Fin.

Hello. Welcome back. You haven't been here for a while, I know, but it's okay. Neither have I. My apologies for closing the lodgings so abruptly and without notice. However, if you have stumbled back here, aware of its existence, you most likely know why: my newly-minted wife and I have relocated to Berlin for a bit. 

The last few months of last year had been terribly busy while we put our affairs into order, packed up our household, moved into temporary lodgings at the in-laws' (who were tremendously accommodating and deserve extensive accolades), organised our trip, sold off a few organs, and flew off into the wild grey yonder.

Now, we are arrived. More on that in a bit.

First, however, let me apologise for never quite wrapping-up the business end of this blog. It promised much and didn't fully deliver. I've learned from that. Shan't happen again. As a weak excuse, a weeny part of that is not my fault. I've been awaiting official ceremony proceedings documents from our celebrant. Due to a bit of a mixup on the day, she's had to re-do them and they've never been quite forthcoming, which presented me the perfect excuse not to post. As we are now located in Berlin, I'm not likely to see the official version anytime soon. Instead, I will let you in on the scribbled notes of my own vows.

Unfortunately, I haven't Vicky's to hand but they were pretty similar to mine. They start and end the same way, which is probably why the celebrant got them mixed up on the day and read out my vows for Vicky - but she recovered well when we stopped her. Full credit. Anyway, I think the only real difference between mine and Vicky's are that hers have something in it about how awesome I am in the kitchen.

I aks everybody here today to witness that I, Matthew, take you, Victoria, to be my wife.
I promise to love you in sickness and in health.
I promise to love you whether we are rich or poor.
I promise not to use you as the butt of cliched jokes about how husbands and wives are different.
I promise to let my guard down with you.
I promise that, once I realise that I have been thoughtless, I will apologise quickly and sincerely.
I promise to continue to pick up after you with a minimum of eye-rolling.
I promise I will love you forever. 

I've abided by those promises so far. It's all going well. 

Writing of going well: we are going well in Berlin so far. So well, indeed, that we have decided to maintain a blog about our Berlin shenanigans. This will be a much more disciplined blog. We'll do at least one lengthy post every week on a Sunday (the shops are all closed on Sundays) and other ones as the mood strikes, or as we take humorous photographs and wish to share them. Between the two of us, as a nuptial couple, the content should be frequently updated and the views divergent enough to stay engaging. 

Go check it out, won't you: http://wearedonuts.blogspot.com - there's not much more to see here, anyway....

...until, perhaps, one day, in the very distant, very hazy, very ill-defined future, in a galaxy far, far away, I may resurrect this site as PreNatal Man. Don't hold your breaths. 

Scenes from married life

I was very excited about going to bed on Friday night so that I could wake up and eat bread rolls for breakfast.

I got 6 for $2.

Vicky was pretty chuffed, too.

the list

Hello, dear friends. 

I know it has been a long time in-between blogs but I have been waiting for nice copies of the wedding "run-sheets" (is there a more romantic word for those?) from the celebrant. You know what I mean: nicely decorated lists of what's to happen when at the ceremony, including the vows, the speeches and the escape clauses. These are yet to arrive, four weeks later, but this is probably fair enough. There was something of a shemozzle and something of a mix-up on the day, which has necessitated the creation of new, accurate records of the event.

If you weren't there, I'll probably cover the clustermuck-up when I post the schedules. If you were there and you didn't notice - awesome.  

Anyhow, I wanted to post these so that you all could re-live the magic, or experience it for the first time if you couldn't make it. As they remain unavailable at this time, here is a list of the songs from the wedding instead.

Guests arrived at the ceremony to the sounds of Fleet Foxes' Fleet Foxes.

Vicky walked down the aisle to Waterloo Sunset by the Kinks.

As we signed our marriage contracts, we played i like the way this is going by the eels and I Will by The Beatles and Heart goes Pitter Patter by Simone and Girlfunkle.

Our recessional was Living in Colour by Frightened Rabbit.

Guests arrived at the reception venue (I hope - I wasn't there to check) to Impossible Soul by Sufjan Stevens.

Then, these:

Love - John Lennon 

Grand Parade - The Reindeer Section 

Go - Sparklehorse With The Flaming Lips 

Cheek to Cheek - Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong 

The Luckiest - Ben Folds 

If Not For You - George Harrison 

Satellite Of Love - Lou Reed 

Here, There And Everywhere - The Beatles 

Can't Help Falling In Love - Eels 

Oh My Love - John Lennon 

Feeling Good - Nina Simone 

Tonight, Tonight - Smashing Pumpkins 

Fresh Feeling - Eels 

Perfection As A Hipster - God Help The Girl 

Untidy Towns - The Lucksmiths 

In The Aeroplane Over The Sea - Neutral Milk Hotel 

Someone So Much - Bob Evans 

Modern Marriage (Demo) - Pulp 

Secret Meeting - The National 

Golden Brown - The Stranglers 

There Is A Light That Never Goes Out - The Smiths 

Friday I'm In Love - The Cure 

Fidelity - Regina Spektor 

Victoria - The Kinks 

Big Jumps - Emiliana Torrini 

She's A Rainbow - The Rolling Stones 

2:1 - Elastica 

It's Alright - Sons Of Rico 

Good Fortune - PJ Harvey 

King of Spain - The Tallest Man On Earth 

The Word - The Beatles 

Babies - Pulp 

People Take Pictures Of Each Other - The Kinks 

Adolescent Song Of Mindless Devotion - The Lucksmiths 

Australia - The Shins 

Mr. E's Beautiful Blues - Eels 

It's Oh So Quiet - Björk 

Got To Get You Into My Life - The Beatles 

You're My Best Friend - Queen 

Tiergarten - Rufus Wainwright 

Days - The Kinks 

I Wish That I Was Beautiful For You - Darren Hanlon 

Sing - Blur 

All Mine - Portishead 

Happy Days - The Tigers 

Try Not To Breathe - R.E.M. 

Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye - Leonard Cohen 

In My Life - The Beatles 

Little Wonder - Augie March 

Road To Joy - Bright Eyes 

The One You Love - Rufus Wainwright 

Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1 - The Flaming Lips 

Swans - Camera Obscura 

Ice Cream Man - Tom Waits 

Connection - Elastica 

Jungle Drum - Emiliana Torrini 

Start Me Up - The Rolling Stones 

Lust For Life - Iggy Pop 

Sunshine Of Your Love - Cream 

Disco 2000 - Pulp 

Don't Go Breaking My Heart - Elton John & Kiki Dee 

Kiss - Prince 

Ringo (I Feel Like...) - Custard 

The Lovecats - The Cure 

Sonnet No. 3 (Like A Duck) - MC Honky 

! (The Song Formerly Known As) - Regurgitator 

She's My Man - Scissor Sisters 

ABC - The Jackson 5 

The Power of Love - Huey Lewis and the News 

Crazy In Love - Beyoncé 

Parklife - Blur 

Informer - Snow 

Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough - Michael Jackson 

Common People - Pulp 

Get Ur Freak On - Eels 

Dizzy Miss Lizzy - The Beatles 

All Shook Up - Elvis Presley 

Age of Adz - Sufjan Stevens 

I Get A Kick Out Of You - Frank Sinatra 

Heart Goes Pitter Patter - Simone & Girlfunkle 

Don't Look Back In Anger - Oasis 

Stand By Me - John Lennon 

Losing Streak - Eels 

First Day Of My Life - Bright Eyes 

All Of My Friends Were There - The Kinks 

Do You Remember The First Time? - Pulp 

Glory Box - Portishead 

There's Too Much Love - Belle & Sebastian 

True Love Will Find You in the End - Beck 

Never Let Go - Tom Waits 

Let's Get Out Of This Country - Camera Obscura 

End Of The Line - Traveling Wilburys 

Leave - R.E.M. 

Notes On Leaving - Darren Hanlon 

I Like Birds - Eels

How Bizarre - OMC

Note, however, that if I ever get to guest-program rage, it'll be different from the list above. There'll be a lot more RUN DMC.

Signs I married the right woman #17

Home-made gin & walnut ice-cream, made magnificently ginny.

Committed (nuptial man)

Hello, so, it turns out that last weekend the world didn't end, as portended for the third time by that mad Harold Camping fellow, and I got married. All up, that's a pretty successful weekend, I'd say. 

Also, never fear, loyal follower! Not only did the world not end but this blog won't neither! At least not straightaway, anyway. Inspired by the one lovely wedding guest who told me to keep this beast rumbling, I plan to upload a few blogs over the coming weeks reflecting on how awesome the wedding went (and how awesome it is to be married), the awesome things that went on and were said on the day, some awesome photographs and other assorted awesome ephemera for anybody who's interested.

Hopefully those posts'll be, you know, quite good or thereabouts. 

And, who knows, perhaps I will eventually commence uploading my worried thoughts as prenatal man? (Calm down mum, this'll be years away.)

I shall start this one with a few of the lessons I have learned, having now been through a wedding, for the benefit of other prenuptial men out there:

1. Practise your chalkpersonship before the morning of the wedding. This is particularly important if you plan on having a blackboard with directions for guests.
2. If you are having a cocktail-style wedding, ask your venue to put a plate of food aside for you and the wife. Your mouth will be too busy talking to eat and you'll miss out on most of the delicious goodies you carefully selected.
3. Don't be fooled into thinking that, because you are not doing full speeches, you can get away with a hastily-scribbled note of thank-yous. You will forget to thank some people and feel rotten about it for days afterward. This includes your friends who got there early to help set up chairs, your other friends who stayed back late to help remove chairs, and your cousin who flew all the way from the UK just for the weekend and whom you didn't get much of a chance to chat with. Clearly, these are people who should be thanked and praised.
4. You will probably be doomed from the start if you try to talk to everybody at the reception. You'll most likely end up talking to most people not nearly enough, rudely ceasing conversations to move onto the next guests and repeat. Instead, focus on those people who travelled the farthest to be there and whom you see least often. You can catch up with your regular chums at the post-wedding pub hoedown a following weekend. 
5. You'll forget heaps of stuff, like leaving the caketoppers in the hotel room. Luckily you'll also have many friends and relatives willing to help out with your mini-crises, like your dad, who'll ransack your hotel room to try to find those caketoppers while you have a good time not talking to enough people.
6. Getting married and having a big party is fucking fantastic. Stop putting it off. If you've nabbed the right one, don't lose her. 

I was going to write something about regrets as well but it's late now and I'm lazy so I'll save it for next post. In the meantime, look at these awesome pics uploaded by our awesome photographer. These are just some of the advanced previews, note, so there should be loads more coming.

It's only right that the rest of the world sees how tremendously beautiful Vicky looks. 

I have tried on the wedding ring and she is good.

The wedding is tomorrow. I'm surprisingly calm, which means that I alternate from relatively calm to outlandishly wired. What? That is totally a surprise.

Anyhow, I thought I would do one last prenuptial man update for those of you who are still paying attention. In case you are curious, I have tried on the wedding ring and she is good. Whereas Vicky's ring was made up special to fit snugly against her engagement ring, I have had my great-grandpappy's ring (with the french engraving inside preserved - "Alice et Roland unis le 15-9-28") resized to fit my well-nourished chubbers. 

Wearing the ring helps reduce a lot of the anxiety I have about tomorrow. When I put it on, it feels nice, looks grand and I feel that I could easily get used to it. 

I don't know why that helps but, then again, I don't really know why I'm anxious either.

See you on the other side. 

On second thoughts and Plans B.

Thinking about the totally pimp ceremony I wrote about in the last post, it occurs to me now that such extravagant fripperies may detract, rather than add to, the simple wonderment of the occasion. 

Instead we really should go with the original plan: some heartfelt personal vows while girt by loved ones.

And no, this decision is not only due to our reluctant decision to shift our ceremony one suburb over. Sure, it will be hard to pull off a lot of the last post's majesty now that we will be hosting the ceremony outside in the splendour of nature but, in honest seriousness, I think we are both better served by simplicity and authenticity, regardless of where we commit. 

Also, so why have we bitten the bitter eggplant and relocated our nuptials?

Although the temporary fencing has been removed from Kidogo and we can now access the building, it still remains adjacent to the ruins of its previous surrounding topography. On the northern side, there remains a triad of bright blue portaloos, which should be downwind. We tried to overlook this through sheer bloody-mindedness. The building is still wonderful once you get inside. 

Unfortunately, the sound of stuff-hammering, angle-grinding, sand-vacuuming, cat-calling, nose-honking and ill-informed politicking follows you in. It ruins the atmosphere a little.

Even if one could block out the sound (one can't), it requires a leap of faith concerning access to the building. The City of Fremantle has advised that "there could possibly be a problem with access" as "Western Power will be digging  in the access way at some stage", though they don't know when this would happen.

Weighing up the risk that we may face litigation as our guests injure themselves either long-jumping or tightrope-walking to our ceremony, Vicky and I have decided to take our business elsewhere. 

Personally, I think that once they dig the trench, they ought to fill it with fire and hoist up a Sad Roger pirate flag as a warning to others that the Kidogo Arthouse is now a no-go zone of death. What was once an inspiring sanctuary for the creative arts is now a place where hopes and dreams atrophy, are garrotted, stuffed into undersized potato sacks, bashed with lead pipes and buried, only half-dead, in shallow graves underneath those trees that drop loads of sticky berries. 

I have tried to change the entry on google maps to a description like the one above but my hacking skills are not as good as they used to be, back when everything was straight HTML.

The Azelia Ley Homestead, in the City of Cockburn, is now the proud host of our wedding ceremony.  Azelia Ley, who was a Manning, built the house with her own husband from 1915 to 1923. Then, while a kooky old bat, well read and dressed all in black, she used to stand on its verandah and take pot-shots at anybody she thought was trespassing. You can see why it appeals.

I bet the place is haunted by her now. I'll be scrutinising our photos carefully afterward to see if she's in any.  

I've attached below a picture a kid drew of the homestead. I bet Kidogo never inspired a child to draw it. 

We won't be inside the building. That's now a boring museum. We will be married in the glorious, great outdoors in a true-blue Australian setting.

It better not fucking rain.