Author: Renae

Living life as a wife, a stay at home mama of 3 kids under 5, a marriage celebrant, a craft and sewing amateur, a cooked breakfast lover, coffee enthusiast, extroverted socialite, and most recently, someone who is trying to keep a tidy house. It's tough I tell you!

Here comes the bride

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This is a very late post about a beautiful wedding that I was lucky enough to officiate way back in April. It was my first wedding and I couldn’t have been happier that I was performing the ceremony for our 2 friends, Nathan and Cal. I have to admit that I was pretty nervous leading up to the day, and the night before I had not one but two nightmares that I couldn’t get to the ceremony!

We arrived at the venue over an hour before the start time, just so that I felt nice and organised. When I started to get ridiculously nervous, I reminded myself that it wasn’t about me. That the day was all about Nathan and Cal, and that I was just there as a helper. This made me relax a whole lot and I really started enjoying myself – getting things ready, and chatting to other friends who were there.

I love weddings. I know I have mentioned this before, but I really do. They are one of the happiest occasions in a couple’s life and I always feel so priveleged when I am a part of someone’s special day as a guest. But to be a Celebrant at a wedding is a whole new honour. Nathan and Cal wrote their own vows which were just beautiful, and I really felt blessed to be a part of it all.

Getting everything in order before the big arrival

With the lovely couple
(I don’t know who was more nervous – them or me!!)
Wifey shmoozing with guests after the ceremony
Nathan and Cal rocking out on the dance floor
When we first started planning the wedding I said something along the lines of “this will be my first wedding – I’ve never done this before” (which they already knew) to which they replied “well we’ve never done this before either so we’re in the same boat.” I’m so glad my first wedding was for a couple I knew well – it certainly helped with the nerves! Thanks Nathan and Cal!

I have done one other wedding since then that I’ll blog about separately, and I have one booked in for the 19th of December as well. Littlefoot will be very little indeed at that one, but I’m sure everything will come together nicely. I’m really looking forward to building up my business in the next few years!

Movember

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When Hubs started talking about participating in Movember this year, I was a little hesitant, knowing that our baby is due in November, which means his first photos with his first son/daughter would be filled with whiskers. But who am I to get in the way of a good cause!? The hospital where he is based has put a team together, so if you would like to sponsor Hubs or the team, you can go to their site here.

This is a week into Movember and Hubs is going for the handlebars + mutton chops look, or as Hubs likes to call it, “The Trucker”. You likey?

The trick will be to participate in Movember every year, so each year Junior can have photos of his/her crazy Dad with his crazy Mo!

Our mammoth weekend – day 6

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I’ve decided to include Tuesday in our weekend as it was a public holiday for the Melbourne Cup. After dragging ourselves out of bed around 10am, I whipped up a batch of double choc-chip cupcakes. We had arranged to meet our friends Maddie, Jade and their son Rupert for a bbq lunch down at Merriwa Park. It was quite a nice sunny day but ended up being a bit chilly when we got there. We had a lovely time playing with Rupert and talking about baby stuff and labour and all things along those lines. It was such a great end to an amazing few days!

The next day I had an antenatal check-up and my doctor took one look at me and told me I looked exhausted. And I really really was. I got home around 11am and crashed til after 2.

It was totally worth it though.

Our mammoth long weekend – days 4 & 5

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At 8am the alarm sounded and up we got. Well, up I got. Hubs had a little extra sleep while I showered and started getting ready. We had my Dad’s famous scrambled eggs with the works (speck, mushrooms, parsley, cheese, onion… anything else, Dad???) and some lovely strong coffee to start our day. We then packed madly (as is always the way!) and headed over to Hubs’ Mum’s place to say goodbye. Our flight left on time (10:50am) and arrived in Avalon just after 2pm Melbourne time (daylight savings is a bitch coming home!) As we were making our descent into Avalon, the pilot informed us that it was cloudy and 15 degrees. Wha?…. We just spent 3 days in 25 degree sunshine! Don’t do this to us!!

As we stepped off the plane, we knew we were home. It was cold and windy and gross 🙂 We jumped in the kombi and began the hour-long journey back in to town. I knew my cousin was down in Melbourne for the races, so I thought I’d see if she was free for a coffee, and luckily for us she was. We met her in town and had some great quality time with her which was just such a bonus.

We were talking about arranging to go out to dinner with some other friends, but when I rang our friends who we were staying with (same people as Thursday night) and they mentioned they were cooking a lamb roast, our minds were made up. But we still hadn’t hit the wall! We had a lovely evening with them and slept very well that night.

We didn’t set the alarm for the next morning but the trams woke us up at a very respectable 9am. We had a lovely breakfast with Liza and the boys and plotted our journey for the day – we’ve been looking for centre seats for the kombi for a few months now and Hubs had phoned a couple of wreckers on the (deep) south side of town so we left around 10:45am to go and check them out and hope for the best! It took AGES – we arrived after midday! I think we only went about 35km but that takes a long time in Melbourne traffic. As we drove into the wreckers, another gentleman pulled up and he got chatting to Hubs. He asked what we were looking for, for the kombi and when Hubs said centre seats, he said that we probably wouldn’t find any at the wreckers as he is there every week and hadn’t seen any. BUT he had some at his place which was just around the corner. He gave us his address and we parted ways.

I thought it was a bit weird but Hubs wasn’t the least bit suspicious. Of course we didn’t find any in the wrecking yard (didn’t even find any kombis, even though we were told there were 1 or 2 in the yard!!). We thought, since we had come all this way, we would take a gamble and check out this guy’s offer. And sure enough, he had exactly what we were looking for, in the right condition at the right price.

What are the odds of this chance meeting? Seriously! 5 minutes either way and this wouldn’t have happened. This was definitely a God moment. We then popped in to say hi to Hubs’ aunt and cousin on our way home and were back on the Hume highway around 4:30pm. On our way home we arranged for some friends who were up in Wang from Melbourne for the races the next day, to come on over around 8pm for dessert. We just couldn’t help ourselves!! We arrived home and Hubs went to pick them up as I made some delish blueberry pancakes and we had a lovely evening with them.

And if you think that was the end of our mammoth weekend, you’re wrong. We still had 1 more day to go…

Our mammoth long weekend – day 3

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Saturday morning my body clock woke me up at 6:30am (7:30am Victoria time) and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t fall asleep again. So at 7:30am I decided to stop trying and got up and leisurely got ready for my 9am doctor’s appointment. Being almost 37 weeks pregnant at the time, I had to get a letter from a doctor 24 hours before my flight, saying I was fit to fly. I decided to get there a bit early (8:35am) in the hope that I could get in a bit earlier, but didn’t end up going in til 9:05!! Oh well You win some you lose some. After stopping at the shops I headed home and woke Hubs up (lucky bugger) and had some yummy leftovers for brekky. We then started welcoming friends and family whom Mum and I had invited over for the morning. It turned out to be only about a dozen people who arrived and left at all different times so it was really nice to catch up with them.

During all of this, my gorgeous cousins agreed to do my hair for me for the wedding:
And, well, I don’t mean to brag, but as usual I think Hubs and I scrub up okay 🙂

The wedding was absolutely wonderful, and, as I suspected, I needed the waterproof mascara and extra tissues. The service was very traditional and similar to ours, so it was lovely to re-live the vows Hubs and I exchanged in the same place a few years ago. Jess, the bride, looked absolutely stunning, and Matt, the groom, was wearing the biggest, widest grin you could imagine. It was a very personal service that really suited them both and I’m so glad Hubs and I could be there to share it with them.

After the ceremony, we had over 3 hours to kill so we decided on the spur of the moment to head out to our friend’s place in Zilmere (about half an hour north of the CBD), as he was having his 30th birthday party. We turned up as a surprise and it was really nice catching up with them. The party hadn’t officially started so we had them mostly to ourselves for a little while.

We then headed back in to town for the reception and were delighted at the table we had been seated at – we met some lovely new people and shared good conversation accompanied by good food and (just a little) good wine. Matt & Jess had hired the same DJ that we had at our wedding, (from our recommendation) so we said hi to him and he remembered us which was really nice. They even played our wedding song during dinner (more tears) which was lovely.

Then it was time for us to hit the dance floor, and, as I already mentioned, we hit it HARD! Hubs was in fine form, pulling out The Robot and a good AC/DC head-bang. I couldn’t pull out my usual moves with my extra cargo, but still had my moments! Alas, all good weddings must come to an end, so at 11:45pm the bride and groom bid us adieu and we headed to the car. As we took off, Hubs looked at me, and I looked at him and we knew what each other was thinking. (Don’t be rude.) Our friends were having a Halloween Party out at Arana Hills (about 15 min from CBD) that night, so we gave them a call to see if they were still kicking on. And sure enough, they were!! So we headed out there and caught up with 4 really good friends of ours (including 2 of Hubs’ groomsmen!)

I truly don’t know where all the energy was coming from but it just didn’t stop! At 2am though, it was time to head home and I was pretty happy to crash into bed at 2:30. A full 20 hours of being awake, and one of the best/most fun/memorable days EVER! I begrudgingly set the alarm for 8am the “next morning” and drifted off into a deeeeeep sleeeeeeep…

Our mammoth long weekend – days 1 & 2

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Well it’s a good thing I have all this energy at the moment, as the 6-day-weekend we just had was not for the faint-hearted! It began on Thursday when we drove the kombi from Wang to Melbourne just after lunch, arriving around afternoon tea time to catch up with the staff at Newman College. It was really nice to see everyone and catch up on all their news, and to share my growing bump with them.

We then headed over to our friend’s place where Hubs and our friends headed out to a photography exhibition while I looked after their 2 & 4 year old sons and their neighbour’s 3 year old daughter. We had a great time in the bath (clearly that was the kids, not me) and had some dinner and then had lots of stories. I had them all in bed by 8pm and was commended for my “baby whispering”! I guess I just wore them all out with all those exciting stories!

We were up at 6am Friday for our 9am flight from Avalon. We drove the kombi to the airport hassle-free and the plane left basically on time. We arrived in Brizzie just after 10am (thanks to daylight savings) and headed over to Nanny and Grandpa’s for a spot of lunch. It was lovely to see them as usual and so good to have yummy Nanny food again! And she was very happy to see us, though she couldn’t help herself and told me I shouldn’t be flying now that I am a “big lady”. 🙂

A snap from lunch:

We then headed to St Andrew’s Uniting Church in town, the location of a very memorable day in December almost 3 years ago, for the wedding rehearsal for “Brisbane’s Wedding of the Year”. Hubs rehearsed walking the lovely bride down the aisle,

and it was a pretty typical wedding rehearsal, other than the pregnant lady sitting in the 3rd row having a little cry. Yes. At the rehearsal. You got something to say about that? I knew that the following day I would have to a) wear water-proof mascara and b) take extra tissues.

We had kept the evening plan-free just in case of a pre-wedding dinner, so when the bride and groom decided to just have a quiet night in, we arranged for Hubs’ Mum, sister and kids to come on over for dinner at my parent’s place. In the mean time, we hung around town for a bit and grabbed a coffee and just chilled out together. It was really lovely being back in our old stomping ground and enjoying the lovely warm weather. We were talking about who we might run in to, as is inevitable whilst in Brisbane. And sure enough, on our way to the rendezvous point to meet my Mum for our lift home, we ran into very good friends of mine and their 6 month old daughter whom I hadn’t met yet!

She. Was. Divine. And her dear parents were very lucky that I’m about to pop out one of our own, or I may have run off with their little cherub. I actually had tears of joy and awe at this gorgeous little girl (seeing a hormonal pattern here people??) I simply had to get some shots with her.

The lovely Henna and the gorgeous little baby Iida

It was SO nice to see our friends and have a little catch up! We headed back to Mum and Dad’s for a feast of seafood marinara and carbonara pasta and Nanny’s apple pie for dessert. And of course, we had to play with the lego as well.

Lego time!
And we had to take some fun photos! Mine’s the biggest!!

And our friend Ian popped over around dessert time as well, so that was another bonus! So that was the first 2 days of our awesome weekend – and they were the most restful days! So much more to come…

Lady in red

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I’m currently writing some posts about our mammoth weekend, but am having photo-accessing-issues (so what’s new!?) so just to keep you entertained, here’s some I prepared earlier. Hubs took these shots of me outside our unit when I was all dolled up for our dinner at Brown Brothers for a conference Hubs attended a few weeks ago.

Where’s the bump?

Oh there it is!

We had a sensational evening with amazing food (truly. AMAZING!) and lovely tastes of a couple of wines and we were at a great table with very interesting people. The conversation was enthralling and not all about medicine! The guest speaker for the night was a gentleman who used to be a doctor down in Antarctica for 9 months of the year, and now recruits said doctors for long (9 months) and short (6 weeks) stints down there. Of course, Hubs couldn’t wait to chat to him afterwards!

Truly a wonderful night to remember. (Did I mention how awesome the food was??)

I’ve still got it

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Yesterday we went to Brisbane’s “wedding of the year” (blog post to come) and I don’t like to brag, but Hubs and I shook our groove thing on the dancefloor at the reception for almost 2 hours with only a few drink/toilet/not-our-kind-of-music breaks. Let me remind you, ladies and gents, that I’m 37 weeks pregnant AND I was wearing heels. Heels people! I was pretty impressed with my efforts to be honest. I’ve been a little nervous about losing energy at times when energy is needed, but my Duracel batteries just kept going and going – from 6:30am when I woke up (not on purpose – my body clock was being a pain) til my head hit the pillow at 2:35am this morning (we decided it would be fun to go to our friend’s Halloween party after we left the wedding last night – totally worth it!)

Needless to say I cannot WAIT to get into bed tonight as I’m sure it’s going to be the best night’s sleep I’ve had in a week. And maybe, just maybe I’m not going to have as much trouble with the upcoming sleep-deprivation as I thought I might?! (One can hope!)