Speak(er) up!

A wedding ceremony has a lot of different elements that people might view as quite important, be it the clothes the bridal party are wearing, the wedding rings, the flowers, the decorations, the music that plays, the backdrop, the furniture, etc. etc. But I'm going to go out of a limb here and say there's one part of the ceremony that trumps all of those, and that is the words that are spoken. For one thing, words are important because the legal requirements involve certain words being spoken. But they're also important because they represent the emotional core of the whole shebang, especially if the couple are speaking personal vows to each other.

And so it's always struck me as odd that you'd go to all the trouble and expense of organising a wedding, inviting all your nearest and dearest, only to have hardly anyone present be able to hear a word that is said. I've attended more than one wedding ceremony where, being situated in the "cheap seats" down the back, I was forced to become an amateur lip-reader as the couple spoke their vows, since I couldn't hear a thing.

The majority of weddings these days seem to be outside (weather permitting), and it is my firm belief that once you step out into the fresh air, and have more guests than you can count on your fingers, you're gonna need a little amplification to help make it a pleasant experience for everyone. So let's talk about what you might need for your ceremony, and what various vendors might offer.

To start with, venues. In my experience, most venues that specially cater to weddings tend to have their own PA system available to use (though I am occasionally surprised by the ones that don't). Sometimes it's only available indoors, designed for the speeches in the reception/dining space, but they're often either portable or have a long extension cable to allow outdoor use. When enquiring with potential venues, "Do you have a PA system?" is probably a good one to add to your list of questions.

Next, celebrants. And again it's a case of many but not all, so if you know that's going to be important to you then ask about that upfront. This becomes especially important if your ceremony is going to be on a beach, in your backyard, in a field, on a mountain, etc.

For the record, I have my own portable PA system, comprising a speaker, a speaker stand, and a wireless handheld radio mic. When I say “portable” I mean that it has a battery that the manufacturer claims will last for 12 hours or so, which means no epic 50-metre extension cables snaking across the lawn. The mic being wireless is great too, cos you really don’t want cords tripping you up in the middle of a romantic moment.

It’s not just voices the speaker amplifies, either. My speaker can receive cables from live instruments, as well as devices like smartphones or tablets that you might have the wedding music loaded onto. In other words, it’s a one-stop audio shop for everything your ceremony needs, and if you’ve booked me as your celebrant, you get the use of my PA gear for your ceremony at no extra cost.

Pictured: My own PA gear, ready to be carried up to that next mountain-top wedding…

Let’s talk briefly about the types of mics available. Personally, I find the handheld style of mic works well for me, but other celebrants prefer lapel mics for a hands-free approach. A third option is a microphone mounted on a mic stand. As part of the planning / rehearsal process, you’ll want to talk through with your venue and/or celebrant what the microphone set up will be, so there are no surprises on the day.

Now, I can hear some of you reading this and and developing a mild panic, as you protest, "But I’ve never used a microphone before!” And I totally get it, it can be scary being in front of a mic if it’s not something you regular use. The way I see it, there are two solutions to this:

1) Learn how to use a microphone. It’s really only one or two principles to get your head around, with the #1 tip being to point it at your mouth. It’s very common to see someone unfamiliar with microphones hold them like an icecream, pointing straight up, which means that when you speak you’ll be speaking across the mic, not unlike blowing across a beer bottle, and if it’s a ‘directional’ mic (as almost all vocal mics are), it’s going to struggle to pick up your voice. So instead, try holding it slightly out from your body, angled in at about a 45-degree incline and pointed at your mouth.

2) Let someone else worry about the microphone. And by ‘someone else’, I mean the celebrant. With almost all of my ceremonies, I find it works best when I keep hold of the mic and just position it where it needs to be - that way, the couple are free to focus on the really important business of speaking to each other from the heart.

So, the bottom line? Sound is important at weddings. Music is often important, and the words that are spoken are always important. Take the time to talk to your venue, talk to your celebrant, consider the seating of guests and all that good stuff, and you’ll end up with a kickass ceremony that everyone can hear, which will result in a kickass ceremony that everyone will talk about for years to come.

Leap? Yeah!

This year is a leap year, and this weekend, I have a couple getting married on the 29th of February. Which is a pretty cool date to get married for at least one of two reasons:

1. It’s a rare date, reflecting the rare, precious nature of the couple’s love

2. They get to save heaps of money on anniversary presents

Now I’m going to take a guess and say that they will probably still want to celebrate their anniversary once a year. But their actual anniversary date will only come along every four years, so what to do? One solution I proposed was to mark it using the period from midday on the 28th til midday on the 1st. Or just get greedy and make the celebration a two-day extravaganza.

Alternatively, there’s the option of choosing a completed separate date when the anniversary is ‘observed’. I mean, hey, it’s good enough for the Queen, so why not you too?

And this option isn’t just available to those Feb 29 knot-tie-ers - there’s no rule to say that anyone can’t observed their anniversary on a date of their choosing. One good reason would be if the anniversary occurs close to some other major event, and you’d rather space out the celebrations through the year. After all, a significant number of weddings happen in January, not long after the Christmas/New Year period.

(Speaking for myself, I have Christmas, my birthday, New Year’s, and my wedding anniversary, all inside a 10-day stretch!)

Not that the marking of an anniversary need be an ‘extravaganza’ in any case, and building up an expectation of such can invite troubles of its own. Even the gifting of presents is an extremely optional thing, and if the only reason you’re giving gifts to each other is because you feel you ought to, then you might want to remind yourselves of what marking the day is really all about. There’s no right or wrong way to have an anniversary - the only thing that’s important is that both of you talk about it and end up on the same page about what you want to do.

Well, I thought this was going to be a post talking about Leap Year weddings but, like a three-year-old flowergirl at a wedding, it wandered off-course in a delightful way. In summary: Get married when you want to. Celebrate the anniversary of your getting married when you want to.

(And even if your wedding wasn’t on the 29th of February, you still don’t need to buy anniversary presents each year if you don’t want to. Just make sure your partner is with you about that one cos, you know, everyone likes presents! :) )

Photo by JOSHUA COLEMAN

Time and tied (knots)

What time of day are you meant to have a wedding? What are the rules? Well the answer to the second question is easy - there are no rules! (Or at least, not any more.)

For a long time the traditional church wedding was in the morning, in a church, immediately after mass (which was then followed by the first meal as a married couple, the Wedding Breakfast, which was literally breakfast, since they fasted prior to the wedding). But no longer. These days, by far the most common time of day that modern weddings occur is afternoon, usually mid-afternoon, something around 3pm, give or take an hour.

As far as I can tell, the popularity of the mid-afternoon time-slot is based on two simple reasons: 1) the majority of secular wedding ceremonies tend to be outside these days (weather permitting), and so choosing a time near the warmest part of the day makes sense on that front; and 2) if the reception dinner is going to be at dinner time (with speeches and dessert and dancing and drinking following that), then working backwards and allowing a little bit of time in between for drinking and possibly photo-taking, mid-afternoon works well for the ceremony kick-off. An optional third reason is 3) because everyone else is doing it.

Now to be clear, there is absolutely nothing wrong with mid-afternoon for a wedding. I had a mid-afternoon wedding; it was great. It remains popular because it clearly works quite well for most people. But it’s important to realise that it is simply one of many options, and if you are planning your day, you should stop and think seriously about exactly what you want out of the day, in order to figure out what the best time is going to be for you.

One potential peril with an afternoon wedding, especially earlier in the afternoon, is catering. Consider a 2pm wedding: your guests are going to be leaving the house no later than say 1pm, probably earlier. They’re going to start getting ready no later than 12pm, almost certainly earlier. They hopefully had breakfast, but it’s very possible that they didn’t have time for lunch. Dinner isn’t til 6pm. How much are you feeding them prior to dinner? They may have eaten nothing for literally hours.

The later in the afternoon you get, the less the catering is an issue. Of course, if you get late enough, it becomes an evening wedding, which can be quite an elegant, ‘compact’ celebration. Just at the weekend, I did a 6pm wedding, which was followed by drinks and nibbles, and then a sit-down dinner in the mid-evening. The benefits of this model are that you aren’t hogging the whole day - the guests still get the daytime to go about their business, and then the evening alone is dedicated and focussed on the nuptial celebrations.

At the other end of the scale, maybe those old-fashioned churchgoers were onto something. I did a morning wedding once, 9.30am. What a lovely way to start the day. The Wedding Breakfast was actually a Wedding Lunch, then drinking continued through a sunny afternoon (the venue was a racecourse, so not entirely inappropriate there). By late arvo, things were winding up, and the happy couple were back at home relaxing after a long day, eating fish’n’chips for dinner in their pajamas.

So what’s my point? Well, nothing really, except to ask that you don’t just do a thing cos everyone else is doing the thing. (And also, to make sure you’re sparing a thought for your poor guests’ rumbling tummies!) Stop for a moment and think through all the options, and decide which one is going to be best for you, to help make your day what you want it to be.

Unplug your guests, to have them more plugged-in

Okay, so there's this word: "unplugged". You may have heard it in the context of an Eric Clapton album, or perhaps as an explanation for why the ice cream in the freezer has melted. But you also may have heard it in association with weddings, and that's what I want to talk about today.

An unplugged wedding is a relatively new thing, but that's mostly because the problem that it solves is also a relatively new one: namely, technology. See, just about all of us carry these little computers around in our pockets all day long, these magical machines that can surf the net and play movies and games and take photos. (I hear they can even send and receive phonecalls too, although really, who does that anymore?)

Alongside that, modern culture has steadily been encouraging us more and more to become documentarians, recording for posterity (whoever that is) the minutiae of daily life, from our children to our social life to that weird cloud formation in the sky to what we had for dinner. It's the urge to quite literally 'capture' the moment, to record the occasion just in case we want to re-live it again in future. Except there's a problem with that - how can you re-live something, if you never really lived it in the first place, observing from behind a digital screen rather than using one's own two eyes to be truly present in the moment?

And okay, maybe I'm sounding a little overly dramatic, but my general point stands I think, and especially so when that occasion is a wedding. You can come at this from a few different perspectives:

1) THE WEDDING COUPLE: They spent a lot of time and money planning this day, and they've chosen a group of their favourite people to share in it with them. So it's only fair that those invited guests actually lend them their full attention.

2) THE GUESTS: And speaking of those lovely guests, this is all for their benefit too. Because does anyone really want to be stuck behind a digital screen, rather than enjoying a lovely moment? No, I think we're just slaves to our devices sometimes, and forcing people to take a break from them for a short time is probably quite a liberating experience for those poor techno-thrawls.

3) THE PHOTOGRAPHER: And don't forget the poor photographer, that is, the real photographer, the one that someone has paid some real money for to do a real job. These guys are really good at what they do, but even they can't work miracles if there's a sea of miniature digital screens leaning into the aisle and obscuring the view.

So what's the solution here? Well, to loop back to the top, an increasingly popular option for couples is to opt for an unplugged ceremony. For me, I find the trick is that it's not something you make a big deal of. Perhaps have a sign as people arrive, but signs can be missed - the main job on this front is done by the celebrant, usually in the context of a few words of housekeeping just prior to the start of the ceremony (alternatively, the MC could make these announcements, if they happen to be speaking to everyone pre-ceremony). It's just a few sentences politely asking people to switch off, put away their smartphones and digital cameras, reassuring them that a professional photographer will be capturing the whole occasion, and giving them permission to sit back, lean forward, and be present with the people upfront, inviting them to come on a wee journey with the ones about to get married.

And it's possible that the way an unplugged wedding is received by guests may vary depending on the country, depending on the culture, not 100% sure on that front. But I can happily report that from a New Zealand perspective at least, every unplugged wedding I've done so far (which has also been almost every wedding I've done) has seemed to work out very well. And occasionally you'll get a couple of people who insist on keeping their camera handy just for a few choice shots, but honestly I reckon that's okay too. I'm not gonna stop the ceremony and point at Uncle Jack down the back discreetly framing up a shot, cos a) the celebrant isn't a policeman, and more importantly b) once you announce the unplugged thing then at the very least they're going to be a whole lot more conscious of not getting in the way.

Another thing to mention is the question of whether the unplugged-ness stops when the ceremony stops, or if you want it to continue on for the rest of the wedding day also. Practically speaking it's going to be impossible to police, but moreover, nothing else in the day is quite as formal as the ceremony, plus the photographer doesn't always stick around for all of it, so these are some things to keep in mind. But if it is something you're concerned about, maybe a compromise is to invite guests to keep their screentime to a minimum throughout the day, keep those little electronic boxes in their pockets as much as possible, and to encourage them to make the most of engaging face-to-face with the family and friends present. (But you've really got to know your crowd, and whether this will fly with the people you've got coming.)

(Oh and a final, related point in all this is about the guests sharing photos or video to social media. I might save that one for a future post.)

So there you have it, that's my quick take on unplugged weddings, how they're awesome, how they're a win-win-win for everyone involved, and how they allow everyone to be right there, in the room, with you, during the wonderful occasion that is your wedding ceremony. And now, if you'll excuse me, this melted ice cream won't eat itself...

PSA: New Marriage Licence & Certificate prices

If you're currently in the planning stages of getting married, here's some info that might be relevant to you: The Department Of Internal Affairs has recently concluded a consultation and review process regarding its pricing structure, and as a result there are a few changes coming. Most of them are behind the scenes are affect us celebrants, but there are also some price changes that almost-but-not-quite-married couples should be aware of.

Product	Current Fee	New Fee
Marriage Licence (if you're using a celebrant like me)	$122.60	$150.00
Marriage Licence (if you're going the registry office route)	$173.70	$240.00
Marriage Certificate	$26.50	$33.00

So yes, prices are going up a little bit, although I don't think they've actually changed them in a few years, so fair enough I reckon. More importantly though, you'll notice that the numbers on the right-hand side of the little decimal point have gotten a lot simpler (a.k.a. no silly 50c/60c/70c after the dollars bit), so that's nice.

Now, if you happen to be sorting the paperwork side of things right now then you'll still get the old pricing - these new changes will take effect in two weeks' time, on 22 May 2017.

(And in case you're wondering, no, my own fee will not be affected by any of these changes.)

Bridal Show (& Tell)

Over the weekend, I attended as an exhibitor at the 2017 Great NZ Bridal Show. It was my first time having a stand at one of these expos, so wasn't 100% sure how it would go, but apart from some very achy bones at the end of a long day of non-stop standing, I had a blast. And sure, these things can feel like a bit of a meat market sometimes, with all the various vendors selling their wares and the potential wedding customers possibly feeling a bit overwhelmed exploring their options. But as counterpoint to that, there were certainly an awful lot of happy smiling faces filling the crowds too. And you can spot them I think, the ones who have decided they're not going to let the apparent hugeness of wedding planning drag them down, and they're definitely out there to have fun.

Me, at the end of a long day, moments into packing up my stall and suddenly getting belated inspiration to capture a piccy of my setup, for posterity (a.k.a. Mum - hi Mum!)

And if people are finding the stresses of the pre-wedding hustle getting the better of them, I reckon that's a big part of where my job as celebrant comes in. I'm there to soothe those nerves and pretty much just say, "Hey! It's all good, everything's going to be fine, and I'm taking point to help hold all the bits and pieces together for your ceremony, so follow my lead and just relax and do your job of being two beautiful-looking, very-in-love people." (And hopefully that came across in my 20-second over-the-table sales pitch!)

Worth mentioning too that despite what the expo's name suggests, it wasn't just the ladies who showed up. Granted, they significantly outnumbered the gents, but I saw plenty of men there as well - with their partners, with friends, perhaps a father there supporting a to-be-married child. Which is a good reminder that a wedding day isn't all about the bride, no matter what the magazines may imply; the groom (or the other bride, as it may sometimes be) is half of the relationship, and really should be equally represented in what happens on the day.

The day was also a terrific opportunity to have a casual chat in the quiet bits with some of my fellow Christchurch celebrants, and what a lovely bunch they are: Kineta, Kate, Chris, Annette, Andrea and Tricia. Thanks to all the not-quite-weds who came by my wee table and said hi, and maybe I might be chatting with some of you again soon!

Name Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

This is a follow-on post from an earlier one about names, here - I've recently made some clarifications around this stuff, and I wanted to make sure I'm not setting anyone on the wrong track. In short, just about all of what I said last time still holds, but there are a couple of additional wrinkles to be aware of.

First up, contrary to what I said previously, the two bachelor names of the marriage can be combined, either with hyphenation or a space, and hence Rose Smith marrying Greg Jones could become Rose Smith-Jones, and that would be generally recognised. Furthermore, if one of the bachelor names is already a hyphenated name, there's no rule against combining that with a third name (although there comes a point where you want to think very carefully about whether you're going to be making life unnecessarily difficult for yourself...).

But there is a bigger point to make here, which is that a change of name as a result of marriage is what is known as an assumed name, and is different than a legal name. If Rose Smith marries Greg Jones and takes his surname, she is still legally Rose Smith, but may go by Rose Jones as an assumed name.

In New Zealand, for all intents and purposes an assumed name functions essentially identically to a legal name, in terms of use on ID, bank accounts, etc. And so most of the time, the distinction is an academic matter. However, once you venture out into the big scary world, things have the potential to get more complicated, since some countries may only recognise your legal name, not your assumed one, and so if travelling abroad (especially if living overseas), it is really important to first double-check what the requirements are on that front.

You can see more info about these rules on the government website here.

Podcast fun!

I recently spoke with a friend and fellow Christchurch celebrant Kineta Booker, as part of a new weddings-themed podcast she is producing. We chatted about a range of celebrant- and wedding-related topics, and you can hear it for yourself right here:

http://kinetabooker.com/backstage-podcast-weddings-nz-choosing-a-celebrant/

(And if you listen to podcasts using an app, be sure to subscribe to Backstage Podcast:Weddings NZ podcast so you don't miss out on any future episodes.)

What's in a name (change) ?

For just about as long as we've had surnames, the general rule has been that as part of the contract of marriage, the woman takes the man's name. Of course, these days that's become much more a tradition than a hard-and-fast rule, and although plenty of women do still choose to change their name, plenty more opt to keep their existing surname, and in some cases it's the man who does the name-changing now. The options don't stop there either: some couples might choose to hyphenate both their surnames together, or dream up something completely new. And I haven't even touched on same-sex couples, where the rules might be easier or harder, depending on how you look at it.

So which option to choose? Well, there's no right or wrong answer - or, to put it another way, the right answer is the one that feels right. But I'm not writing this to give you naming advice; instead, this post is going to be more concerned with something perhaps more boring, but rather important, and a source of perennial confusion: the legal side of changing your name.

At first, I was actually pretty confused myself by how this all worked. I assumed it must be some kind of deed-poll legal name change that was required, as it would be under non-marriage circumstances. But no, it's much simpler than that. And here's perhaps the most important bit to understand in all this: Within the legal contract of marriage, it's not about changing your surname, but instead adding an extra surname.

Okay, so let's use an example. Rose Smith is marrying Greg Jones. After they are married, Rose can legally keep her maiden name Smith; she can also legally use Jones now. The point is, if she chooses to go by Jones, she doesn't lose the ability to use Smith also if she wants to - she simply has two legally usable surnames now. To awkwardly paraphrase the Bard: A Rose by any other name (as long as it's hers or her partner's) would smell as sweetly legal.

And very important to make clear, this goes both ways. Greg can stay a Jones, but he can also choose to take her name, Smith. Most men probably don't even give this a moment's thought, but they are automatically gaining their partner's surname whether they like it or not.

(Probably worth noting also that in the hopefully unlikely event of divorce, this means that you can then revert back to your original name should you wish to, without much hassle. But that's quite enough talk of divorce on a wedding website!)

All of this is the reason why you can still use your passport when heading off overseas on your honeymoon, despite it having your old name printed on it. This is also the reason why some people, years after having changed their name in marriage, still have their bank account in their old name (procrastination is a powerful force).

You'll note that any other surname option beyond the bachelor surnames of each of the couple is not an automatic legal option, and that includes hyphenation of names. So anything like that can be used casually of course, but if you're wanting to use it for legal purposes, then I'm sorry Mrs. Rose Metallica-Forever, you'll just need to see about doing a name change the old-fashioned way.

(It hopefully goes without saying, but the above info is talking specifically about the circumstances of legal marriage in New Zealand. I have no idea what the rules around name change are in other countries.)

UPDATE 4/04/17: I have a little bit more to say about changing names as a result of marriage, with a couple of clarifications of this post; check it out here.

Beware the Brides of March

Okay, I only wrote the above headline because I'm a sucker for a good (bad?) pun. And to be clear, the brides I've worked with so far this month (i.e. March) have been nothing short of delightful. But since I've mentioned the name of a particular month of the year, perhaps this is a good opportunity to muse somewhat randomly on why people choose the dates they do for a wedding.

To begin with, much like climate and high fashion, weddings have a "season". This season is the result of the period of the year when the majority of weddings happen, and approximately falls on the warmer months, although the weeks prior to Christmas seem to be less popular due to the exigencies of end-of-year work and school and present-shopping. My limited data set suggests that January to March is the peak of this season, which roughly correlates with meteorological happy fun warm-times.

Then again, New Zealand summer can be rudely interrupted by bursts of cold/wind/rain/hail, and no particular date is safe from this possibility. And is warmer necessarily better? Mid-winter weddings offer their own suite of aesthetic pleasures, such as the cosy feeling of being inside with friends and family on a crisp winter evening, plus the magical early sunset light that makes otherwise-professional photographers squee with delight.

This year, the month of March that we are still in, while technically Autumn, has produced some whoppers of the heatwave variety. We've also had the odd torrential downpour. Which serves to prove precisely no point at all really, except perhaps that weather is a fickle mistress.

Another consideration is what else is going on at the particular time of year you're looking at. This applies to travel and accommodation if you have guests coming from out of town; there's also touristy things to consider if you're honeymooning. March in these respects has an appeal, being likely quite warm while also not in the holiday season.

One final thing to think about, and maybe this is a shallow one, but the date you have your wedding will become the date you celebrate your anniversary. And if that date is nicely separated away from other events in the year like Christmas or birthdays, you'll allow it more space to be made special. Or, failing that, maybe just do what the Queen does and observe your anniversary on a different date to when it actually happened. Rules are made to be broken! (Just make sure that you both agree on the same date, or else things could get messy...)

I suppose the short version of all the above is that whenever you choose to have your wedding is a good time to have your wedding. And if that time happens to be March, well, we'll all just have to be extra careful around you I suppose.

Beware, beware the brides of March

of August, April, June or May

Their dresses fair and white as starch

Their smiles bright on any day.

It's, like, rain on your wedding day

I have a sneaking suspicion that whoever invented the superstition about rain on your wedding day being good luck was just ad libbing in the interests of comforting a rain-soaked bride. And if it's your wedding that's getting unexpected dampened, you're going to cling to anything to make you feel better. Although I'm not trying to side-step the fact that if you’ve planned an occasion designed for the outdoors, then of course you’ll want to be outdoors for it.

Still, rainy days have their own charms – warm yet rainy is one of my personal favourites, especially if you’re under shelter but exposed to the open air. I did a wedding the other day which was essentially that: outside but under the somewhat patchy shelter of a big old tree (the forms have the odd water blotch on them to prove it!). Sure, it was a tiny wee service and we weren't there for too long, but it was a rather lovely occasion. (Actually, the lack of other people wandering past due to the rain might have also contributed a little to the intimate vibe.)

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A guest arriving at my wedding.                        (Photo credit: Andy Currie)

My own wedding seven years ago was inside, but despite that the weather still had plenty to say. The morning was overcast, then around an hour before the ceremony a light sprinkle of precipitation began to fall. By about quarter to, the heavens were starting to well-and-truly open, and we have some amazing images of guests dashing from cars to the venue – less wedding, more war photography. For the duration of the ceremony, from our windowless theatre we heard the roar of pounding hail on the roof, punctuated with drum fills of alarmingly loud thunder. And then, after the ceremony, the rain eased off, and then by dinnertime it was all blue sky and sunshine.

I have no grand conclusions to draw from all of this. Rain is a thing that the sky sometimes does, and even if you struggle to appreciate the majesty of nature as you stand sodden in your best clothes, at least it'll make for a good story later.

Earth-shaking romance

I'm of two minds about Valentine's Day. On the one hand it's easy to get cynical about what seems to be a manufactured, Hallmark Card-style event, a sort of cardboard cut-out version of romance that gets culturally advertised at us. On the other, well, I guess there is a nice idea at the heart of it, underneath all the consumerist trappings: it's an annual reminder that we all ought to take time to do something special for our loved one, and not take them for granted.

Of course, you might argue that we should all be doing this anyway, as often as possible, and that we don't need to hold off on the thoughtful acts until a specific point on the calendar rolls around (the same argument holds for Mothers and Fathers Day too). But I guess that as long as you're not only doing romantic things on Valentine's Day, and turn into a loveless hermit for the remaining 364 days of the year, it's all good.

Today is Valentine's Day, and in Christchurch the earth shook for us in ways that perhaps weren't quite what the romantics had in mind. Big quake, 5.7, probably the most violent shake we've had in a couple of years (original earthquake was a little over five years ago, in case anyone's still counting). But the thing is, this city's so acclimatised to them now that, after the initial shock, people by-and-large seemed to cautiously shrug and just get on with their days. And it's not about making light of a potentially serious thing; it's just that after a while, you learn not to waste unnecessary energy on something that you have absolutely no control over.

Which, if you'll allow the clumsy segue, is a bit like the attitude you need when planning a wedding. Sure, everyone needs a backup plan, an emergency kit (a.k.a. the wet-weather option), but there are some things you can't plan for. And you have to be at peace with that. So instead of planning for everything that might happen (which is impossible), what you need to do is plan an attitude, a state of mind as you sit inside your head, ready to accept the aftershocks of unscheduled real-life, and just roll with it.

It's also a good reminder of why that space on the Marriage Licence for a Plan B venue for your wedding, while optional, is absolutely a good idea to fill in. It might be an earthquake or other natural event, maybe the place burns down in a fire or goes out of business, maybe the wedding gets delayed due to illness or giving birth. Plenty of reasons to list Uncle Kevin's house (the one with the big backyard) as a backup - you know, just in case.

A very good place to start

Dearly beloved*, we are gathered here today to start writing a blog. Mostly because in the course of putting together this website, it's occurred to me that there are plenty more things I want to say, but I can't figure out exactly where they should go. So in a sense, this blog will serve as my clearing-house for random musings and the odd piece of advice that I want to share with you all.

Now, I've had blogs before, and one thing I know for sure is that posts on here won't be regular. So that means I might have three posts in a week, and then nothing for a month. That said, I'll try my best to keep a steady drip-feed of content coming out, and I suspect that every new wedding I do will serve me up a platter of fresh inspiration.

So have a read, and please do comment if the mood takes you (even if it's to say that I'm wrong about something - I like debates). Enjoy!

* I promise I will never actually say "Dearly beloved" in a ceremony, unless you really really want me to. And even then, I'll probably try to talk you out of it, cos let's be honest, it's kind of a weird thing to say, especially to strangers.