WWW - wonderful wonderful wedding
15th December 2001
(Last updated 16/01/02 with new photos in "Various Sources" and "Candida's" at the end of the page)
Definitely the biggest day of our lives. I loved it all - had a
smile from ear to ear most of the day and never felt like it was forced!
The thing that really made it was the atmosphere of friendship
created by everybody there. The ceremony was lovely, Clare looked
absolutely stunning. I had a tear welling in my eye as she walked
down the aisle, but we reassured each other with a smile and it was
just fabulous, everything was perfect. David our Minister had some
lovely things to say put us at ease and allowed us to focus on the
meaning of it all.
Ricky and Jessica's Austin Sheerline was a grand car to go to the
photo sessions in and we attracted a lot of attention in transit.
The photo session was a great time to shake ourselves out and enjoy
ourselves with the wedding party. The caterers provided a couple of
hampers with a beautiful and delicious selection of food and drink.
When we got to the reception everybody was inside the great hall
after mingling at the pre dinner drinks.
We were thoroughly impressed by the setup in the great hall.
"Christchurch flower arrangers" did a marvelous job with the flowers, they received many many
favourable comments. The complete event made the whole evening flow wonderfully they were
professional, efficient, friendly and completely unobtrusive.
The cake was cut, entrees were
served and the speeches were very professionally introduced by
Max/Gavin the MC.
Clare was the first up and made a delightful speech
thanking everybody and making me a bit embarrassed by saying such nice
things about me.
I was next and was petrified so I read out my
speech verbatim. Well really that was the only option since I only
started my speech at 10pm the night before and had no chance to practice
it. I think the worst part was just getting started but I seemed to flow
through it once people started laughing at the right moments
Andrew's speech was a hilarious. Because Andrew had been overseas for a number of
years, and prior to that I had been overseas, he had to dig into the distant past
to find the anecdotal evidence that proves how lucky I am to be matched to such
a fine girl as Clare. So long ago so young so naive. I think I should
just remind everybody here that probably every cell in my body has been replaced since the
times that those stories came from, so I am essentially a new man now.
The first dance was to the Gershwin number "Our love is here to stay" performed by Ray Charles.
We are definitely not formal dances but we had plenty of fun.
It was a balmy evening so when the coffee was served a lot of people went outside to the Quadrangle
to drink it. The wedding cake came out and I was inundated with positive comments about the
ginger layer. Before long the dance floor was full to capacity again and Marcel and Grant got up
to compliment the band musically. Certainly it was great to see people from different
aspects of our lives arrive as strangers to one another then meet and mingle and dance and enjoy each
others company. The venue was fantastic but it would have been an empty shell without the
good feeling created by the people there that night.
It all started here - click for a link to the proposal.
Photographs Links (click on them)