 Mark proposed with a bit of dutch courage, after some beers at a party in Te Awamutu. He leaned over while we were sitting at a table and whispered in my ear "I want you to marry me"...here we are 5 years later.
We went to a friends wedding in January 2004 which inspired us to "go ahead and do it". We decided on a date 05 March 05....Plans were going well and we were looking forward to that date. Symone finished her teaching degree in October this year and got a job offer for 2005 which forced us to hurriedly bring the date forward.....We looked at some dates just before the end of the year but they were getting too close to Christmas and things were very booked up so we decided on a date of 20 November which gave me 3 weeks to pull everything together.
Bringing the wedding so far forward meant some serious reorganizing, cutting back numbers from 70-80 to 30 (Luckily invites had not been sent out). Fortunately we had a very understanding wedding party and after lengthy discussion with bridesmaids and groomsmen we decided to only have our daughter Dakota (9), son Fletcher (3) and niece Libby (5) as the wedding party (We had already had the flowergirl dresses flown in from the USA).
We tossed up eloping, registry office, but after careful consideration, I said to Mark...if I can't do it at Cooks beach I don’t want to do it at all as Cooks Beach is a special place for us with a family bach there have holidayed there for 15 years.
So then all was left was to plan our big day. I did the invitations myself and my wonderful sister agreed to take the photos....which turned out absolutely beautifully. My dress was bought from the Bridal Gallery in Hamilton . It was raw silk in Diamond white and was perfect for the type of wedding we had, a lovely casual dress for a casual laid back wedding. We had a bit of a dilemma with it during the year. We had placed it in the hotwater cupboard for safe keeping but unknown to us there was a leak in the cupboard...(you can't get silk wet) and it had a huge brown stain all over the front of it...I panicked but the dry cleaner was able to get the mark out....thank god!!!
My daughter and niece wore dresses imported from the USA made of a gorgeous ivory satin dresses with and ivory organza overlay...just beautiful.
Naturally, the wedding was Beach, Beach, Beach....No theme really, however my dress had a really low cut back and did have two strings of pearls across the back to keep with Ocean setting and my flowergirls had pearls encrusted into the bodice of their dresses. It also meant we didn’t need bridal cars as we simply walked down to the beach!
With November weather being a little unstable we took a bit of a gamble having a beach wedding but we just went for it. Right up until the Thursday before the wedding the weather was terrible....torrential rain and high winds. The Friday began to look up and the forecast for Saturday was brilliant, and true to form, I woke up in the morning with sun shining, blue ski, gentle breeze and calm seas....PERFECT!!! So off I went with my sister and flower girls to have a girly day of hair makeup.
Well the ceremony was lovely, I walked down the beach with my flower girls on either side of me holding their hands rather than having a bouquet of flowers and my dad holding my daughter’s hand, and they took me to Mark.
I was standing there with Mark while our lovely marriage celebrant read the vows and I looked down to the sand and i saw little drops in the sand coming from somewhere...to begin with I thought they were tears coming from me and I didn't know I was crying, but I looked over at our daughter and she was very emotional and crying her little wee eyes out. After the ceremony we joined our family and friends on the beach in the sand dunes and had wine and cheese and lovely time down there.
Afterwards we went out for a wonderful dinner at The Fireplace Whitianga where everything was fully taken care of for us. Just having our friends and family with us to share our day made it so special for both of us and the whole wedding was romantic...the setting and having my wonderful new husband with our children there to share with us.
As far as tradition goes...that went out the window....a couple of friends growled me because we had nothing traditional going on at all.........It was probably about as untraditional as you would get. It was just a lovely relaxed fun day.
Our best decision was having it where we did....what we would do differently....Have longer down at the beach for drinks and more people.
We are going to honey moon later as we just don’t have any time to right now!
And what advice do Symone and Mark have for other couples about married life? “It is awesome, we have been together for 8 years but this just adds a new dimension to our life. Enjoy”.
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