northlandboy…and his girl

This year has been a tough year, with a huge amount going on in both my life, and Anna’s. In the last few months, it feels like we’ve hardly had time for ourselves, let alone each other. In my case it was study taking up all my time, in Anna’s case it has been three things: Exams, moving house, and organising our wedding. She passed her exams, we are successfully installed in our new house, and now finally we made it to this scene on December 10:

In front of our friends and family, Anna and I said our vows, and are now formally married.

We wanted to do something different, so we held both the wedding and reception in St Kevins Arcade, an old shopping arcade in an area that was once Auckland’s premier shopping strip, but is now a somewhat alternative area. Very cool location, and very central, making it easy for guests to get there.

We had a huge family turnout, which was particularly appreciated. I know it’s not always easy for people to travel, especially when they have young children. It meant a lot to us that those people were able to make it.

Since it was an evening wedding, it meant that we had the day to do as we pleased. So I went for a run, read the newspaper, sat around chatting, generally took it easy. Somehow I doubt things were as relaxed where Anna and the bridesmaids were getting ready.

The wedding itself was a lot of fun, if extremely busy for Anna and I. Normally if you go to a party with 130 people, you only really talk to a dozen or so. When you’re the bride/groom, you need to make an effort to chat to as many people as possible. I did my best, but I couldn’t make it around to everyone. To those I didn’t get a chance to talk to, I apologise, but I did note your attendance, and we’ll catch up next year!

I can also highly recommend getting a live band for a wedding. The area the wedding was held in is a bit of a party area, but we still managed to get noise control called in. To a party on K Rd! Top effort that.

When we went home at the end of the night, I was half expecting someone to have done something to the bed. What I was not expecting was to be locked out of our own house. We have two doors, only one of which we have a key for. It seems that the last person to leave had put the chain lock across the one door we had the key for. I had to kick it in, busting part of the door frame. Lucky it was an old door frame.

Now it’s time for Anna and I to head off into the distance on our own, on our honeymoon. More on that in the next post, probably entitled ‘Wifee in Tow’

P.S. Yes that is Samson just disappearing around the corner ahead of us