/Karen/

Double matriomonials

Sunday, 20 March, 2005

So yesterday was my second wedding for the month and I was roped in to sing for it a couple of days before. I didn't mind; I'd made an offer to the couple in question several months previous and had thought they weren't going to take it up but then it turned out that the groom's powers of organisation were not on the ball so they called in a favour. It was a pleasure.

I like weddings when the people who are getting hitched are good friends of mine. For the wedding of the Pakmen (can I call it that? Or should it be Mr and Mrs Pakman?), I had known both bride and groom for quite a number of years. I was around when they first starting dating, when they got engaged and while they were preparing. To see them finally tie the knot was just lovely—the culmination of their relationship.

The wedding was held at St. Michael's and we had to be there at 9. Coming back to the Illawarra, it had felt like we had never been away. We saw Steve Pym asking a lady who had parked in the church grounds with the express purpose of going shopping to move her car. Ben had been asked to bring his keyboard down but not the humongous amp. There was some confusion, however, about where it was going to be used; it turned out that it needed to be taken to the City Gallery where the reception was being held. Susan and I went through the item, “What Am I To Do?” by Ruth Buchanan a couple of times, vaguely trying to remember how we'd done it at NTE mission. Then me and the rest of the band went through the songs for the wedding (just three). The church started to fill with all manner of people that I knew.

Pakman looked spiffy in his tux. He and his brother look quite similar. I couldn't look at his brother without thinking of Pak's “Little or much?” story. The bride was on time and she walked down the aisle to Ella Fitzgerald. They split the vows and the promises over the rest of the ceremony. There were three Bible readings—the last of which was the shema from Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (Pak is a Christian Jew). Pak got up and read it first in Hebrew (which I thought was supremely cool, even if I could not follow the words) and then in English. The bride and groom had memorised their promises off by heart and so were able to just say them without repeating after Shaun (who had come down from Kurrajong specially to do this wedding). The best man, Stu, made a show of searching for the rings before Pak's little half-sister tripped on down the aisle with the rings in her little basket. They signed the register and then, just after Shaun was going to announce them man and wife, Pak broke the glass in a teatowel just like Jewish tradition. And the bride and groom walked out to AC/DC.

The reception was a cocktail lunch served in the City Art Gallery and the food, true to Stacie form, was delicious. Instead of a wedding cake, they had chocolate cupcakes with those silver balls sprinkled on top. Speeches were given by both fathers, the best man and the groom, and then the bride gave a short one because she couldn't resist. It was a lovely afternoon and we capped it by going to dinner with some friends from college who were coming down to watch the football, Irwan, Little and Seamus.

I love how some wedding really bring out the personalities of the ones getting married. The wedding we went to two weeks ago was on a Sunday, not a Saturday. Once again I had been asked to sing and, not only that, organise the music and the band. The wedding was being held in the bush chapel of the Mount Keira Scout Camp—ie. no electricity. So the band consisted of two acoustic guitars, a trumpet player, a violinist and a djembe player. We had two singers for this one. We rehearsed the weekend before and then came early to rehearse on the day but everyone was rather late because they underestimated how long it would take to get to Wollongong and how long it would take to get to the bush chapel (you park at the bottom, walk up to the lodge and then follow a winding path of stepping stones until you emerge into a little clearing with log seats and a stone pulpit). It was also a bit chilly. But everything pulled together (as it does) and even though the bride was unsurprisingly late and the instruments went out of tune, no one really cared; it was just lovely to see Naomi and Simon get married.

They also had a cocktail lunch reception in the area around the lodge but everyone migrated to the sunny patches on the lawn instead of using the chairs in the shady paved area. Food came to us in Chinese snackboxes and was passed around on trays. There was also a continuous story in a journal that guests could add, as well as a long piece of fabric for people to sign. Ben and I forgot to do either. The bridal party had a three-legged race to symbolise the beginning of the bride and groom's journey together and there were some very amusing speeches from the fathers, the chief bridesmaid (which I thought was the best of the lot), the best man and the bride and groom. Everyone joined hands and made an arch for the bride and groom to race through to their car. And then we all dispersed and made a mad dash for church with no time to go home because the holiday traffic coming back into Sydney was so bad (so there were an awful lot of well-dressed people at church that night!)

My only wish for weekend weddings is that there be an extra day off so I can recover. Today I am sick and am spending the day in bed but it's the kind of sick you get at the tail-end of a virus. I am hoping that 24 hours of convalescence will have me right as rain for entertaining Deb and going to Moore graduation with Elsie and Duncan.

/Karen/ had a thought at 12:21 PM | | EE comments (2)

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