
The Bride arrives, the ceremony begins and the weather is no longer important. It wouldn’t have mattered if the heavens opened up that very second, the moment Gareth spotted Billie, the moment she walked in looked at her husband to be, the world could have collapsed and none of us would have noticed.
Before getting married brides, grooms, families and wedding planners do nothing but worry about the small details. The small details make sure you get the wedding you’ve always wanted but in that moment, in front of your tribe, the details are unimportant. As long as you stand with those you love, all that matters is that chance to say ‘Yes.’ To say ‘I do choose you’ and the rest of the world becomes irrelevant. Even if just for a moment, not even the rain or the threat of a wild summer storm makes an ounce of difference.
PS: The rain did hold out long enough – just long enough to clap and cheer. Then it rained. A lot. Enough to swim in on the very wet walk back to the hotel. Billie + Gareth? Dry as a Middle Eastern Desert.