Day 5: An Australian Wedding

This morning Eve and I headed off to a wedding, which she had obtained an invitation for me prior to my arrival. The invitation actually said: Eve + an American friend or two. The wedding was located in the hills of Adelaide, in a small town called Mylor at a Baptist camp. I enjoyed getting out of the city and seeing some of the countryside. We arrived early because we were transporting chairs for the reception, so we also helped set up. I thought the decorations were really lovely: small tables with white tablecloths dotted underneath shade umbrellas and strung between by decorative baubles and white flowers.

Eve's friend Colleen married Dylan in an outdoor, casual ceremony. The bride looked really beautiful and the wedding was very like an American ceremony, except for the signing of the register (like the marriage license), which is done by the couple while the audience witnesses it and as a part of the ceremony. Afterward there was an outdoor reception with little snacks to eat brought around on platters.  Apparently Australians like to give speeches during wedding receptions, and these can just drag on and on so everyone sort of hates them.  This wedding had only a few speeches and they were fairly short.  Everyone seemed pleased about that.  I was a bit worried that I would end up doing a lot of standing around with no one to talk to, or that I would have to make small talk all day, but things actually turned out better than I'd thought.  I met a guy who lives in NZ and works as an Adventure Guide and asked him about the company that I hope to do some work for.  He had a good report about them which is encouraging to hear.

Once the reception ended, Eve and I drove back to Adelaide and went to an open air cinema in the park.  They were showing Avatar.  We took a feast with us for dinner and borrowed some bean bag chairs from Eve's church to lean on.  It was a really great atmosphere and we both enjoyed the parts of Avatar that we were awake for!  It was a good end to a great day.

PS I have been posting the photos with embedded HTML captions.  You should be able to read these if you are using IE by just hovering over the photo.  In Firefox they don't seem to work, though.   So for now, if you want to see the captions, you'll either need to check the HTML source code or use IE.  Sorry :o(