Today was the big day! Anthony and Amy would finally make it official. Normally for the morning of a wedding I’d be putting on a suit, my best leather shoes and trying to remember how to tie a tie again but this wedding is very different! Not only was there no massive ceremony with hundreds of people but we were in the middle of a holiday and most of the people on the trip didn’t even know there would be a wedding. This made for not only a nice surprise but a super relaxed wedding! Instead of putting on a suit, I was putting on our custom made Star Wars T-shirts with our faces on them and my plain old sneakers.
We went to the cafe near the hotel for breakfast while Amy and Madi were out getting their hair done, etc. (Not quite as relaxing for them but still very relaxed compared to most weddings I’ve seen). While most of us were wearing the Star Wars T-shirts (because its traditional for the groomsmen to wear matching clothes and this is the best we could come up with), Anthony wasn’t. Anthony was wearing a much more formal tuxedo T-shirt.
After eating some food and wishing Anthony all the best for the ceremony we jumped into our big, bright hire van (not your typical wedding car) and drove to the registry office. After meeting the registrar we all headed in to what looked like the main courtroom. I was tasked with capturing the events so with my camera at hand, I did my best to take as many photos as were needed. There was a small amount of formalities and then documentation to be signed, accompanied by jokes and laughing from our small but rather loud crowd. Considering most more formal ceremonies have a lot of silence from the crowd, this less formal wedding also meant more laughing which made it feel very intimate.
Eventually it was my turn to get up and sign on the dotted line, so I handed my camera over to Rob who took on the important job of capturing every moment a little too literal. I don’t think he even let go of the shutter release the whole time! I now have quite a lot of photos go through!
With the ceremony complete and Anthony and Amy officially announced as husband and wife, the crowd went wild! We took a moment to recognise how amazing this very different wedding was. Mid way through a holiday, a surprise wedding occurs in a foreign country, in the middle of a cyclone, surrounded by a small group of close friends and family, where the wedding car is a hire van and almost everyone is in comfortable traveling clothes and novelty T-shirts.
From here we drove down to the lake for some outdoor wedding photos by the lake. Also not your typical wedding photos. The lake was overflowing, there was temporary fencing preventing anyone from getting too close and the wind carried a cold, light spray of water in each large gust, but determined we all got out, took some photos and then hurried our way back in.
By this stage, everyone was hungry so headed to The Pig and Whistle and ordered ourselves a nice big celebration lunch - literally, the burgers were huge!
The plan for the rest of the day was to head over to Hobbiton where the equivalent of the wedding reception would be a massive Hobbit feast, however due to the weather warnings we thought we should probably go to The Hobbit shop and see if the tours would still run.
Our band of merry wedding goers, dressed in our wedding attire arrived at the shop, cold and damp. Amy, even on her wedding day, took the lead and got the information we needed to plan the rest of day. There was a very high chance that the one mountain pass road we needed to get to (and from) Hobbiton would be closed or blocked by damage, not to mention Hobbiton itself being closed - even though on the phone the lady from Hobbiton sounded quite confident they would still be open rain, hail or shine. It sounded like an epic tale in itself but together we decided it would be better to play it safe and heed the official advice to get supplies, bolt the hatches and watch Netflix.
We rescheduled Hobbiton for our last day, just in time and drove over to the supermarket for supplies. Just to add to this amazing, intimate wedding experience the rest of the wedding night ended up being a movie night in a hotel room, with snacks from the grocery store and cyclone weather outside.
What a great day!