Our 11th Wedding Anniversary

Today is John and my eleventh wedding anniversary.  We are jetting off to Hobart for the weekend – our first time away together since our honeymoon!  By the time our first anniversary came around, we were parents of a six-week old baby (Amelia).

Our wedding was everything I wanted it to be.  I never dreamed the girly dream of a big wedding.  I actually never thought about it much until I was planning my own wedding.  I owned a newsagency at the time, so had all the wedding magazines to peruse for ideas.  🙂

I did most of the work myself.  If anything went wrong, I would be the only one who would know.  John’s jobs were the cars, rings and honeymoon.  (I even rang the jeweller to change my wedding band without John knowing – I wanted a thicker band, which I love.)

The funniest thing that went wrong was as I was putting my dress on.  My Maid of Honour Emma was helping me and I flipped the front of the dress up against my face.  It fell down with a huge mulberry purple lipstick kiss on it!  We were both shocked for a split second, then everyone else jumped in and started to panic.  Meanwhile, the flowers arrived (late) and I had to decorate the wedding cake so my brother could drop it to the reception venue.

So we went to the kitchen of the apartment where we were getting ready and I decorated the cake…  with Mum’s hand up my dress, soaping the stain and Nanette, the hair-stylist, blow-drying it.  My photographer, Geoff Letchford, said to me, “I can’t believe you are laughing and are so calm.”  I replied, “What can you do?” laughing.  You can see that moment in the first of the following three images.

 

Hahaha – and check the hair out!!  My hair was long –  nearly to my bottom – and I just wanted a light curl/wave to it.  The over-night rag-curlers worked better than we thought and all of us were extremely curly!!  Mine wouldn’t even touch my shoulders for the first few hours!!

My bridesmaids – Emma, Tracey and Allyson – and I got ready at West End Central Apartments, where I was living at the time.  Geoff photographed us with our perfect Winter sky.

 

…and a couple of me, in the lobby…

 

Here’s John at the church, Sts Peter’s and Paul’s at Bulimba, with his groomsmen Arj, Brian and Andrew.  We had a full nuptual wedding with lots of family and friends.

 

 

I absolutely loved the Jaguar we had as our wedding car.  We would have liked a MkII, but they are deemed too small, so we were happy with the MkV.

 

After a quick stop at Kangaroo Point cliffs, we headed off to the city to catch up with our bridal party.

 

 

 

I love the old and the new in this image.   One day I will enlarge it for the wall.  I’m lucky enough to have all the negatives from our wedding!  Mostly photographed on a couple of Hasselblads, the image quality and detail is just gorgeous!

 

Our reception was at the Brisbane Tattersals Club, which is an absolutely stunning venue.  We enjoyed the company of just over one hundred guests.  With John the third youngest of eight kids, we had a LOT of family to invite!

 

Unfortunately, when my dress was cleaned after, all the beautiful detail around the bottom of the skirt fell off – apparently it shouldn’t have been dry-cleaned, even though the label said to.  This is the best image I have of the detail.  I designed the dress myself and had it made by Kate Stevenson of Bridal Elegance at Camp Hill.  I bought all the fabrics from Gardams Fabrics in Brisbane city.

 

…and one last photo…  I am not a girly-girl.  I don’t often wear dresses and pretty heels.  There were even jokes about it in the wedding speeches.  It came as no surprise, then, that I wore great big, bridal, lace-up boots under my dress!!  There were a creamy/pearl in colour, almost matching the dress perfectly.  I love them and have saved them in the hope that Amelia’s foot is a size 10 when she grows up!!

It’s hard to believe we have shared such an amazing eleven years together.  We have done so much and had so much happen.  It has been marvelous!!  So, in leu of an eternity ring (which I am sure is in the near future), I have indulged myself with this enormous blog post!!

So, here are a handful of things that have happened in the last eleven years:

* Got married!
* Had five beautiful babies.
* Built a house.
* Bought five properties.
* Sold three properties.
* Started John Pearcy Audiology at Carina.
* Started Sassi Photography.
* Renovated our home.
* Changed cars five times.
* I crashed the motorbike.
* Started three kids at school.
* Opened a second clinic for JPA at Indooroopilly.
* Never been away without the kids.
* Paid off our home.
* Loved each other more and more every day.

I am so very lucky.
xx S.