Ooookay, this has been a long time coming, but I’m going to try to list all the vendors we used as part of the wedding. There will have to be multiple posts cause I know I’ll forget something… also I haven’t finished taking photos of the extra stuff that we had done…

Hen’s Party — Hen’s Treasure Hunt

A well-organised little business and fun way to celebrate being a hen without (too much) debauchery ;)

Day-before-the-wedding pampering — Endota Day Spa

This was a surprise day with my chief, paid for by my gorgeous MGs from Melbourne, England, Wales and Sweden. Was completely floored by the generosity of my girls  and loved the day spa experience.

My dress — MrK via Harts

My dress was from the Ongoing Bridesmaids collection, and you can order dresses from the range in a multitude of colours. They get shipped from China and take three months to deliver (though mine only took two). Three weeks before the wedding, I almost bought a second dress — issues of wearing something so sheer didn’t leave much to the imagination, but a lot of my stress was brought on by bride-brain and turns out I had nothing to worry about.

Bridesmaid’s dress — MrK via Harts

Nat’s dress was largely the same as mine, with a different neckline and in the awesomely named pink shade of COSMIC. Nat got hers hemmed up to her ankles to go with her shoes better. Nat’s dress was imported from China too, but it only took two-and-a-half months instead of the quoted three.

My shoes — Target

My only requirements for my wedding shoes  were for them to be flat (comfort and I didn’t want to be taller than my groom) and to be hot pink (inspired by Sandy). I bought a pair from K-Mart in February, but they were too tight (my hopes to stretch them were quashed). But I found a largely similar pair in Target last month for $15. Awesome!

Dan’s suit — Anna Ro

Dan’s been going to Anna Ro for 10+ years for suits and general alterations of clothes he’s bought. Anna *loves* Dan and has been asking us for years when we were going to get married, get a mortgage and have kids. Dan’s suit was made entirely by Anna and her tailoring assistant, Frank, after much discussion over colours and fabric options. He also got a shirt custom made and my dress was altered here too. Anna is a bit of a nutjob, but she’s good at what she does. She was adament about us posing like this for a photo… this is Anna to a T:

Bouquets — Flowers by the Vase

For a multitude of reasons, I went with silk flowers. I went with this Sydney-based duo and were really happy with them. I wrote about them over at That’s Noice, too.

Cut-outs of our kittehs

Well, these were a special extra from our photographers :) Don’t they look handsome? They wore ties and everything!

Wedding bands — Vanessa Samuels

Van is now one of my gorgeous in-laws. She makes stunning stuff and designed our rings from scratch. I love knowing that our rings are one-of-a-kind :)

Bracelet – Delia S Thompson

I’ve had a number of silver jewellery gifts made by Delia, and earlier this year I decided it was time to treat myself. Mine’s inscripted with a few lines from the first verse of “The Luckiest” by Ben Folds, which has been my personal wedding theme :))

Marriage Celebrant – Lachlan Warner

Lachlan married friends of ours last year. During their ceremony, the bride had nowhere to put her tear-stained hanky. Lachlan held out his hand and held it for her and I turned to Dan and said “that’s the man I want to marry us”. And he did! He’s not one to market himself, but let me know if you want his number, he’s so thorough and relaxed and just what a bride needs on her wedding day.

Oh, and he gets so excited for you on the day, it’s sofa king adorable:

Hair and makeup — Makeup by Claire

I called Claire 3½ weeks before the wedding and asked if she was available to do a trial the upcoming weekend and the wedding day itself. That Saturday I met Claire and her friend Rachel who did the makeup and while they cost a pretty penny, THEY WERE SO WORTH IT. Claire uses the Benefit makeup range and it was gorgeous. Rachel used a sponge in the back of my hair to give it boof!

Photography, etc – Jarod and Liz

When Jarod and Liz offered to take our photos, we knew they would be able to create exactly the photos we wanted… and they totally did. Now we have their works framed, hung, bound and regularly accessed on our hard drives. The photos reflect us as people perfectly, something that we know any other photographer couldn’t've managed. And the compliments we keep getting about the photos? In-sane. But totally deserved :) (ps, thanks guys, we still owe you no matter what you say).

Next post I’ll cover racists hire car drivers, unlimited pizza wedding reception venues and how many different ways you can say “here’s a thank you card to say thank you for your card”.

(Hint, there aren’t many) x

Okay you guys, tomorrow I’m back at work, meaning today’s our last official day of honeymooning. But, my husband’s got man-cold so we’re just bumming around the house and pretending that we can stay home again tomorrow.

It’s grey and rainy outside, too, perfect weather for reminiscing about our grey and rainy wedding day ;)

For those who haven’t been reading along, Dan and I eloped. Like most weddings, we’ve experienced our fair share of complications. We had to take our average-sized wedding and scale it right back. We couldn’t have a full reception on the day, either, though we were lucky enough to have our closest friends join us for a pig-out session of our favourite pizza and cupcakes. We don’t regret our choices one bit, although we do regret that we were handed circumstances that negated us making such choices. Life hands you lemons, you make lemonade and have a great big party,yeah?

Of course, a bride never sleeps the night before her wedding, especially when all I could hear was the rain pounding on our little tin roof. The ceremony was supposed to be at Balmoral Beach and we didn’t have a wet-weather plan and the council wouldn’t let us set up a marquee or anything useful like that.

I woke up at… I dunno what time. But we both felt mostly awake and a bit stunned that it was THE WEDDING DAY. For reals!

9.30am Nat arrives at our place and is taking photos of everything. I managed to hide from some shots, or hide parts of me at least.

10.00am Nat and I arrive at Claire‘s house for hair and makeup. Claire lives just around the corner from us and she and Rachel were so so lovely to work with. Nat’s always had shorter hair than me, so she’s virtually done by the time Liz pops over for photos. There were bursts of sunlight and even blue sky amongst all the rain, so there was hope that we weren’t going to have to get married in the back of the hire car!

12.00pm Us girls get home to find Dan, Chris (the Best Man) and Jarod hanging out for some lunch noms. We pfaffed for a bit, and I only know this because Nat kept reminding us that we were running behind on my timetable! We got Bank’s Thai for lunch and I remember not eating very much, but being completely aware that I would regret it later.

At this stage it was still pretty rainy, but the shade of grey in the clouds was improving. There was hope!

12.30pm Oh, oops, am I supposed to get ready and go somewhere? The poor boys were relegated to the loungeroom to chuck their suits on while Nat and I busied ourselves in the bedroom with the DRESS and the shoes and jewellery and deciding if we were going to wear our fat-sucker bike pants. (We didn’t).

12.50pm We’re all dressed and the rain has officially stopped, people! We manage to execute our plan for photos amongst Enmore’s finest graffiti and street art ;)

1.15pm Our car arrives and there’s still no rain, but we bundle the umbrellas into the boot as our insurance policy. Our driver was nice enough, but insisted on playing a DVD of some comedian who I’m sure on a normal day I would find hilarious, but that day, all I could think was that he was majorly racist. He also insisted on driving up George Street in the city to get us to Balmoral and sometimes I thought he was trying to get us killed. I spent half the trip sending scared texts to Liz in the Mazda following us, the other half trying to absorb everything that was happening cause apparently it was MY WEDDING DAY and I hear that the day flies by pretty quickly.

1.50pm Magically, we arrive on time and there’s no rain at Balmoral Beach! We meet up with Lachlan, our celebrant and we nitpick the bride in the wedding in the rotunda because she’s wearing a toilet doily dress. Lachlan also snuffs at the celebrant, who is daring to wear a brown suit: “Who the hell wears brown when they’re the celebrant at a wedding?”

We pull out the stand-in kittehs that Jarod made for us and start getting into bridal mode.

2.00pm-ish We meander along to our spot on Rocky Point Island and find that the island is thankfully empty of most picnic-ers due to the morning’s rain (a plus!). Lachlan had dutifully picked a spot to shield us from the wind and the passers-by who would sticky-beak during the ceremony. Suddenly Lachlan  is spouting the first words from his script that I recognised as the beginning of the ceremony and I blurted out “Oh shit!”, in a manner that matches my level of class. This is it!

Here we are paying attention, still in shock that it’s actually happening (though Dan looks far calmer about all this compared to me)

Here’s me doing the reading (We ended up doing one reading each, instead of the tradition of getting others to do the readings for us)

Love by Roy Croft

I love you, not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.

I love you, not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what we are making together.

I love you because you have done more than any creed could have done to help me grow.

And more than any fate could have done to make me happy.

You have done it without a touch, without a word, without a sign.

You have done it by being yourself.

Dan’s turn

Grow Old with You by Adam Sandler

I wanna make you smile whenever you are sad, carry you around when your arthritis is bad.

All I wanna do is grow old with you

I’ll get your medicine when your tummy aches. Build you a fire if the heater breaks.

Oh it could be so nice, growing old with you.

I’ll miss you, kiss you, give you my coat when you are cold.

I’ll need you, feed you, even let you hold the remote control.

So let me do the dishes in our kitchen sink. Put you to bed when you’ve had too much to drink.

I want to be the one who grows old with you.

I’ll grow old with you

Then Nat lead Dan through his vows, and Chris lead me through mine. I was so sure that I was going to cry, but I managed to hold it together just enough.

Nat: Dan, please take the ring and placing it on Laura’s finger and repeat after me.

I call upon the people here present to witness that I, Dan

take you, Laura

to be my lawful wedded wife

Dan: I promise to make you laugh and smile, to stand by your side and to hold you when you cry.

I promise to nurture you, to help you meet all your desires and to protect you from harmless insects.

I promise to love you for all of my years.

You’re the pepperoni on my pizza,

the spice in my curry,

and the sugar in my coffee.

I am yours, always.

My turn!

Chris: Laura, please take the ring and placing it on Dan’s finger, repeat after me.

I call upon the people here present to witness that I, Laura

take you, Dan

to be my lawful wedded husband

Laura: I promise to be there when you need me and even when you don’t.

I promise to respect you, appreciate you and not to get stroppy when you’re teaching me how to cook.

I promise to love you with all that I am.

You are the icing on my cupcakes,

the parmesan on my gorgonzola,

and the Milo on my icecream.

I am the luckiest.

Then Lachlan said some stuff that I don’t really remember. Then he said we were husband and wife!

We were told we should have practiced how we were going to kiss, but we didn’t get around to it. Now I see why they tell us that! Poor Dan getting mauled as soon as he’s married.

Okay, so maybe I cried a bit… enough to have to tidy myself up with my “something blue” hanky!

It still wasn’t raining by the time we signed the certificates and the book and whatnot. It may have been the work of Mary MacKillop?

We managed to get some photos before we could see the RAIN coming in from the coast. As in, you could tell that we only had 45 seconds to get under cover. Thankfully we were near the bridge, so we made a run for it and got there just in the nick of time. I put my brolly up early though, no way was I spending all that money on my hair only to have it ruined!

Our toilet doily bride also hid under there for a while. We huddled in our corner and half laughing, half feeling sorry for how stressed out she looked. Her dress was WAY more expensive and it was heavy and her 2 bridesmaids had a real task to try to keep the dress (and the bride) under control.

But we still managed to have some fun while we played trolls under the bridge.

And like the good geek I am, I twitpic’d a photo:

And we popped out as the rain was clearing for some noice umbrella shots (thanks, Tek’s at Marrickville Metro!)

And the best shot of my dress happened to be this one. Interesting fact: I didn’t drink any of the bubbly and spat it out as soon as Jarod got this shot!

This is my favourite photo of me EVER. This is Bahloo, who we met near the Balmoral fish and chip shop. What’re the chances of meeting a pure white cat on your wedding day? Ceiling Cat was watching over us, m’thinks ;)

We were getting text messages from my (now official) in-laws, who were very sweet and wrote luffly things.

As hoped, we had time up our sleeve (also: we were all exhausted), so we stopped for some hot chips.

5.00pm Our racist driver picked us up and took us to Maninci’s Italian Pizza Restaurant in Belfield.

Mancini’s is our favouritest pizza in the entire world. Especially their La Patata pizza, which is potato, bacon, sour cream and spanish onion. YUM.

“Elvis and Bear” were the hit of the party. And notice, if you will, that we had the NRL grand final playing on the big screen during our wedding party.

And now I would like credit for being THE best bride-on-a-grand-final-day EVER!

We also had my favouritest (store-bought) cupcakes, from The Cupcake Factory. Om nom nom.

There were speeches made by our BFFs and then there was a surprise: video messages from my MGs who are all the way on the other side of the world and couldn’t make it. ALL FOR ME! This had been months in the preparation, including the involvement of our favourite rockstar, who sent a video after having to cancel his surprise trip to sing for us. Only then did I find out that there had been about 20 people involved in the making, downloading, compiling and delivery of the video, with friends hoofing laptops and projectors and speakers down to Mancini’s. I was completely floored and touched. I messaged all the girls afterwards and said “I’ll never forget how complete I felt at that point with my husband sitting next to me, with Nat and Anna running the video show, in a room full of people who chose to celebrate the day with us and watching all the love pouring off that screen.”

We kept our speech short, and I chose not to ad-lib anything on the end because I knew that I would ramble and cry, and I thought the video had expressed enough love. We spent the rest of the night chatting and catching up with everyone and only occasionally remembering to eat (usually when the Mancini staff insisted that we eat something).

11.00pm-ish When the night was over, we scored a freebie limo ride home (courtesy of Mancini’s!). It was a totally retro limo, akin to the one that was used in The Wedding Singer. We were so tired that we just curled up in the back, listened to the rain on the roof and recounted all the awesome stuff that had happened our WEDDING DAY.

There were so many things that could have put a dampener on the day, but it all fell into place and was perfect :))

I don’t get many things right the first time

In fact, I am told that a lot

Now I know all the wrong turns, the stumbles and falls

Brought me here

And where was I before the day

That I first saw your lovely face?

Now I see it everyday

And I know

That I am

I am

I am

The luckiest

What if I’d been born fifty years before you

In a house on a street where you lived?

Maybe I’d be outside as you passed on your bike

Would I know?

And in a white sea of eyes

I see one pair that I recognize

And I know

That I am

I am

I am

The luckiest

I love you more than I have ever found a way to say to you

Next door there’s an old man who lived to his nineties

And one day passed away in his sleep

And his wife; she stayed for a couple of days

And passed away

I’m sorry, I know that’s a strange way to tell you that I know we belong

That I know

That I am

I am

I am

The luckiest

What has this BrideZilla forgotten to organise? To pay for? To buy? To pack for the honeymoon??

Instead of practicing my wedding ceremony bits (readings, vows, etc – because we all know I’ll cry like a baby if I don’t), I’m customising my mobile by way of a process called “rooting”. Hmmmmmmmm.

But while I wait for Ubuntu to burn to disc so I can complete this whole sordid “rooting” process, I thought I’d share this pic on the wall above my desk:

This is me and our dog, Duke, and it was taken on or around 29 July 1981, the day Princess Diana married Prince Charles. I wanted to play Brides and apparently we kept a truckload of tulle at our house. Ready for impromptu games of marrying your dog, I suppose.

This was when we lived above a fruit shop on the main drag of my home town, Grafton. And now I live above a shop in the middle of Sydney’s bohemia. Quite fitting for a bride-to-be, no?

No way has it been a week since my hen’s party. I think time gets exponentially faster the closer you get to a big event like a wedding day.

(Pssst, that’s only like 9 days away, hollllycrap)

So my chief had organised a surprise TREASURE HUNT for me! We had to answer riddles and complete challenges (including “kiss a man in uniform”) as we hiked around The Rocks. SO. MUCH. FUN.

I could show you photos, but then I’d have to kill you ;)

For the record, there were no strippers but there were plenty of other memorable moments… as evidenced by some of the contents of my handbag from when I stumbled in the door at 1am:

It was so good to have an excuse to see all my best girl friends and family in one place… shame I can’t organise one of these every few months….!