Poor Stevie

Yeah, so where were we? Oh, yeah. That’s right – me being all lame in Las Vegas.

I can assure you, that lameness continued during our second day in Vegas. Unlike everyone else in that crazy city with their fake boosies, Flinstone houses and sparkly fanny packs, I hate spending money. I’m a cautious person. Just now I scolded J-man for washing the hand-held blender while it was still plugged in and told him to cook the chicken through. You have to be so careful when it comes to electricity and chicken.

So J-man had to convince me to re-marry him before Elvis Christ. Over lunch that day he talked me into a $200 wedding package at Graceland Wedding Chapel, the very same place Jon Bon Jovi Christ married his wife in 1989.

On my real wedding day, I spent the morning painting my nails, doing my hair and sweating. On the morning of my second wedding day, I walked with my love through Red Rock Canyon. It was truly one of the most beautiful national parks we visited. It’s just like the America I imagined – magnificent and slightly eery, with plenty of places to hastily bury bodies to the sound of duelling banjos in the background.

Later that night, we went back to our seedy motel room and got gussied up. Just after night fell, a stretch limo picked us up and drove us up the strip to the chapel. J-man had never been in a limo before and was pressing all the buttons and marvelling at the television screens tuned to AV and the (empty) in-car bar. Oh J-man, what a novice. I, on the other hand, was once taken to a Justin Timberlake concert in a stretch hummer with a bunch of strangers who plied me with alcohol in the name of building professional relationships (I never heard from them again, like most people who have a) talked to me and b) seen me dance while mouthing the words to Sexy Back).

When we went inside the chapel, Elvis was not in the building. The two blonde receptionists, complete with teased hair, entertained us by showing us photos of Hamish and Andy’s wedding at the very same chapel. We all agreed it was strange that Andy would marry Hamish, when he had steak at home.

They pinned a rose on J-man’s shirt and handed me a bouquet and then a very sweaty Elvis appeared. It was a Tuesday night and it was clear Elvis would have preferred to be at home gently stroking his shag pile carpet. He quickly ushered us into the chapel, gave us a little run down, before walking me down the aisle; something I didn’t let my own dad do in the name of being an Independent Woman (the rock I’m rockin’, I bought it).

I walked down the aisle to Only Fools Rush In, exchanged Elvis-themed vows with J-man (“I promise never to step on your blue suede shoes”) and hammed it up for the cameras:

Photies by Graceland Wedding Chapel.

When I look back at the photos, it’s clear I’m kind of getting over it towards the end and probably, judging from my bloated face, jonesing for some curly fries. But I remember leaving the chapel feeling absolutely euphoric. I was happy that we capped off our American adventure with something completely frivolous and crazy. And dudes, I may make fun of J-man all the time, but I would totally marry him a third time.

Sometimes people ask me why did you marry J-man? Sure, he lets me eat food off his plate, buys me flowers twice in one week and strokes my head while telling baby animal stories when I can’t sleep. But just now? He made me soak his white t-shirt after he’d spilt homemade pizza sauce on it while making my dinner. It’s a lot for me to deal with when I’m trying to watch TV.

So it’s just as well he has the world’s stupidest sense of humour:

The reason this makes me laugh is not so much the fact that I can imagine J-man, who insists he’s some kind of professional, will leave it somewhere after a really important meeting. It’s mostly because it reminds me a lot of what I was like as an eight-year-old neighbourhood roughian. This is the kind of stuff I used to write on my wooden ruler. Once I sent an invitation to a picnic to a boy in the street with instructions to: “eat my shorts”. This is the same boy to whom I sent an anonymous Valentine’s Day card bearing the greeting “You Tickle My Fancy and I Fancy Your Tickle”, not fully understanding the glaringly creepy sexual overtones. I hate myself, I really do. It’s lucky I even found someone to marry.

PS. Just FYI, I’ve been meaning to BRB lately, but I’ve been trying to sort out the backend of my life. You may think I finally booked that appointment with the backend doctor, but I really mean “backend” as in, “offline”, life. We need to find a house! LOL.

We’ve been home now for 11 days. I have spent the last few of those 11 days unexpectedly trying to get me a job. So, understandably, I have not been in the most romantic of moods. After you spend all day trying to sell yourself to strangers (on paper, that is), the last thing you feel like doing is getting weird and lovey dovey with your husband. Unless, of course, he pulls an excellent job opportunity out of his pocket and later reveals his generous super package.

So, all poor old J-man can do at the moment is read this here blog and remember the days when we were flushed with cash and in love.  From the bottom of my now cold, dead heart I bring you my five most romantic moments overseas:

This is a neat tradition you see all over Europe. People put their initials on padlocks, lock ‘em to bridges or railings and throw the key in the water. How cheesy and disgusting. I would never do that.

Taking in the view of Florence from Piazza Michelangelo. To get to the top of this hill in Florence, you’re forced to walk past tiny shops with strings of fresh vegetables hanging on the door frames, buzzing wine bars and lovely Italian villas. As I trudged up the hill, I wasn’t expecting that much. It’s a view of a city, I thought, I could care less. Give me Real Housewives of Beverly Hills over this crapola any day. But, as it turned out, it’s not just any view. It’s a beautiful view on top of a lovely hill, where there are stalls to buy wine and warm chestnuts, people having their wedding photos taken and young couples huddling together on the steps. An autumn breeze blew lots of lovely aromas around and I just felt so content, happy and lucky to have such a wonderful J-man to share all of this with. A wonderful J-man who didn’t mind when I forgot that most Italians can speak English and blurted out: “Look! That boy matched his socks and undies! What colour are your undies today?!”

Taking the ferry in Venice. J-man, the vulgar romantic that he is, was planning to surprise me with a gondola ride. I pried his secret plans out of him with meticulous skill and then firmly told him no, I wasn’t interested. See, the thing is, gondola rides can cost more than 100 euro. Plus, if you want your rowing man to sing, you gotta pay even bigger bucks. At the time I felt like the grinch who stole my own marriage, but I’m glad we didn’t fork out a kidney and a half for foul touristy dross. Instead, we hopped on a public ferry that took us from our place, near the train station, around to San Marco in about 20 minutes. A lot of tourists had done the same thing, but there were also some genuine Venitian businessmen and families just going about their business and taking the ferry around the city. Plus, Venice is just beautiful and it’s hard not to get all wussy about it. When we got to San Marco, we walked around the square together and happily talked about our future. Gag, I know.

Going to Disneyland.  Throughout our trip, I was hoping that we would have enough money to visit Disneyland when we finally ended up in LA. I went to Tokyo Disneyland on a school trip, but J-man has never been and, you guys, he is the cutest when he’s excited. I would pay $80 just to see THAT. We went in mid-December and it was the perfect time of year to go, with every ride somehow Christmasafied. We started the day slowly, with the Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters and the Storybook Land Canal Boats. I could see J-man was kind of bummed. This stuff’s for lame, idiot kids, I could hear him thinking. That was until I took him on the kablamo awesome that is Space Mountain. It blew his mind. Of course, we did the Mad Tea Party, Splash Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and even It’s A Small World (CHRISTMAS!) My favourite was the Haunted Mansion, which was revamped in the style of Tim Burton’s A Nightmare Before Christmas (CHRISTMAS!) for Christmas. But, the best part of the day was when the sun went down and we sipped the famous Disneyland hot chocolate and watched the Christmas parade. It was nice to feel carefree and be swept up in the magic. Barf.

Hanging out in the Malasaña district, Madrid. Spain’s capital was the last stop on our four month trip around Europe and we were exhausted, dirty, a little bit sick and really over each other. Instead of visiting churches, museums and taking walking tours, we decided to take a little break. A little Spanish break, how quaint! So we saw lots of movies, including The Town (hello, Ben Affleck, touch me?), ate until our bellies hurt, drank Sangria, went to crazy food markets and slept in a lot. We spent a lot of time in Malasaña, just wandering around, checking out shops and cafes. One of my favourite moments was devouring an incredible red velvet cupcake in a deserted playground while it drizzled. Life is good, dudes. Vom.

Locking the shit out of our love on the Pont des Arts in Paris. OK, so we carved our initials into a padlock, attached it to the bridge and threw the keys into the water. Gross, right? Our last night in Paris was the only romantic night we actually planned, but it was so much more amazing than I could have hoped. We had dinner at the McDonald’s near the Louvre, in the hopes of having a Royal with Cheese (no such thing, apparently). I remember I was worried about something and J-man worked his usual magic and talked me down from the top of the (figurative) Eiffel Tower over a serve of cold fries. When we left the Louvre to head to the bridge, it was drizzling and, huddling under umbrellas, we happened to catch the sparkling light show on the tower. Then we did the deed on the bridge (edit: some readers have mistaken this for actually doing the actual deed on the bridge. I actually mean this is the point at which we attached the love lock to the bridge). Afterwards we went to a little, empty bar and sipped on mulled wine, sitting on purple velvet chairs. A little part of me will always be in that bar in Paris (lame).

2010 has been the best year of my life.

- I married my one true love.

- We bought plane tickets, packed up everything and went overseas.

- We saw Europe, complete with night-train rides, hostel dorm rooms, ancient cities, romance, fights, gastro and exultant happiness.

- We drove across the United States of America. We walked 5th Avenue in New York City, we stood in awe of the Grand Canyon, we got remarried by Elvis in Las Vegas (a story for another time) and tonight we will see in the new year in San Francisco.

- Also, I became a very proud aunty.

I’m sure 2011 is tempted to bring me down a peg or two, but if there’s one thing travel gives you it’s perspective. I realise what a great life I get to lead and I’m determined to be fitter, happier, more productive.

Happy New Year!

Lately I’ve been waiting for life to begin – again.

Way back in 2006 I had just finished uni, moved out of my flat with the J-man and into a house with friends for a couple of months. I had a trip to Vietnam with my cousin Sophie planned for January 2007 and, determined to pay for the whole thing myself, I had to save up a bunch of cash. My housemates were often out of town so I saved money by buying a loaf of bread and a jar of vegemite, which would last me for a weeks’ worth of lunches and dinners. Needless to say I got thin, unhappy and a fairly stabby. I felt like every day I spent behind a checkout in that small country town was a waste and I was just waiting for life to begin.

And then I went and had an adventure, which included many sexy sleeper trains:

The thing that was extra hard about that time was what J-man refers to as “the dark times”. Just about every summer we spent apart at uni, things between us would get weird. It was, I think I realise now, me freaking the bejesus out about the fact I’d found my one true love at the tender age of 17.

So the extra sweet thing about finding myself in the same spot now – saving for a trip by depriving myself of a social life, food and clothes – is that this time I get to wait for our lives to begin. I think this adventure is going to be so amazing. And I can’t wait for it to look like this:

It’s such a girly thing to say, but I think my wedding day was the best day of my life. It was better than the day I finished high school, the day I got my first real job and the time I won a bunch of cinnamon donuts in a reading competition at my local library as a kid.

There’s no way I will ever be able to write about it in the sunny, perfect way it plays out in my head, or how it was captured in photos, so I’m just gonna give it to you blow-by-blow, peeps.

I woke up on March 13, 2010, after a night on an uncomfortable bunk bed sleeping above my sporadic snoring sister, Julia, in a beach house at Copacabana. I was very tired after only a few hours sleep and had a gut full of tingly nerves. To try and get to sleep the night before I had tried to meditate by pretending I was on a gently rocking boat, so I felt a little disorientated in the morning and kept expecting to pull seahorses and pirate’s gold out of my hair. I had a little cuddle with Vincent, painted my nails while watching Video Hits, blowdried my hair while my family had brunch at a hotel, sat around jiggling my legs and generally feeling like I was going to barf chunks.

In the afternoon, I decided to start getting ready. I did my own make-up and hair and later, got into my dreamy Alannah Hill dress. Ever since Joel gave me an extravagant Alannah Hill (yes, there’s a theme, I <3 AH!) hair clip in our early-ish days of dating, I knew I would wear it to our wedding. He gave it to me over cheeky afternoon beers in a park in Bathurst and looked mildly alarmed when I read out the description on the price tag “‘Marry Me, Stupid’ hair clip”. Well, OK.

Photo by Mary Gardiner

Guests arrived at our wedding at 3.30pm, allowing half an hour for a mariachi band to play while they drank champagne and chin wagged.

Photo by Chris Gardiner

J-man and I had decided we wanted to walk ‘up the aisle’ together and he and his sister would pick me up, school formal style, before the wedding. At 3.33, Joel hadn’t arrived and I had my first and only bridezilla moment. “Of all days to be late!” I kept yelling at Julia, who was all: “Dude … shut your idiot cake hole”. When he did show up four minutes late, relaxed and wearing blue faux Wayfarers, we sat together in the lounge room of the beach house and just kind of looked at each other, chuckling like a couple of loonies. At about 3.45, we got in the back seat of Joel’s mum’s white Camry and Nat drove us to the surf club, where we waited outside in a bus shelter.

Photo by Natalie Connolly

I was desperate to get in there and tie the hell out of this knot. Joel had to hold me back several times while we stood on the stairs ready to make our entrance, listening as our chosen song (Wedding Bell by Beach House) began to play. We took each other’s hands and walked in to a room covered in paper hearts, flowers and filled with everyone we love. I know it sounds cheesy as hell, but walking through that door was like flying. It was a whole new world and I could not wipe the smile off my face.

Photo by Chris Gardiner

The ceremony itself is a bit of a blur. I know I stumbled on some words, put Joel’s ring on the wrong finger and spilt sand everywhere during the sand ceremony. But I tried as hard as I could to take it all in, to breathe in Joel’s smile and his love and to focus on the fact that today was the beginning of forever. I know, right, there is corn in my vomit too.

Photo by Chris Gardiner

Afterwards, we sat down to sign the marriage certificate and my wonderful aunt Jo showered us in red rose petals.

Photo by Chris Gardiner

And then we were married. I made my way around the room in a complete daze, talking to some family and friends, before going to have photos taken on the beach. Now, I was particularly afraid of having photographs taken because I always look like a complete doofus. I can’t smile with my teeth on cue and usually end up looking like I’ve just seen a mass puppy grave. But, getting married to your one true love really does something to your emotions – weird, I know. I felt elated, a little bit high, even, and showed the whole world how wonderful my orthodontic work is.

Photo by Emotiva

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Photo by Emotiva

Photo by Julia Gardiner

And then we spent the rest of the night dancing, laughing and catching up with old friends and family. And we ate our Krispy Kreme tower.

Photo by Bronwyn Loudon

We made a deal to take a little time out together every now and again just to take it all in. It was the best day ever.

Both photos by Julia Gardiner

As I walked to work a few days ago I passed a shop that was being painted. The strong smell of fresh paint transported me immediately to my Catholic high school classroom in winter. There was no particular memory but suddenly I wasn’t walking to work frowning; instead I was sitting on the crappy green carpet in my thick maroon kilt/dress, which Catholic schools enjoy because it guarantees you look so much like a sack of potatoes noone will ever love you or touch your ungodly bits.

But I just love that feeling when something – a smell, a song, a taste or a sound – makes you instantly relive a part of your life in real time. So I decided to take a little more notice of it to see where else I could time travel.

PEANUT BUTTER: I love peanut butter. Love it on toast, straight from the jar, mixed with chocolate, blended in milkshakes or licked off strangers’ faces. I probably eat it everyday – it goes so well with coffee. During uni I discovered another great way to eat it was smeared on those corn thin crackers. Around about this time I did work experience at a place I shall call The Lame-o Crud Face Company For Jerks (TLCFCFJ). Unlike a lot of other places I did work experience, the powers that be at TLCFCFJ gave me sweet fuck all to do. Even when I kindly asked, said I was free or introduced myself to new people – you know, all the soul destroying things people recommend you do as a work experience dweeb – I was abruptly rejected. I was staying in a town hundreds of kilometres away from my home and feeling very vulnerable, so I took it all a bit personally.

TLCFCFJ also had their internet heavily filtered so I could only really look at their intranet and ponder the mysteries of their HR protocols. Every day I would watch the clock, holding off having lunch until about 2, so that when I finished I only had 2 hours until I could leave. So I would sit in their sunny lunch room eating peanut butter on corn thins. As I discovered, swallowing peanut butter and choking back tears simultaneously is hard work. I ended up feeling okay about the experience in the end when, at the end of the two weeks, just as the boss was giving me a fairly average assessment, his mobile phone signalled he had a text message with a farting sound. Dude, I don’t need your approval. Anyhoot, I can’t eat peanut butter on corn thins now without being immediately transported to the most crushing two weeks of my life. Up yours, TLCFCFJ.

WATTLE:  The smell of wattle actually brings back a lot of memories. But the strongest memory by far is the time I pooped my pants during sport in primary school. Actually, pooped my netball skirt would be more accurate.  I was a little dramatic in Year 2 – a totally unreserved show-off, bordering on bully. But that all changed one fateful, hot Friday. I guess maybe I’d told my teacher I was nearing death one too many times because when I told her I had an enormous pain in my guts, so sharp it took my breath away, she ignored me and told me to come with the rest of my grade to a sports oval near the school for cross-country practice. She let me sit under a wattle tree with my best friend and another disturbed girl who was known for coming to school sans underpants and using … that … as her news item.

At one point I remember the pain moved further down in my guts until, I can’t put this delicately, I parped and then pooped. And let’s just say I must have had bad vindaloo the night before. Other than the telling pain, there had been no sign it was going to get to this point. I remember just looking at my friend as she looked back at me in stunned silence, we were both thinking ‘this is it, this is the end’. Worst of all really, I was wearing a netball skirt so there was no hiding my shame. My teacher made me walk at the back of the group on the way back to school and I remember looking down at my newly , umm … tanned, legs, burning with utter shame. Weirdly though, no one made fun of me. I probably pooped myself at exactly the right time in life when kids looked at me and felt sympathy, knowing it hadn’t been so long since they were in nappies. The school called my dad to come and pick me up. The poor fella took me home, put me in the shower and once I was clean, took me to his office. I remember one of the receptionists saying “you do look flushed you poor thing”, and when I looked at my dad he just had this unforgettable expression on his face, which told me I should never, ever talk about this day again.

RADIOHEAD, KID A: I love this album. But it was the soundtrack to a very painful few months of my life. At least at the time it was very painful. Now it’s just a great story to tell over and over again to my friends in group therapy. I had met the J-man at uni, fell for him hard, kissed him a few times, shared my bed with him once and pretty much did everything I could to tell him I loved the hell out of him. I more or less walked around wearing a sandwich board saying, “You will be mine”. The beginning of uni alone was a very confusing time for me. I had begun living in a dorm with about 20 others and, since that day under the wattle tree, I can be very reserved around new people. Aside from one girl, the people I lived with did not react well to this. I wasn’t freaky peer-at-you-through-the-key-hole kind of quiet, but just didn’t participate in conversations about the weirdest colour my puke had ever been (ask me about my poop and there’s an epic greater than Homer’s Illiad) and I couldn’t join them at the uni bar for a long time because I was underage. So I just did my own thing, which I think they found difficult to understand. I mean if you can play drinking games every night with your dormies, why wouldn’t you? Right? Right? Holler!

I was also really, really  reserved around Joel at first as well. While I understand it was difficult for him, I still stand by my behaviour in those first few months of sporadic makeouts. He was a theatre student.  A loud, confident, popular theatre student. I was always nervous that whatever I had to say would not compare to whatever one of his theatre mates had just said about Bertolt Brecht. And you know, I wasn’t sure if I should be talking to him in character, singing or using symbolism to communicate. One night we sat together in dining hall with a lot of my dormies looking at me and giggling. So of course, I had nothing to say except *blush* *giggle*. And that was the beginning of the end (well, until he proposed three months ago, sucker!), he didn’t see much point continuing to hang out if I wasn’t going to talk to him. Fair enough, really. But it made me hate myself. I thought I had been so desperate and pathetic. I wished I could talk to him, show him how cool I was, listen to music with him and just be together. So every night for what felt like months, I would put on Radiohead’s Kid A and listen, discovering new things about it on each listen. I would cry, think things through, resist temptation to call him, and fall asleep to its spacey sounds.

It sounds like I’m a rock and roll preacher but with enough listens I got the strength to move on, delete his number and attempt to forget about him. Until one night, he sent me a text message about Bjork and the rest is history. I can’t listen to this album now without thinking about those nights I spent under dull light, not knowing how things would end up.

MY TAXI DRIVER’S B.O: This story might make you gag. I was certainly surprised, confused and disturbed when I got in a taxi after work a couple of nights ago, took a deep breath and rode the wave of my taxi driver’s B.O right back to a high school disco. The old cabbie’s pitts were emitting a strong scent, barely masked with what must have been the Lynx deodorant so popular among boys at my high school. Suddenly I wasn’t in a taxi anymore, there I was nervously quivering in the arms of someone I shall refer to as Barry Otter Young. I had the biggest, longest-running crush on BOY in high school. He was my first kiss, he played guitar and he was older. As appears to be a theme in my love life, I was convinced we had to be together but he was very resistant to my persistent charms. The only time BOY would ever come near me was at school discos, where he would hold me in his arms and attempt to bump and grind. I’m actually pretty sure, looking back, he liked to do it to torture me. “Here’s another taste, little lady,” I imagine him saying. Once you graduate from teenage-ship I don’t think you ever feel that same adrenaline-rushing-heart-pumping-mouth-drying-hyperventilating-headache-loin-tingle thing every single time you think about or see your crush. You get a version of it when you’re older but it’s not quite the same. But breathing in that scent the other night, I got a small replay of that feeling. I’m pretty sure if the taxi driver knew what was going on, he would buy that deodorant in bulk and set up a whole different kind of business.

Turns out there’s a whole lot of stuff you have to think about when planning a wedding. Where will old people sit? Do we invite people we don’t like? Who am I marrying? Should we get a Mariachi band?

The J-man and I have set a date. We’re committing ourselves to a foreverness of fighting over whether to watch Entourage or The Wire on March 13, 2010. I quite like that we have chosen the 13th, because it’s a big ol’ feck you to spooky-wooky wedding tradition. Up yours superstition. I wonder if I’ll be saying the same thing when the venue slides into the ocean mid-vows.

Anyway, we’re starting to think about how we want to do this thing. We don’t have too many disagreements. So far the most unsettling thing is listening to other people’s advice. I got a copy of a book called Tying the Knot Without Doing Your Block by the comedian Terri Psiakis and decided, what the heck, I’ll give it a go. There were a lot of bum jokes and some fun and awesome tips. There was also a part about what to do when you get the wee bum on your wedding day, which was clearly written with me in mind.

But a lot of it made me feel a little unsettled. I don’t want a traditional wedding dress; I don’t care about hair and make-up tests; I was thinking I’d just wear flat shoes ‘cos J-man is a short-arse; I don’t want to have to ask people to say nice things about us; I don’t have/want bridesmaids and, oh my god, I have never even heard of a ‘bridal lounge’. Even when I scoff at these things to cynical friends, “Ha! Hair and make-up tests, who are these crazy women!” they kind of look at me suspiciously out of the corner of their eyes as if they’re imagining me walking up the aisle with blue eyeshadow up to my drawn-on eyebrows.

So I started kind of freaking out and just repeating to Sir J “SIMPLE, CLASSY”. “Good night Poor Stevie,” he’d say. “SIMPLE, CLASSY” “How was your day Poor Stevie?” “SIMPLE, CLASSY”, “What should we call our first baby?” “SIMPLE, CLASSY”. After a while he said I was becoming a bridezilla in my attempts not to be a bridezilla.

But this is all I want: An awesome day that reflects who we are, surrounded by the people we love, with a whole lot of good food, music and booze. Plus a big stripper pole in the middle of the dancefloor so I can show my grandma what life has taught me. Seriously, is that so hard?

J-man and I had a lazy Sunday lunch in the sunshine with a group of his high school friends. These are boys who playfully tease him about his tight jeans, his tartan scarf and his colourful collection of American Apparel shirts.

During the conversation, which covered topics including music downloads, hangovers, cars and babes, J-man busts out two crackers which will forever remain filed in the “favourite all-time quotes” section of my brain.

First: (Mostly unrelated to the conversation) “I did a delicates wash the other day. Thirty minutes!” This was met by whole round of manly snorts and chortles.

Second: (Wrapping said tartan scarf around his shoulders) “Oh, I feel like Helen Garner!” Mostly I laughed about that. If only the dudes knew who Helen Garner was.

I’m sure when J-man reads this post he’ll get defensive and say there’s nothing more I can do to destroy his manliness. But it’s his boyish enthusiasm for just about everything – from washing cycles and baking to music and technology – that makes me love him hardcore.

I’m not one of those alien girls who dreamed of getting married when I was little. I didn’t ever pretend to be a bride and I didn’t make my dolls marry. In fact  and I were talking the other day about how we used to have to make our Barbie dolls bone a stuffed Bananas in Pyjamas doll. I used to think he was really masculine and sexy. Anyhoot, as it turns out I’ve really enjoyed the few hours I’ve spent so far planning our engagement party and wedding.

Joel-Michael and I are in the middle of putting together a casual engagement party for our friends and young relatives. I figure I do not want Joel’s family to see me take off my dress and pull it back and forth between my legs while dancing on a table to Daryl Braithwaite’s Horses. I also don’t want to have to get my mum to buy me a kebab before I spew into her cupped hands. So they’re not invited and can just look at my mug shot later.

We have a few little fun ideas but my biggest ask is being able to plug in an iPod so we can dance to the music we like. I’ve just spent a couple of hours looking at function rooms in Sydney pubs and I found it really satisfying to do some investigating. Using advice from the wedding planning guide written by  I ruled out any place that didn’t have their prices online. I also ruled out places that had really bad grammar on their page. So our garage is pretty much the only perfect venue left.

In other exciting wedding news I tried on my first dress today. This is probably the most exciting part of the whole thing for me (aside from all the obligatory love stuff) because I don’t have any set ideas and I love shopping and drooling over magazines for looks to emulate. Also, I’ve never really spent a whole lot of money on one outfit and this is the one occasion I think a splurge is justified.

So yeah, I went into the city for the David Jones sale and found a super cute Marc by Marc Jacobs pale pink/flesh-ish coloured cocktail dress with the most beautiful pleated tulle detailing around the bust and hip. It was half price too. But when I tried it on I noticed a tiny hole in the seam, which I’m sure is fixable but it just kinda spoilt the moment for me. THE PERFECT BRIDE MOMENT. Also, it was a size smaller than I usually wear and I had a montage of all the food I like to eat (burgers, mixed sweets, pizza, beer, wine, burgers, beer) flash crazily across my retinas. I just don’t want to spend the next six months or so not eating what I want to eat and hitting my head against a brick wall every time I have a schooner.  I also saw some horrid rip-offs on other racks that reminded me vaguely of those girls who leave Randwick racecourse with their knickers stuck to their high heels.  Oh, the nightmares. But still, it really was gorgeous and I can’t stop thinking about it.

Now to figure out how to pay for all this on top of a planned overseas jaunt. Hmmm. Maybe I’ll start playing the pokies