Ben & Hel’s Shindig

Just a few things while I think of it.

• The weather’s warming up a little, but it still gets pretty damn cold at night so bring coats/jumpers/long-sleeved stuff if you can. Luckily this isn’t a big, formal wedding so nobody’s expected to really dress up anyway. Not sure if Ben’s already mentioned it to anybody, but wear whatever you like. I think Ben’s got in mind general smart-casual stuff, and I really don’t mind if people wear jeans. I’d wear them if I thought anybody would let me get away with it
• Also the budget hasn’t stretched to taking everybody out for dinner like we’d hoped :(  But, we’re going to get heaps of food in and make a few dishes, and we can just hang out at the house. If all else fails and people get really hungry there’s a great place down the road that does yummy gourmet pizzas and they even deliver
• I was going to try and find out some good motels etc, but we haven’t been here that long and I really don’t know what’s good and what’s not. The best advice I can give to anybody who hasn’t found a place to crash yet is to definitely get somewhere in the city (they call it Civic) if you’re catching a bus here, and any place on Northbourne Avenue is good too since the bus to our place goes straight down it. Buses stop at all stops in Canberra so you don’t need to worry about expresses etc, like in Brisbane.
• Speaking of buses, this is the bus you’ll want to get: Route 58. It runs on the weekends/pubic holidays and it’s the “outside peak hour” one during the week. Definitely catch a bus if you can help it - taxis charge an arm and a leg here. Crazy prices!
• Reminds me: I’m assuming peope have Ben’s mobile since that’s how he was contacting people, but we have a home phone as well in case you get lost or need help with anything. It’s 02 6255 6351.

I suspect there’s other stuff, but I can’t think of it right now. My brain’s a little bit of a crowded mess. Can’t wait for all this to be over so I can get my brain back!!

For those that can’t make it I remind you not to feel bad. Helena and I will be coming to Brisbane after our wedding for my sister’s wedding.

 We expect to be in Brisbane for Thursday and Friday - 6th and 7th of September. So I will be hoping to see the people who couldn’t make it down here (at such short notice) while we are in Brisbane.

 We’ll be seeing everyone in Brisbane for dinner somewhere on one of those days. So you better make yourself available or else

Think I’ve gotten a handle on how this Google Maps Wordpress plugin works so here goes. By the way, neither of us came up with this design; it’s a theme for Wordpress, the blogging software, that I found on the Wordpress Themes Viewer. I narrowed down the millions to a handful and then forced Ben to choose the one he liked the most. I think he chose wisely Technically I could have done a whole new Wordpress theme from scratch or redesigned one like I did with my own blog, but I figured there was enough going on and nobody had the time to wait for me to beat a Wordpress theme into submission!

Anyway, here’s the Google Map for our address. You should be able to zoom in and out, move it around and all that.

Canberra

Edit: If you can’t see the map either get a real browser like Firefox or Safari or this link will take you to the map directly on Google Maps.

And here is the photo of what the front of our house should look like. Note that this is from when the house was for sale so we don’t really have a gnome out the front. At least not until I find one cool enough

Okay, spoke to Ben and he corrected me about the whole gift thing. Kind of. I was close. He meant spirits. We’re trying to get a little wine collection going which seems to be going okay so far (thank you Flybuys!), but apparently he’d also like to get together a spirit collection, probably because we don’t have any at all yet. I highly doubt you can register for that sort of thing and I don’t know how gift registries really work anyway, but pretty much everybody knows what goes into a spirit collection by now I think. I’m going to add that if you either a) don’t drink, b) don’t approve of drinking, and/or c) still want to bring a gift then go for a nice safe David Jones gift voucher. Our not-so-inner snobs like David Jones

So weird to be advising people on what to give us as a gift let alone posting it on a website! Anyways, that’s the deal on gifts. It’s no small thing to trek down here for this (let alone to Canberra of all places!), so just showing up is pretty cool already.

And while we’re on the subject of alcohol: I’m going to make sure to get in a few bottle of non-alcoholic wine for my parents, my brother, and anybody else who doesn’t drink

The When: Actual wedding type business begins at 4.30pm, Saturday 1st September

The Place: Our new house @ 40 De Bortoli Street, Harrison, Canberra (you know, that blob on the map somewhere in NSW)

That’s the bare facts. In reality, what’s happening is this:

1. Feel free to turn up any time on Saturday before the actual ceremony time. Well, don’t turn up at 5am unless you want to sit on the steps in the freezing cold for several hours! There’ll be general drinks/chatting etc from roughly 3.30pm until we start the whole marriage process, turning up earlier will certainly not be discouraged however! Come around lunch time if you want, we’ll already have family here so there’ll be some nice lunch stuff from the yummy Pita shop down the road.

2. Sorry to disappoint anybody who might be looking forward to a 1 hour ceremony with readings, ring warmings (don’t ask!), releasing of butterflies/flowers/small furry animals/balloons, but there’ll be none of the above unless one of us loses our tenuous grip on our sanity. Short and to the point probably so, unless we or our celebrant talk slowly, we’re looking at only a 10 - 15 minute ceremony. Hey, FlyLady always says “you can do anything in 15 minutes” which apparently now includes getting married!

3. After we get our pretty new rings, smooch, and fill out paperwork, then we can return to the drinking/eating/general merriment for an hour or so until we proceed to…

4. The Restaurant. So capitalised as we haven’t actually picked one out yet. We’re trying another restaurant out this week though so fingers crossed it’s not only nice, but available.

5. After dinner if you’re incredibly slack you could go back to your hotel room to sleep off all that food… OR you could do the intelligent thing and come back to our place for further catching up/drinking/playing bad Guitar Hero/playing with cool glowing LED poi/etc etc.

I think that’s it for the plan for now. As I’m sure you’ve probably guessed this is a pretty casual deal. Luckily we were only planning on having a small wedding at our house anyway. Given more notice we could have probably come up with some cool Firefly themed wedding though. As it is I think I’ll have to settle for referring to our wedding as “The Shindig” If you don’t get that then clearly you haven’t watched Firefly and you’d be ill-advised to mention that lest Ben chain you to a chair and force you to watch said TV show!

I’ve got some maps I’m getting together, a photo of our place (in case you suck at reading maps; you can just drive around Canberra until you recognise the house), and some map locations of hotels. I’ll post those tomorrow since tonight I need to stop thinking of wedding stuff before it creeps into my dreams.

Because we were lazy/pushed-for-time we didn’t send out traditional invites. Actually the only sending we really did involved emailing a few people and calling others. Unfortunately that really doesn’t give people a great deal of detail since Ben was doing all the calling and inviting, and anything other than “hey! party at my place and oh yeah, it’s a wedding” was asking a bit much of him

So this very temporary site is simply to provide some detail to any guests… er, party attendees… people. That’s better. “Guests” sounds so weddingy and formal! In any case, this blog/site is being set up as a kind of FAQ.

See you on 1st September!