OK, so now on to Sunday and Athalie and Brett's wedding. A slightly different setup this time – the ceremony was outside of the Old Government House at Belair National Park. And thankfully, an improvement in the weather.
The first thing that struck me was that I barely knew anyone at the wedding, aside from Athalie, Brett, Athalie's Mum, and Cara & John – a couple of old friends I hadn't seen in quite a while… and their daughter's 3 already !
ANYWAY, the wedding. The wedding cars rolled up fairly conspicuously, but then it's hard to miss the sound of a WW2 jeep. I guess that answers the question of whether Brett got it finished in time…
It seems a bit dopey to say that she looked awesome, but I will, and she did. You could *so* see her personal touch on things, for instance the bridesmaids all had little butterfly tattoo thingos on their right shoulders. The ceremony was really cool – the priest had a pretty good knack for cracking jokes, and overall everyone seemed to really enjoy it.
Afterwards there was the traditional barrage of photographing, and I managed to capture a rare moment of unusual pictorial splendour.
In fact, I liked the photo so much, I rushed back home between the wedding and the reception, and printed and framed it ! OK, more particularly, I went home, found my printer out of colour ink, rang my parents to find them not home, rang Ben and couldn't get him, rang Jon and found they were out at Easter lunch, rang Mat to find he didn't have a colour printer (prolly can't afford one after buying an iBook !), and finally went around & borrowed Chelsea's printer.
The reception was up at the Mt Lofty Golf Club, and I reckon it's the first time I've set foot upon those grounds whilst not wearing hiking boots. It was certainly a far cry from the old days of being a Torrens Park Scout and camping out on about the 12th green (lovely flat patch of grass, that !). I presented the photo to the couple, and Athalie proceeded to show it around to all and sundry, identifying me as “the culprit”.
I was seated at a table full of primarily Brett's friends, who were all pretty cool, I've gotta say. No idea what there names were, except for Maria whom I was seated next to. And the guys all had monosyllabic names.
Again, an awesome night, with some very touching and heartfelt words spoken, and I believe I'm correct in saying that the mood in the room was one of happiness and comfort – you just felt like these 2 were marrying the right person.
Now, as apparently I've got a knack for, my cynical observation/narky comment for the weekend was this : wedding DJ's are among the lowest forms of intelligence the human race can produce. Admittedly this is entirely based on a sample size of 2, but man, what shining examples. Having now thought about it for a hal-second, I actually know some guys who do wedding DJing, and whilst I've not seen them in action, I dearly hope they put on a better performance than the Herberts we had… Why the hell would a guy who's been hired to play music sing and dance along with music that it's obvious nobody in the room is enjoying ? At Athalie's, everything was cool during the bridal dance and the one following, but then this idiot struck out with a poorly placed Neil Diamond track. Seriously. Neil bloody Diamond, at a 27 year old's wedding ? It was like some augmented version of musical chairs, in which rather than stopping the music, it was a case of the last one to sit down when the gimp put the shite song on had to go stand outside, or something. Lynn's reception suffered a little from this syndrome too, albeit not as badly. They had a git who basically played “roll out the cliche's” for the entire night, apart from those songs he'd been directed to play.
ANYWAY, this is meant to be a happy story about a beautiful wedding.
Mmm, so yeah – a great day, Athalie and her reserves looked gorgeous, and even Brett scrubbed up decently.
Oooh, bloody hell, I nearly forgot ! I'm not normally much of a meal photographer, but in light of the fact Mum had been hassling me that morning about how my diet is obviously lacking in salad/vegetables (intriguing argument, given I'm living with the parents at present, therefore she's the one *responsible* for said shortage), I decided to capture the following as evidence:
