Our Wedding Story - Part 3 - The Lead-Up

It has been almost a year since the happiest day of my life.  I've been wanting to write this ever since, but have not quite found the right time to sit down to put it on paper.  In a way, I'm glad I'm only writing this a year on, as it's given me time to reflect on all of the details that made it the amazing story that it is.

Our wedding story is not your traditional wedding story... there was no fairytale proposal, no months and months of the bride flicking through wedding magazines, dreaming up the most wonderful dresses, flowers and table settings, just a humble little story of two people in love, stuck on opposite sides of the world!

The Lead-Up 

With everything as organised as it could possibly be, I finally boarded my flight in London (rings "in" hand) home to get married.  I left the UK exactly 1 week before the big day and couldn't wait to be in the arms of my new fiancée.  I flew straight into Sydney to spend some time with Ben (and his parents who I would be meeting in person for the first time!!!) before we all flew up to Noosa for the big day.  After spending the morning getting to know each other, Ben and I snuck off for the afternoon to spend some quality alone time together and was the perfect opportunity for Ben to officially propose to me (which happened whilst sitting in the sun on top of a cliff overlooking Bondi beach - perfect!).

It was around this time that things started getting a little worrying as there had been a LOT of rain and river levels had started rising to dangerous levels with the threat of flooding.  We tried not to think about it as we were quite sure all would be OK and Noosa wasn't in direct threat of being affected.

Unfortunately, all wasn't quite OK.  When we flew up to Noosa, we were supposed to spend the first couple of nights with my parents (and would have been the first time I had seen them since flying home) - but this didn't happen as they were stranded on the other side of the now massively flooded river.  Our plan B was to go and stay with friends in Brisbane, but the highway was cut off by the floodwaters.  We had no choice but to book last-minute for a few extra nights into our hotel (not that spending extra nights at the Sheraton Noosa is necessarily a bad thing).  However, once we checked in, we turned on the TV to hear that the floods were the worst to hit since 1974!

As all of our guests lived out of Noosa (and all were cut-off by the floods), we had to start considering whether we would have to postpone the wedding (which was not ideal as timing was everything in organising Ben's visa), or go ahead without our guests (which was even more devastating, no parents, grandparents or best friends).  As you can imagine, we were beside ourselves and this was an impossible decision. 

During this time, everyone remained incredibly positive for us (for which I will be forever grateful), and the more we watched the floods developing on the TV, word started circulating that the levels were nearing their peak and would be beginning to recede in the next day or so.  All we could do was sit and hope.

In this hope that the floodwaters would be receding, we decided that we would go ahead with the wedding, as by the Friday, we would at least have our parents with us, which ultimately was our main concern.  However, I was quite devastated that my grandparents still might not have been able to get through.  I was frantically asking around to see if anyone had a video camera we could borrow so that we could at least record the ceremony that we could still share with them.  As luck would have it, one of my cousins was just starting a wedding video business and offered to film for us.  This was the first wedding he would have filmed, so it was a win-win situation - we have our wedding filmed by a professional, and he gets valuable practice and some shots to use for marketing.

But it wasn't just our guests that were affected by the floods.  The friend who had made our cake was stuck on the other side of the river also, with our un-decorated cake stuck on the other.  This meant that we had to frantically try to find a bakery in Noosa who could make us a wedding cake in VERY short notice.  Luckily, we found a shop in nearby Coolumn, who made us the most amazing 2-tier white chocolate & raspberry cake AND deliver it to Bistro C on the morning of the wedding - lady luck was definitely on our side.  And as it turns out, it was the best luck - the cake looked absolutely beautiful and tasted out-of-this-world amazing!  We still used our other wedding cake for our after-party, so all was not lost.

Also because of the floods, it meant that the flowers were also nearly undeliverable.  On the day of the wedding, they were delivered to the florist (which is an hours drive from Noosa), but she still had to do all of the arranging.  Adding to this, Nancy, who was doing my makeup, was bringing them down to Noosa, so could not leave until they were ready - this was definitely the biggest stress of the day...


to be continued....


Our Wedding Story - Part 1  
Our Wedding Story - Part 2