8 years on…

Today is our 8 year wedding anniversary! It seems like just the other day that we were standing on the beach saying our vows, but then I think about all the things we’ve done since then (lived overseas, had 2 kids, for starters…) and realise we’ve packed a lot into that time.

We had quite an unconventional wedding, seeing as how we didn’t actually get married at the wedding. When we got engaged we were very keen not to just follow the traditional, well-worn path down the aisle that, to us, didn’t seem to be very personal or have much thought put in to it. We didn’t want to do things just because “that’s the way its always been done at weddings”. When I’m making decisions or planning things, I like to break things down into manageable chunks, its just the way my brain works. I love lists and bullet points. So we thought about what goes into a wedding and a marriage and tried to select the things that were important to us. The way I see it, getting married has 3 essential elements to it - a legal commitment (signing the marriage certificate), a religious commitment (if you’re in a church, standing before God and making promises) and a personal commitment (making promises to each other). Neither of us is religious at all, so we knew we didn’t want to get married in a church, and we couldn’t see how having a piece of paper to say the government recognises you are married would make the marriage any stronger (look at the divorce rate). [Incidentally, we always said that if there was a practical reason to get that piece of paper we would, but that would be a completely separate transaction, if necessary. More on that later] So, in the end, the only thing that mattered to us was the personal commitment - that is the thing that is ultimately going to keep you together or not. Because of that we decided not to have a celebrant (who would be essentially a stranger) and instead have a commitment ceremony - still standing before all our family and friends who would witness our promises - and support us and hold us to them in years to come. My uncle directed the proceedings and we still had vows, readings and many of the elements of a “traditional” wedding, but they were all things we chose as being important to us. In his speech my Uncle made a comment that always stuck with me, he said that because we had deconstructed and examined what a wedding and getting married was all about, it meant that we had put a lot of thought into why we were getting married and what we loved about each other and were going into the marriage with eyes open and with no illusions.

So, that was the philosophy behind our “Clayton’s Wedding”. Needless to say there was some resistance from family who didn’t really understand why we were doing it that way. We expected that and tried to explain (as gently as possible) that it wasn’t really important that they understand why, just that they accepted our choice to do it our way. It wasn’t always smooth sailing with my family, but it worked out OK in the end.

When it came to planning the wedding we wanted a relaxed and beautiful spot. Not a church, obviously, and given that it was a December wedding (summer in Australia) outdoors was perfect. We met at a New Year’s Eve Party in Dunsborough (south of Perth) 5 years earlier so a down south wedding was entirely appropriate. We got married on a beautiful beach near Dunsborough and had the reception at a nearby winery restaurant. We were keen for it to be a PARTY, not a boring reception like so many we’d been too. We had a lots of colour (rainbows of gerberas and huge bowls of jellybeans for centrepieces) and our wedding cake was cupcakes (before everyone was doing that!). We danced all night and were the last to leave and most of all we (and everyone else I think) had FUN. I don’t regret a minute of the stress and effort of organising it, because we have such fantastic memories of the day. Here’s a few photos (sorry they’re so pixelly - it was very early digital camera days)

We were so much younger then…

The postscript to the story is that we did end up getting the legal certificate (a very unexciting registry affair) because it made life so much easier with getting visas to live overseas. We never celebrate that anniversary and I always have to think twice about the date when filling in forms…