Feeling blah tonight.  Could be being back at work.  Could be getting nothing done tonight, not even any planning.  Could be just tired.

I did however Google Earth a bunch of my flight over Australia Day 1 photos.. I guess that's something...

In other news...

• not looking forward to going back to work
• neither is Stu.. (according to his intestines at least anyway)
  
• 6500-odd photos downloaded off various media from the honeymoon
• no ETA on when any will be online
• our "life planning" list has way too many items on it
• my ordinary todo list has way too many items on it
  
• new bus timetable starts tomorrow, could be, er, interesting
• realised (again) that this blog is thoroughly boring
• watching a marriage breakdown remotely via the blogosphere, which is sad, but understandable given the crap that happened
• knew Sam would win the biggest loser (his face looked *scrawny* on the finale!!) (yes, finally got to watch it, taped it as it was on telly two days after we left on our honeymoon).  Bit sad for Alison - she got soooo close!
• our diet of sausage, meat, cheese and beer for a month resulted in a 0.7kg weight gain for me and a 2kg weight *loss* for Stu (!!).  We're still trying to figure it out, as we expected to pile weight on.
• I wish I had time to read more blogs
• (I wish I had time to do lots more things)
  

Spent much of today catching up on rss feeds, downloading emails, downloading photos, etc.

Stu spent much of today catching up on sleep :)

Had Annie and the girls over for a while too today which was nice.

I don't have time for this!!!!  We're meant to be leaving in a couple of hours and we haven't packed or tidied up the house!!!  And there's over two and a half thousand photos *so far* to get through!!!! (more to come).  It's going to be very hard working making a wedding album, and even harder to do up a website.... eeeeep!!!

So the day of the wedding dawned still and foggy.  Always a great sign.  I had a lazy morning.  Although I did wake up early and not get back to sleep.  So eventually got up and had bacon, eggs and croissants for breakfast.  Very yummy. 

Got myself ready, then went for a drive in Scotty's new car because we had nothing better to do :)

Josie came around 10am and then the process of curling my hair began.

An hour and a half or so later....

Then my head became a pincushion for all the pins to hold up my hair.  hrmm.. heh.  Josie also did up all my makeup. 

So Kerry cooked us up some lunch while we waited for my parents to turn up (with the bouquet and flowers).  They eventually did but very late.  They ate their lunch then rushed off to get Stu's bag to take to the reception venue/hotel.  While I sat there at about 1:30 thinking it's really time to be getting dressed now, but George and Kerry were all "no you'll have to sit around for too long in it" .. hrmm.  At 1:45 I said no really, let's get dressed, so we did.  And a good thing too, as it still ended up being rushed at the end :/  Because they all had to get ready too, then people were coming and going and my parents still hadn't returned and it was starting to get stressful.  Eventually the parents got back, but then they had to get ready too.  So the whole last half hour was very rushed, and didn't get all the photos I would have liked.  Oh well.

So we packed off J&G, and mum and then Dad and I hopped in the car with "other Stu" for the ride to the church.  Stu had had some trouble attaching the ribbons to the car, and one actually came off at one end during the trip.. oops!  So we stopped just round the corner from the church to reattach it heh.  Arrived at the church pretty much dead on time.  To be met by the paparazzi.  Honestly it was hilarious, so many photographers there and lots of very nice cameras!

Managed to get my dress out of the car, had some more photos, then it was up to the church....

It was all very exciting.  Think we walked down the aisle a little too quickly though.  And so many cameras!! 

We should have had leaders for the singing, as people didn't "get" the boy/girl bits.. so it was a little silly, and the organist played them a little too slowly too which didn't help. 

I remembered my vows.  But after a little hesitation on the second line when Stu was doing his, the minister prompted Stu all the way through his.  Oh well.  So we were married!!

Then it was things like lighting the Unity candle, signing of the register etc.  And walked back down the aisle to Saint-Saëns' Symphony #3 (what else?? :) ).

Even more photographic chaos outside.  We didn't know where to look!  Lots of various family type shots were had and eventually we decided to head off to Lake Ginninderra for the "official" photos.  We went to this lake rather than Lake Burley-Griffin because the tower would be in better light from that direction (and there was a nice park with lots of autum trees - all very pretty).  So there were at least ten people all lined up taking photos, which was such a crackup.  And they were all comparing the size of each others' .. lenses... hehe (my brother won! :) )

When we'd all had enough and run out of light, we all piled back into cars and headed off to the reception.

I had "A Touch of Elegance" do up fairly lights all around the hall, and they looked fantastic!!  That and with the candelabras they provided, as well as 96 tealight candles I got off ebay, the room looked amazing. 

Entrees then dinner was served in quick succession.  People said the food was good, and what I ate of it was good, although I couldn't really fit much in given how tight my dress was, so I really just had a taste.  But then they brought out the desserts almost immediately afterwards, which was very upsetting for me because they weren't paying any attention to my schedule for the night :(:(  sigh.  So that really stressed me out for the rest of the night, because then it felt like the whole night they were trying to rush us out the door (in the end most people had left well before the official 10:30 finish).  *And* they ran out of some desserts, so people didn't get to choose at the end :(:( 

So after dessert Damien did a speech, then Stu did one too, then we cut the cake and did the bridal "waltz" which was nothing like a waltz, but people thought it was amusing.  At least it will be remembered!!

After the dance, took off back to our room and got out of my dress and slipped into something more comfortable.  *Much* more comfortable!!  Was able to walk around more, and even joined in some of the dancing.  My playlist was relatively well received, although they did complain that some of the tracks were too slow to dance to!  oops.  But I really wasn't even expecting people to dance much at all.. so there you go.  So deleted a few tracks towards the end and added some different ones in. 

Stu and I stayed til the bitter end so we could collect everything up and take it back to our room.  Because I was so stressed I didn't feel like being sociable, which meant a tonne of people just didn't get talked to by me, which was upsetting in itself.  I felt really bad afterwards that I'd been so neglectful, and so the whole thing left me feeling very bitter about the night.  Not helped by a massive pillow that I couldn't sleep well on.  So in the morning we didn't even stay for breakfast we just took all our stuff and left very early.  Thank goodness for maccas drive through! lol.

Anyways.  Noone else really noticed the problems with the scheduling, and everybody that I did talk to said it was a great wedding and good food, so I was glad about that.  Maybe one day I'll look back on it all and laugh.. hrm... hehee.  (We went back today to pickup some things we left behind and settle accounts, and they were very apologetic about everything and took off some of the cost of the additional pre-dinner drinks, so that was all very much appreciated and left me feeling a lot better).

So we're now very happily married.  Not that it feels a whole lot different.  I suppose it'd be different if we hadn't been living together first. 

We watched "The Wedding Singer" (or I listened to it rather as I didn't have my glasses on and couldn't see it) at Kerry's on the morning of the wedding while having my hair done.  There was a part were Drew Barrymore's character said she didn't think the butthead dude was the right man for her.  Which made me realise I never once had those thoughts about Stu.  And I asked Stu if he'd ever had any thoughts like that either and he said no.  So I reckon that's pretty darned cool!

4:38.  It was actually a little earlier than I needed to be up (alarm was set for 5am).  But that's when I woke up.  So got up and drove into the city, and it was still completely dark.

But the balloon people were arriving, as were the spectators.

About 6:25 they got into full swing.  By 7:30 they were floating in all directions above Canberra.

The only thing that could have made the morning better would have been some sunshine.  But I still went overboard with photos!  Next year I plan to go up in one :)

So I was thinking last night, oh it's two months and a day til the wedding.  Then Stu freaked me out by saying we'd need to send out invitations..!  eeeep!

While we've come up with a preliminary guest list, we haven't refined it yet.  It's still quite a number over our initial estimates. 

I'm lucky in that I don't have any feuding relatives (except perhaps one of the aunties, but don't think she's getting invited).  My problem is with feuding friends.  There's certain people I'd have liked to invite, but can't if I invite others.  It'd be like putting matter and anti-matter together.  Catastrophic universe implosion potential.  I suppose that will help reduce the numbers, but I'm a bit sad I can't invite everyone.  Not being able to invite friends I don't see much of anymore is also a bit sad.  Also vaguely annoyed that will have to invite four of my parents friends.  That's four less of my friends I could have. 

*sigh*

So anyway, this week is trying to design invitations.  Talking to the reception venue peoples on Thursday to get some more details and hopefully decide on a menu.  I ordered stamps last week which are pretty nifty.  With any luck I'll be able to send out the invites next week.

Fancy material has been bought for wrapping up sugar-coated almonds which have been ordered.  Necklaces and earrings bought on ebay.  Doing as much buying of stuff through the internet and ebay as I can.  Anything that takes paypal is a big plus heh :)  Decided not to hire a professional photographer.  Will be asking a couple of people that have fancy cameras to be semi-official photographers and everyone else to download their photos to a computer at the reception if they're willing.  Sure to get plenty of good photos that way.

So it's all slowly coming together....

So Friday afternoon, we all meandered down to the coast. (If you're reading this in Google feed reader you might want to jump to the page as the page goes a bit screwy with the way MT4 does things..)

We arrived with enough time to wander down to the beach to play in the sand.

When we got back to the flat there were kangaroos in the front yard

Kerry cooked a nice stir fry for dinner, and we drank beer.

Saturday morning saw Kerry up before dawn to get photos of the sunrise.

And this nice shot of a seagull.

The flat has a bird feeder and visitors are encouraged to feed the birds.
So we did.
There were lots of birds.

After breakfast we all drove up to Myrtle Beach. It's a nice walk to the beach..

And we saw this cool lizard looking at us and catching ants.

Myrtle Beach.. covered in seaweed.

Unfortunately it was very rough, so we couldn't really swim there. So we went back to Maloney's Beach. Had a nice swim there. Saw this nifty hexagon-shaped house on the way back..

This is the view from the flat.. nice huh? :)

After unhealthy lunch of fish and chips, we headed down to the beach again.

Saw this.. thought it was a spider pushing a bug, but it was a bug dragging a spider!

Found a sand worm in the sand (strangely enough!)

And dug a big hole for Jake to play in.

Kerry and I went for a walk up to the end of the beach.

There were more birds back at the flat.

Kerry cooked dinner again Saturday night, this time pasta. And we drank beer.

Sunday morning still more birds. The most so far.

After bacon and eggs for brekky, we went up to the end of Long Beach again to go snorkelling, but couldn't see a thing due to all the crap in the water from the onshore wind.

But Scotty caught a couple of fish, which he let go.

And we dug another hole for Jake.

And then we came home.

A very pleasant and relaxing weekend. And cheap too - the place was only $85/night which we split between two families. Definitely need to go more often wethinks.

Went away to Bateman's Bay for the weekend with Scott and Kerry.  Several hundred photos were taken, less than half of them by me :)  I picked out thirty-odd of them, will blog them tomorrow night.

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Vista?  If you take a memory stick out of the card reader while you still have its window open, explorer crashes so completely that new explorer and internet explorer windows simply won't open.  Until a frigging reboot!!

Played pool with the soss guys tonight.  We lost two games and won one.  Lotsa fun, even though I'm crap at it.

Then off to the Dumpling Inn with Damien.  Food was amazing as always.  Especially the shredded beef peking style :)

Then took some cool rainbow photos.


Then to Scotty's to watch some more Firefly.