There is still some minor editing to do on Mike and Sam’s photos before they are uploaded into the album associated with this site, but the images are also on display on Flickr.

The slideshow below is of the ceremony itself.

You can see the full set of photos at these links:

• The Wedding Party and its Preparations
• The Wedding Ceremony
• Signing the Register
• Wedding Party and Guest Photos
• Cheese and Speeches
• Party People

Below the cut are some of the animals they saw at the second of those three locations.

The stags are away tomorrow to locations not wholly known.

Glasses frames remain, however, subject to the vagaries of fashion, and it’s with this in mind that I’ve decided to wear contact lenses again for the wedding.  (Ned, who like many sensible people, cannot bear to put a finger against his eyeball, will be chancing future changes of fashion and staying bespectacled.)  For the first time in many years, then, I’ve had cause to see my face from a distance without glasses.  What a strange experience.

As a teenager, I was convinced that my face was my shining badge of individuality, that no-one resembled me and I would resemble no-one.  The passing of some years reveals something rather different, however.  That round, slightly jowly oval of my face is my great-grandmother’s, soft at the jaw and narrow like an egg at the widow’s peak.  That flattening out of the cheeks around the eye socket and the nose (caused in part by wearing glasses) is also my father’s.  The wispy fringe that needs pinning or spraying not to hang flatly might have been my grandmother’s.  My eyes and mouth remain my own, but they are in a family setting.

The author with wedding hair, incognito

I went today without glasses for my hair and make-up trial, a fun indulgence that I haven’t enjoyed at such length since the days of my high school ball. I am rather better at sitting still and letting others make decisions on my appearance than I was then. Without my glasses, I continued to feel as if some vital item of clothing, some key facet of identity, was missing. The ocular discipline of my teenage years hasn’t deserted me, however, since I was still able to sit still with brushes and pencils close to my eyes while colours and shapes were applied.

To get to the premises at which I needed to be demanded sunglasses, for which normally I also wear prescription lenses. I managed to find my old pair of wraparounds, which precede the current fashion for outsize lenses and thick legs. A strange sight I made, walking around town with my curled hair, my K-mart-shirt and my turn-of-the-century shades. Still, if my wedding face is to be a composite of identities, then so can be my external form in the fortnight remaining till the day.

My colleagues remarked on my equilibrium, two weeks out from the day.  In part this has been achieved by careful planning, but there is another element to this, and it is something like realistic (or maybe vague) expectations.  We’ve both tried to reserve our energy in planning, to put in place the basics and to hope with this that there will be enough for people to have a happy and lively good time.  We can’t effect on ourselves or our guests a magical transformation into anything that we’re not.

A big part of this is travelling alongside, rather than within, the commercial discourse of weddings.  Complete detachment is impossible, and likely pointless, but there’s so much that can be bought and sold that isn’t any good for us.  Consider the myth of the tiny bride, for example, which threatens not only the large but also the nearly-tiny; or the bridezilla (whose alleged behaviour comes up regularly in wedding conversations), who might otherwise be described as a woman with limited time and unresolved conflict with her mother and sisters.

I have limited personal knowledge of other brides, of course, and therefore a restricted range of experience by which to judge my own. It seems, however, that a wedding is a fragile thing on which to set one’s self esteem and by which to define oneself, pageant-style, for people by whom one is already known. We’ll see.

We are looking forward to seeing you soon.

Ned and his party will be at the Homestead from 4pm on the day.  Megan and the bridal party will arrive (on time!) at 4:30.  Around 5pm the ceremony will finish and afternoon tea will be served; there will be some short speeches at 6pm.  All will be finished by 7:30.  Photos will be taken throughout the afternoon.

The wedding party will arrive at Beleza at 8pm to welcome the party guests.  Supper and drinks will be served, and there will be speeches and toasts around 9:30pm.  Guests can stay as long or as little as they wish; there is no need to wait for the bride and groom to leave.  After midnight, drinks will be on sale at the bar.

It is exciting to be dressing up in what we hope will be elegant outfits.  The bride and her party are all (save Megan’s brother) close to being women d’un certain age (without the adulterous implications of the original French phrase), so it is important to us to look elegant and even stately rather than perky and pretty.  Our partially complete outfits give us hope for the finished items and a pleasing sense of dressing for ourselves as well as the occasion.

Tradition offers a way around this, by doing things in a certain way because that is how they are done, and religion offers the further guard rail that this is how they should be done.  Our initial response to this, which is to side with the counterculture, to shun tradition, is only helpful to a small extent, since what is a wedding but a more-or-less direct product of tradition in itself?  The understanding that you can’t have a wedding ironically, without it ceasing to be a wedding, is obvious to most people but has taken some learning for us.

By this path have we come up with vows drafted for us by our celebrant and edited by us, combining in some degrees what is traditionally said — in which the ceremony, in effect, speaks in our place — with some slender textual shapings of our own.  The two are more or less indistinguishable.  The idea of a public commitment has not given us much too much pause, but the idea of framing that commitment in a manner direct, conventional and sincere has been more of a challenge.  We take comfort from the fact that, for most wedding guests, the ceremony is a brief route to the heartier celebrations that follow.