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December the 31^st, for most people, is a time to celebrate one year’s end and welcome in the new one.  For my best friend Lex and her husband (it’s a bit weird saying that) it is now also their wedding anniversary.

In my opinion, it was “about bloody time”: they’ve been together for nine and a half years and everyone has known it’s been on the cards, but it’s just never happened.  I apparently was not the only one to say this.  The wedding was held at a beautiful lodge near the town of Waipu in the north of the North Island, with views over the estuary and out to the sea.  A small group of family and friends were invited from the UK and New Zealand, with Lex’s brother and his wife flying over from the US as well.

I think it’s fair to say that all involved were a little concerned about the weather for the day.  The idea was to have the wedding in the beautiful gardens, but the forecast was looking grim.  Mark had been checking the weather forecast every twenty minutes using seven different iPhone apps since around two weeks before the wedding and all but one said that the day would bring torrential downpours.  Being an actuary, whose livelihood depends on statistics, Mark knows how to work the numbers and chose to go with the one in seven that forecasted sunshine.  Amazingly, apart from a couple of showers in the morning and quite late in the evening, it turns out he was right!  I like to think that was my contribution though: the weather was looking so bad that I bought a transparent dome umbrella for Lex and decorated it with bows that fit the colour scheme; I was hoping that it would be the same as that decision you make every time you go for a hike in England, where Sod’s Law says that if you take your raincoat you’ll just be lugging it around all day for no reason, but if you don’t, you’ll get drenched.  Turns out that worked too!

Those of you who know me well, know that I’m not really one for weddings.  Seems a big load of stress and a massive expense to sign a bit of paper and have a big party.  This wedding, however, really did seem to be a celebration of Lex and Mark’s love and their life together and, touched even me.  It was a civil ceremony, held in the lounge of the lodge (I think this was better anyway as it produced a much more intimate environment than would have been created in the outdoor wedding and meant that the celebrant and those doing readings could be heard much more easily).  They had written vows together which represented them as a couple, being simple and poignant.

A lot of work had gone into the preparations (necessitating quite a lot of blood sweat and tears from members of the wedding party too, but I think they’d all agree it was worth it in the end), with Lex hand crafting all the invitations, orders of service, menu cards, etc and a mega inter-continental collection of crockery – and drilling of holes in plates to create cake-stands – for the afternoon tea party.  The day was full of beautiful and characteristic little touches: one of the readings (which I had the privilege to read) was a poem from Winnie the Pooh (“I can’t think of anyone else who would read it in quite the childish way you could,” Lex said to me when she asked me to do it); the napkin rings were wooden and labelled with each person’s name and the date; there were balloon modelling kits on the wedding breakfast tables; there was pick ‘n’ mix on the bar; and Lex’s wedding ring was, I believe, supposed to have 11 diamonds in it, but she had asked for nine, one to represent each year they’d been together.

Lex and Mark really do appear to be one of the few couples that, after nearly ten years, are as in love with each other as they were at the beginning.  Mark’s speech was truly beautiful (at one point I shed a little tear (yes, despite popular opinion, I am actually a just another soppy romantic) and all of a sudden he was talking about the bridesmaids and everyone was looking at us!), and I think I’m not the only single girl out there whose hope it is to meet someone one day who has those sorts of things to say about me.

To Lex and Mark: congratulations on finding and keeping each other…long may it continue!

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