Wedding pics

Wedding pictures can be seen here (facebook gallery).

Tomorrow we are going on a James Bond island canoe tour thing. We are already buggered from our all day excursion to Phi Phi islands yesterday (snorkeling all day!) - more pics from that soon!

xx

Our wedding day....

Stef wrote the following as a message to our friends and family - I've edited it a little, but this is how it all went:

Well, its now official. Yesterday morning we spent quite some time at the Amphur (wedding town hall place) office in Phuket Town. The hotel manager arranged for one of her friends to help us out, so we had a translator with us... which was a good thing as the paperwork was complicated. In the end, a little Thai woman dripping in gold and diamonds and wearing fuscia lipstick, signed our fancy marriage certificate. I think maybe she was the Island's Chief Administrator or something... in any case, she looked *very* important. So... our "official" wedding took place at 9:20 am in a little office at the town hall and cost $2.85.

We got back to the hotel and went off to have our "Spa Romance" package that Stef's mum got us, as part of our present. It was a 4-5 hour private massage/beauty session: we had foot rubs, facials, time in a steam room, a bath full of rose petals, we were covered in seaweed and wrapped in plastic (just like Laura Palmer).

We both drifted in and out of consciousness. When it was over we came out smelling of fancy oils and it was then time for the ceremony.

Our celebrant was an Australian. He talked a little about Paul's letters to the Corinthians, which was weird... but we read our poem, and I had a bit of a cry, and with the exchange of rings, and a bit of a pash, we were wed. It was perfect!

We spent about an hour around the gardens, posing for photos. Tom the photographer took about 400 snaps, so we're hoping that at least a few of them will be half decent (maybe not as we were HOT as it was incredibly humid!). He had us pulling some pretty wacky poses... poking our heads out from behind vine-covered pillars; we felt like it was a Monkees photoshoot.
Stef had trouble smiling for an hour straight, so he had to keep saying "cheese" to himself.

wedding self portrait

Oh yes - this reminds me that as I had NO IDEA that I was getting married during our vacation I did not pack an appropriate wedding dress - but I did have a dress from BIG-W (like Australia's version of Wal Mart) and a nice white short sleeved cardigan (Myer) that I wore. I took the pockets off the dress the night before - it was looking too Ragedy-Ann-ish.

It turned out OK I guess but I of course wish I had worn something a little classier.
Oh, and we were both barefoot.

We had a bit of time to kill before dinner so we went for a romantic dip in the pool. It was just the two of us and it was unbelievable. We had some cocktails at the pool-bar and generally just swam and frollicked about for an hour.

There was an intimate candle-lit dinner planned for us at 9:30 in the hotel restaurant. The staff presented us with a massive banquet... every inch of our table was covered in little dishes of Thai delicacies. We shared a bottle of wine and concluded with some banana coconut desert. Delicious! The waiter took our coffee order and just as we thought it was all over the "executive chef" came out and presented us with a love-heart-shaped cake, covered in little icing rose petals. He congratulated us and took our photo a few times.

When we got back to our room the bed now featured a beautiful arrangement in rose petals! We hadn't really told the hotel much about our wedding, but only asked their permission to have the ceremony on their grounds. Everything else has been their own doing, and they have made every effort to make us feel very welcome, and to make our special day ever more special. I've always wanted rose petals on our bed in a hotel room and we've had it twice here - once when we arrived, and once last night.

(when we arrived)

Yesterday could not have been more perfect! It was so beautiful! Thank you for all the sweet well-wishes! They've meant a lot! I will upload more photos when we get them!

xx

I do! I do too!

We are married!

We did the paperwork in the city hall and were oficially married at 9.20am at the price of $2.85 when a lady with dark fuscia lipstick and lots of gold jewellery stamped our forms.

We had the ceremony tonight in the hotel gardens at 5pm (humid!) and then loads of photos taken.

More soon, the day isn't over yet - candlelight dinner and mo'mance still to come!
It's been an outstandingly beautiful day!

YES!

In case you're not a facebook friend......

Stef asked me to marry him last night!

We're getting married on Friday (in Phuket)!

WOW!

Bobo and me

I am home alone with Bobo and have been since Sunday morning. Bobo wasn't very "warm" to me when I came home from Japan but now that I am the only friend he has (and therefore food-giver) he's nice to me. Very nice in the morning, infact, but kinda grumpy by midnight.

On Friday I'm flying to Darwin (to meet Stef) and then Saturday we fly to Bangkok. Oh, I guess I haven't really mentioned it here yet but he's had a secret plan up his sleeve for months, but I managed to get the destination out of him about 2 hours after I saw him.

Tomorrow I think I might have to escape Bobo's furry clutches and go see my other ginger lover, George.

Drinking. Tasmania. Kids (not mine). Family.

Last Thursday Stef arranged a Melbourne bar tour thing with a whole gang of our friends (Mike even came up from Tasmania!) and it was great fun!! It was an awfully long night and there was a lot of mixing of alcohol involved and only two photographs taken - neither of which were of people!

I can't remember how many places we actually went to, but as it was a Thursday I didn't get fucked off at all because it wasn't full of drunken young morons.

The night ended with us locked down in an establishment run by a fellow not at all unlike Tom Waits (well, his voice, anyway) and when he kicked us out, at 3am, we went for Chinese food. Of course they were not impressed when we walked in but I think the fact that we ordered a reasonable amount and didn't need forks saved the day and they allowed us to stay.

On Friday I dragged Mike around the city and I resisted the urge to buy everything I saw. It was a challenge of great proportions. Friday night was much more low-key (Stef had only 3 hours sleep on Thurs night and was not quite as with-it as he usually might be) so we watched "Skeleton Key" and talked a lot about gumbo. Mainly to piss Stef off.

On Saturday we got up at the crack of dawn to fly down to Hobart together. Stef's dad had his 60th birthday on Saturday and we stayed with Mike and Jemma (and Felix who is so cute by the way)! I was SO excited to see Jemma again, as I had previously only met her once on her wedding day - just over 3 years ago. We had big drinking plans for the night but the week caught up with me (international flying, slight culture shock, little sleep) and I didn't party as hard as I had planned.

We pulled (rescued) Jemma from the party at about midnight and went home.

Jemma and her banjo. Sexy!

The night still went quite late and ended in a guitar/banjo duet with Stef & Jemma and then some extreme misuse of eyeshadow/eyeliner:

Stef said to me tonight:
"It looks like I have some kind of rouge on"

to which I said:
"Dummy! You DID have rouge on!"

It was all very emo-ish and I would like to officially blame the beginning of daylight savings for making us go weird.

On Sunday we slept in (whoops) and then went to see Stef's dad to see how they had pulled up after the party. I got to see my cute little niece again - she's so damn cute!

And then we went home. It's been a crazy week!

ps: I love driving my fancy newish car!

Sorry you died Bruce, but thanks for the car!

I told Stef that I was arriving on Saturday morning, but I actually came back on Friday. I had to spin a big web of lies to get him to believe that I was back on Friday and it almost got out of control.

The only problem about lying to your boyfriend and coming home a day early?

The fact that most boys who live alone, live like pigs and the house was a mess (me having arrived before he had had time to clean).

So I got home at about 11am and cleaned for a few hours. I guess it started off as normal cleaning and quickly changed into possessed, no-sleep, crazed cleaning and I was even on my hands and knees and scrubbing the corners of the kitchen whilst telling Bobo (our cat) that his daddy was a piggy.

Anyway, it wasn't as bad as that - certainly not warranting a "piggy" comment - so I had a shower and went into the city to meet Stef. He was led to believe that he would be meeting his friend at 4.30pm for some Koko Black, but instead I hid behind a pillar at the old Melb GPO and waited for him to arrive. The only thing about being a fatty who wears bright colours is that I stand out like a sore thumb and he saw me before he was even off the tram! Hahaha. He started shaking his head - he couldn't believe that I'd fooled him.

I AM THE QUEEN OF TRICKS!

It was great to see each other again - but it's always weird for the first 5 or so minutes when we haven't seen each other for a few months. After the reunion and a cafe latte, we walked into a hairdressers and got my hair chopped off.

And by that point I hadn't slept at all for about 30 something hours and was going kinda funny.

Anyway.... I have been busy ever since then - I went shopping with my mum on Monday, went to Ikea with my brother on Tuesday and bought a car today!!

This is what it looks like:

It was bought new last year by a 90 year old man called Bruce.
Unfortunately Bruce died this year and the dealership bought the car back off Bruce's family. And Bruce only ever drove the car to bingo and it's only done 2,000km in almost a year! And it was a few thousand dollars less than what I new one would have been - it's an automatic (not my preference but pretty nice) and has no nicks or scratches or anything. So it was a good bargain!

And as Bruce had trouble with the original stereo, he had it replaced (as it wasn't "loud enough") so now I also have a new CD player - with extra loudness - and it's all still in warranty etc etc. Exciting!

So I guess I should call the car "Bruce"?
(it sucks on the first day of my new car that there is some kind of horrible wind/dust storm across Melbourne. New car = dirty car!)