Kelly's World

Today I went to my first ever bridal expo, with my friends Kim & Chere (Matron of Honour and bridesmaid accordingly). I had no idea what to expect, and the only plan I had was to see what services and venues cost so I could start forming some sort of a budget.

We arrived (after I took 3 attempts to reverse park, it’s often years between my attempts of doing a reverse park, and this one was awful) and headed in just before 10am. I had a taste of things to come when we were greeted with “who’s the bride”. Damn, looked like I was going to be a focal point, and hiding in the background wasn’t going to work. I already know this will be the hardest part of getting married I think. The fact that people will be paying attention to me. Yuk.

The first room had a series of tables and chairs set up as they would be in the wedding reception. One stood out to me, which had the basic chair covering, but with a starfish tucked in the back. It was very beautiful, and totally fit in with my plans to have a wedding on the beach (Mat’s still undecided on this, as he feels it’s a bit too cliche and overdone). They also had table centrepieces set up, where I remarked instead of flowers (which I’m not really a flowery kind of person) we could have fish bowls instead. How cool! But I’m probably getting carried away with silly ideas like I always do.

Then we happened upon the coolest thing ever. The one thing that I can definitely say will be at my wedding. The one thing that I refuse to compromise on. A photo booth. Hell yeah, a fucking photo booth.

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I was never one to say I wanted to get married. I viewed marriage as the ultimate sacrifice of independence; it meant you were giving up your life as a free spirit and instead tying yourself to one person. That was spoken by the 15 year old me only a few months after getting together with Mat. How grand I must have thought I was, saying such passionate words. Yet instead,  I’m still with Mat ten years later and now we’re engaged. At 15, I thought if Mat and I got married that I would look back on my life and regret it. I should point out, I have a fear of regretting anything in my life – I don’t want to look back on it all and be upset that I missed something. The only problem is, I’ve never been happier.

Getting engaged has changed me, and it’s scary. At the moment it’s just all about organising the engagement party. Where to have it, what food to serve, if we can afford drinks, if we can’t afford drinks, can we just have it at home. All of this is running through my head consistently, which could be passed off as someone just trying to organise any kind of event. Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there.

I have visions of weddings, and receptions, and dresses, and lots of stupid girly things. It just doesn’t stop! I talk about dresses with my friends. I talk about makeup and nails (only because they tease me that I’m going to have to get the whole manicure/pedicure nonsense done). The other day, I repainted my fingernails three times (let me say that again, three, THREE FRIGGING TIMES) because I knew I would be showing off my engagement ring that day, and the colour had to compliment the jewellery. The only reason that I took up painting my fingernails is so I would stop biting my nails…not because I like having colours on my fingers!

So while I can go into this wedding planning fairly confident that I’m not going to regret anything (since getting engaged felt more right than I ever thought possible), we’re not planning on getting married for at least another 12 months. At the rate my mind is thinking, I wish it was over and done with so I didn’t have to be so girly! What happened to the girl who thought a wedding was just a piece of paper? Maybe we should elope, it would be so much easier and I could return to my tomboyish ways. You know, eloping is starting to sound pretty darn fantastic to me. Vegas anyone?

Traditionally, Christmas Day isn’t always a completely positive affair for my family. Oh sure, we have the typical moments of love and happiness as we sit there gorging on endless food with our friends and family. Usually, someone has always had too much too drink, or has a drug induced mental illness, which causes them to fly off the handle over some trivial issue and ruin the day for everyone. Last year we didn’t have such a moment, so my sister Amy and I pretended to have a fight, just so it felt like Christmas. It went something like this:

Me: OMG, YOU SUCK! (giggle)
Amy: YOU BITCH! (laugh)
Mum: What’s going on? (confused look)

This year, we were on track to have yet another good year, which I didn’t think I would be able to cope with – two in a row could cause a system overload! We spent the morning having breakfast at my dad’s place, swimming at the river, then eventually at my Mum’s place to unwrap presents and have lunch. I begun wondering what I’d need to do to make it seem like normal…whether I should have a domestic with Mat or not. As it turned out something memorable did happen, something I definitely didn’t see coming.

Mat proposed to me, and I accepted.

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