The Wedding Day- Farewell to Australia

Friday night saw the wedding party meet up at St. Mary's Cathedral, for the wedding rehearsals. I had just about recovered from the fishing trip the day before and did my best to be helpful and, more importantly, remember what I was supposed to be doing the following day.

On the wedding day we all assembled in the church waiting for the arrival of Elena, the bride. As mentioned previously I was best man, and was therefore at the top of the church with Donal, the groom. I was curious about the traditions in this part of the world and enquired as to whether the bride would be on time. The general consensus was yes, she would be.

They say life is stranger than fiction and every now and again something happens to remind you of that fact. The time of arrival had passed and then some and there was still no sign of the bride! We began to speculate that something had happened to the car and as it would turn out we weren't far wrong.

The bride eventually arrived and it transpired that an uncle decided to visit the house before the wedding and parked the car in their drive. No problem there, except that when he went to leave, his car wouldn't start! and wouldn't you know it but the brides car was blocked in by the uncle's. It was time to roll up the sleeves and get dirty and the bridesmaids duly obliged. Picture the scene the bridesmaids all decked out and pushing the uncle's car down the drive. Like I said, life is stranger than fiction!

Here's a picture of us with Ian and Norah outside the Cathedral. (We just learned today, 18th April, that Ian is now minus his appendix, get well soon!)


There were no hiccups after that, they both said their "I do's" and became husband and wife. Here's a few pics of the happy couple.

The picture above is from the wedding cake but a pretty good likeness I think you'll agree.

After some photos it was onto the wedding venue which had a magnificent setting in Hobart harbour surrounded by all types of yachts and boats. The picture below gives a good idea of the setting.

The wedding saw the coming together of several traditions, Italian, Australian and Irish- the brides parents are originally from Italy. The Italians were keen to show off a few of their own traditions during the wedding and one that was especially popular with the kids- but probably not the cleaning staff- was the throwing of confetti during the first dance.

After the speeches were over we all let our hair down, I hadn't drank a whole lot before my speech but not to worry as myself and the barmaid got well acquainted before the night was out. Someone even remarked how during my speech I was quite articulate and that within the space of a couple of hours I couldn't string a sentence together and was slurring my words!

The bride and groom were good enough to organise a birthday cake for Ian and myself as Ian's was the day prior and mine was coming up on the 6th, the wedding being on the 3rd. We got presented with a bucket and a toy fish as reminders of our eventful fishing trip a couple of days before!

That was the wedding day, we spent the next day nursing hangovers and generally taking life easy. Although we did try to impersonate passengers of the third biggest ocean linear in the world, which just so happened to be docked in Hobart at the time. It seems big boats were one of the themes of the trip. Alas we didn't get on even though we tried to casually saunter by the security guard. Here's a pic of a really nice area around the harbour with the boat in the background.

I am not sure what the actual area is called or indeed whether there is a name to it, but there's a really nice hotel called The Henry Jones Art Hotel. Check out the web site, even if you can't afford to stay there, it's worth popping in for a drink and a gander. The picture below is of a covered courtyard area that the back of the hotel links onto. There are loads of nice cafes and shops in there also.

I forgot to mention in the previous post that during our time in Hobart there was Bioluminescent Algae in the water. When anything disturbed the water, lets just say for arguments sake a handful of stones, the algae light up as a defense mechanism. It was really unusual and something we had never witnessed before. Here's a pic I borrowed from another web site which isn't great but gives an idea of what I am talking about. When the boats came into the harbour there was literally a blue neon type halo affect around them like in the following pic.

So that was our time in Hobart, we departed the next day and arrived back in Wellington Airport at 23.59 on the 5th March, a minute before my birthday. Alas for once I had opened my present early, the trip of a life time!

Cathal