Never settle of anything less than butterflies...

Well, the count down is well and truly on for the big day! 

To say I am excited is quite the understatement!! 

Sure I am excited to be wearing a pretty dress, but to be honest, I am just so freaking excited to be marrying one of the most decent, awesome men I know. 

While there are so many reasons that I love him, there are many things that really make me stop and recognise that he is the man I want to bet half my shit on going the distance with. 

One of the reasons why I know I want to marry this man is that when he gets up and goes to the kitchen, he always asks, "can I get you anything?" He doesn't just ask and then ignore. He often follows up my response of "no" with a, "are you sure?" and almost seems disappointed if there is nothing I need.  This makes me smile, because he asks this every single time he gets up off the lounge and heads toward the kitchen.  I love it because it demonstrates his thoughtfulness. Over the few days that it has taken me to finalise this blog entry, I have smiled like an absolute loon each time he has asked me if he could get me anything. 

I could bang on for days about all of the traits and features of his that I adore, or why I am so fortunate for him to love me. But I will save you all of the nauseating details :)

I get butterflies when I think about him. But not like 16 year old, girly crush butterflies. These butterflies are different. These butterflies are a genuine excitement about what adventure our next day has in store. It is an excitement about all of the places we are going, bucket list items we are going to tick off together, and the awesomeness of our lives together. And I really dig that. 

In the past, I have settled. And I resolved to never settle for anything less than butterflies (...thank you Sex in the City...) I honestly feel like I am the luckiest person alive and I cannot wait to call him my husband.  

Celebrant Roulette

celebrant noun cel·e·brant \ˈse-lə-brənt\ : a person who performs or leads a religious ceremony : a person who participates in a religious ceremony : a person who celebrates something

The celebrant was the second thing we booked in for our wedding. The first being the venue. We locked our celebrant in about 6 months before the wedding, but  6 weeks out, found ourselves playing a game of celebrant roulette.

When we started looking at celebrants, I guess it was a lot like looking for a partner. We knew what we did not want, but we could not really narrow down what we wanted. We did not want a fuddy duddy old person who would be over the top with religious stuff, nor banging on about the sanctity of marriage and that we have one true love in our entire life. We wanted someone who could get the job done, and make our union official, while still saying some sweet things along the way. We found a wonderful celebrant who specialises in elopements. Our fondness for a Vegas wedding drew us to this celebrant. This celebrant stated on their website that they only did very small weddings, and initially we were not going to have THAT many people. But as they do, the guest list grew, and so we went back to our celebrant to explain our guest list now exceeded her maximum capacity, so she explained she would pass the batton to a fellow celebrant who would be able to still give us a quirky lil ceremony but would feel comfortable in front of a larger group of people. We were assured that all would be ok, and deposit, paperwork etc. transferred over.

8 weeks out from the ceremony, I sent a message to the new celebrant, touching based and making sure everything was ok. I waited for about 5 days (which, for anyone who knows me will be astounded by my patience in waiting this long) but still did not hear anything. So I rang the new celebrant. I was assured that they were on top of everything, and  that the celebrant would ring my fiancé and I on the coming Sunday to have a good chat about what our expectations were, and to give them a better idea of who we were and what we wanted to achieve in the ceremony.  Sounded great, and I was relieved that we would finally have some forward movement on the ceremony/celebrant front. Sunday came and went. No call. Late on the Sunday night, I received a message which stated they had forgotten but would contact us the following evening. Then on the Monday night, I received quite a brief call, advising they would send through a questionnaire for them to get to know us better. She advised that this questionnaire would be sent through the next day. So Tuesday comes, and goes. You guessed it, no email. At this point, I was panicking. I felt really let down by the celebrant, but knew we were against it with time, as the notice of intended marriage needing to be held by the celebrant 30 days before the date of marriage.  Eeeiiikkk!!!

So I rang NSW Fair Trading to get some advice on how to handle the situation, and go about getting our deposit back. They were fab and gave me some really useful information. Armed with this, I put in writing my desire to cancel the arrangement we had in place with the celebrant. I explained that it was due to concerns that we held about her promising certain things and then not delivering on these. I expressed concern that she would remember to actually attend our wedding. It was not nasty in any way, more defeated and fearful. 

Not too long after I hit send, I was speaking to two of my lovely colleagues. Mrs W was telling me and Mr W about a friend they had who was a celebrant. Mr W offered to make contact with the celebrant to see if he was free on our required day, and see if he would be into officiating our ceremony. Later that night, after texts and calls between Mr W and the celebrant and Mr W and I, I gave the (now third) celebrant a call. He sounded lovely, and we arranged for him to meet us the night after next. 

On Friday night, at the time we had agreed on, the doorbell rang. Bugger me. The celebrant was there. He showed up at the time he had told me he would be here. And best of all, he showed up!! Things were certainly looking up! We talked, laughed, talked some more. He was FAB!!! Funny, well spoken, listened to what we had in mind for our ceremony and what it was all about for us. We could not sign on the dotted line quick enough! Lock it in Eddy!!! 

After he left, it was the biggest relief! All of our concerns were gone. We have great faith in our third (and final) celebrant and can now be all philosophical about how things happen for a reason and everything works out in the end :) 

Confidence that your celebrant is going to show up on your wedding day - #priceless :)