Melissa and Nat's Wedding

The third wedding is of my x-housemate, Melissa who is now married to Nathaniel- also known as Nat. Their wedding was held in a small town called Nimmitabel, 2 and a half hour drive South of Canberra.

Having to live with Mel for one year, I get to know her well more or less. She’s got some habits that people would think of as strange. For example, she likes to bring empty yogurt buckets from the café she works everyday. She doesn’t want to waste them so she brought them home to be used as pot plants to grow herbs. Though… she had collected so many of them that our house verandah have got stacks of bucket from floor to ceiling. She loves the earth and in return hates wasting resources, and will go with whatever is green and organic. She studied rocks at university, but came out not wanting anything more than to be a mom with lots of kids. She also thinks systematically. Her arguments are usually verbally numbered. She’s also very quiet at home. Coming back home from work she would go straight to her computer and stayed silent… and I guess that’s how she met Nat on a facebook game.

It wasn’t until I went to the place that Nat grew up in, I realize how Nat, and the rest of his family is everything that Mel had ever dreamed of. Nat’s parents bought thousands acres of forest where they brougt up their kids. I quite enjoy visiting their property. Their living space is a combination of a house that they've buit themselves, a junkyard, Bianca the guard dog, chickens, ducks, vegetable garden, a green house, a half-made mud house and a dam. Nat is the oldest of 8 siblings and his youngest sibling is still a baby. For some reason he also likes to verbally numbered his argument….

The following are some photos from the Walker's property, This is their organic garden:



The half made mud house with the glorious forest background:

And the dam with the tilted sign that vaguely translates to, "Do not jump in":

Mel had asked me to make her and her bridesmaids jewelry as well as their bouquets. I finished making all the jewelry at home, but I was quite nervous in making her wedding bouquet as this is my first time, and it’s for real! Argh! Mel might not care so much about the flowers, but I still think she’s got a lot of trust in me.

I was lucky enough to get the flowers that I need from the wholesaler since the wedding is on the valentines day weekend. I got pink and yellow lilies from the supermarket as a backup, purple lisianthus and irises from the wholesaler.

On Friday when we arrived at nimmitabel, I had to go on a quest to pick some wild flowers to put in the bouquet. We went to Nat’s parent’s property to look for them. I end up picking some wild purple clovers and brackens for the bouquet.


I also took this advantage to have a little tour of the forest...it is so, sooo beautiful in there. No wonder Mel and Nat wanted to get married there.



That night there was a bushdance held in the Nimmitabel townhall. The band was excellent, there were little kids running around everywhere and delicious home made food being served, it was a great! I get to dance with tall men that I swear nearly catapaulted me flat on the wall. I don't know how the little kids cope...



While the bushdance is still going, I decided to duck out early to the hall’s kitchen to start arranging my flowers. I was a little nervous as I have no idea of what I was trying to do, but I was so fortunate that I had so many friends and strangers to came over to say hi and watch what I was doing. They also offered me help which made everything a lot faster and fun!

I realized as I was doing my flowers, there were about 50 times where I thought my bouquet looked so bad and I have to start again. If I was working by myself, I think I would, but people who saw me or watched me arrange them would sincerely say that it looked nice. Some even asked me if I've had training before because it looked like I knew what I was doing. I'm surprised, but I take it anyway, because I can't go on without those kind words and I can't handle the pressure of Mel not having her wedding bouquet looking great. It made me realize how important encouragement are.

I finished arranging the flowers at 3am and didn’t get to sleep until around 5 am on the floor in the townhall without a mattress… and yes, It was a stupid idea but at least my bouquet is done. My friend Caroline stayed up with me until 3 am. She's so funny she made time flies. I was arranging my flowers in the same room as where the girls were all sleeping, so both of our stomach hurts from trying to hold too much of our laughter.

I'm particularly proud of Melissa's bouquet. The pink lilies look so sweet againts the purple lisianthus. I was a bit worried that the Iris's didn't bloom in time, but I used that as 'spikes' coming out of the bouquet, and the purple clover helped toning it down. I would like another florist come up with this arrangement... I can't imagine anyone else using clovers and closed iris in a wedding bouquet :p



The next day, I woke up at 8 am to the sound of chairs being moved around inside the townhall. Everyone who slept in the room had disappeared. I peeked out of my sleeping bag and there he is again, Mr. helpful and cheerful (aka:John) is happily sweeping the floor away. “It’s Fionna!” like I just popped out of my cocoon or something.

“What? What’s going on? Where’s everyone? What’s with all the noise?!”

“They’re moving the wedding to the townhall. It’s still raining and this morning the wedding venue is covered in a layer of mud.”

“For a split second I thought about the prayers I whispered to God asking Him for a better weather today so that we can have the wedding in that beautiful forest. I was rather disappointed that it wouldn’t go as planned. But since yesterday the venue was covered in a layer of mud and the pizza oven is sufferring from the rain, I guess the townhall will have to do.

So the ceremony and reception happened spontaneously inside the townhall. Not just that, but it also functioned as a bushdance hall, kitchen, dining room, flower arranging table, and a sleeping hall. It feels like a thousand memories are jammed into that one building. Like any good country town, everybody is more than willing to help out. Everything seem to go in place as they move along. All the food are from their contribution and even though it was a buffet style sort of eating, some of the food there are just amazing! Especially the pizza! Unless I go to Italy and have the real deal, I will taste a better pizza. The townhall was packed with 200 or more people in it. That made me realize the fun of not having a 'seated' reception.



One of the wedding's highlight was when Melissa gets to cut Nat’s hair that he’s been growing for awhile. Story is, he made a deal with someone that he won’t cut his hair until he gets married… that was 6 years ago. The crowd got so involved they went mad! They even went all the way and got his head shaved.

The other highlight is… well… they’ve got a cookie monster cake topper.





So there it is, another country wedding. I spoke to yet again so many friendly and helpful strangers. Speaking of helpful, Caroline was amazing that day! She didn't just stayed up till 3 am helping me, she also helped out in the kitchen during the reception while everyone else was busy eating. She also brought cups of tea to people who really need it. She's like a superwoman, I wish I could be as sensitive as her.

I left early to Canberra because I was exhausted, and needed a timeout with Greg. Later I found out that Melissa did a bouquet throw, and guess where it landed? Carolineeeee.... !!!

Ehm... and so... a new adventure had begun for the new Mr and Mrs Walker... and where are they heading? Into the mysterious land fully populated by a 4 legged creature called a 'married couple'- congratulations you two! :D

My First Jewelry Wedding Gig

I was SO fortunate this year that my awesome friend, Sienna had recommend me to do a bridal jewelry for her sister, Garmisch who is now happily married to her husband, Tim in Australia last month.

It was my first bridal request so it was VERY exciting and lots of new experiences had been learnt. Since I’m currently living in Jakarta, Garmisch and I communicate a lot via emails. She’s the best client anyone would ever want really. She sent me so many helpful pictures of what she wants that when I finally did come up with some jewelry, no further alteration was needed. When trying to come up what sort of jewelry I'm going to make, color theme is my no.1 concern. The design, and all the rest comes second. I asked about her flowers and what the bridesmaids are wearing. In this case, Garmisch is wearing white, and her flowers and bridesmaids are going to be yellow.

This is one of the picture Garmisch had sent me of the Bridesmaids dress to let me have an idea about what sort of 'yellow' is in her colour theme.

When I went to Australia for holiday, I used this opportunity to discuss the details with her in person. I also took measurement of her, and her bridesmaids wrists to get their bracelets properly fitted. We meet up in the city’s café and she even brought her dress over!!!

These are the final result of the jewelry:

For the bridesmaids, I use predominantly peach rice pearls to match their dresses.

Fo Garmisch, she requested a chandelier style earrings and a matching 3 layered bracelet. After looking at many photos and conversations, this is what we came up with:

A few weeks ago, Sienna sent me a link on to the photos from the wedding. These amazing photos are taken by Tate Needham on the courtesy of t8photography (www.t8photography.com) So amazing in fact I'm considering him to do photos for my own wedding now. So, If you're getting married in Canberra, he's your man! ;)

This is a photo of Sienna wearring the peach earrings.

Misch looking absolutely stunning in her dress, flowers and the jewelry.

I’m not there at the wedding, but seeing my jewelry had made it there in those photos made me feel like a piece of me had been there at there, especially when I saw this photo here:

A big congratulations to the new Mr and Mrs. Riley! And thanks Sienna and Garmisch for your friendship and support! You guys rock my world…!!!

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A couple of weeks later I was approached by another customer, Carrie from Ohio, USA. She requested to make 3 sets of necklace/earrings set for her bridesmaids. Her wedding is in May. She loved a necklace I had made, but wanted the colors to be predominantly black, red, pink and

white.

Then there’s a hiccup, my supplier had run out of those oval hoops, so I had to buy hoops that are larger. After experimenting with it a couple of times the result wasn’t very good.

So I went back to the shop and looked around for other alternatives. I found round hoops that I quite like, so I made these Christmas necklace to test it out:

It was really cool because Carrie ended up liking this one better than the original oval hoops! Yay for both of us! But there’s another challenge. Carrie requested that I use non- iridescent swarovski crystals rather than the iridescent ones that I use. So I rang up all my suppliers, and none of them supply a 6mm round non-iridescent crystals. I found that rather irritating because personally, I also prefer non-iridescent crystals, and I think they used to have it. They also stop ruby colored crystals coming in… and I like to use a lot of ruby. That’s the downside of the bead market in Jakarta. They like to stop supplying whatever that doesn’t sell without any warning.

I happened to be very lucky this time because I had to go to Singapore to attend a 3 day conference. I have a bead shop over there that I normally go to, so I bought the non-iridescent crystals over there.

So this is the final outcome! Carrie said that it looked exactly as she imagined, and that made us both very VERY happy! Yaaay! =D

Looking back at this project, it did take a long time for us to work this pieces of jewelry out, and there are times when I feel that the nature of my suppliers are very unstable that I’m going to hit a dead end several times. But God has been extremely good to me. With a lot of faith, it’s just so amazing to see how it all just work out by itself in the end.

Thanks Carrie for your patience and trusting me with this project! I really appreciate it. I also can’t wait to see the photos in May of course! =)

Finally thanks to Etsy for making it possible for me to work with people from around the world. I absolutely LOVE it…!

Wedding Bells in February

By this December, Greg and I would have been going out for 3 years, which is for us, is an Ok amount of time for not being engaged yet. But apparently, 3 years of waiting is a little bit too long for most of our friends.

It’s only October, but it looks like my Calendar is already full for next year’s February. All these wedding dates are flying at me only in the past couple of weeks, and they all happen to land on February.

Greg’s sister, Joanne is getting married to Henry on the 6th of February. They had been going out for 3 years and the relationship has been striving through a painful long distance since Henry lives, and is from Bangladesh. They met at Bible school in Australia. They’ve been trying to get married for awhile but Henry has been having problems in applying for a VISA to get in the country to get married. Their July 09 wedding is delayed till February 2010.

Our friend Nick is getting married to Anita on that same day. That's a photo of Nick there, the only one I have of himself.... Actually, I don’t really know this couple. I’ve seen Anita around at church years ago but never really had a proper conversation. I don’t even know Nick. When I recently came to Canberra for a visit, Nick randomly appeared to crash my lemon dinner party. It was rather surprising since we don’t even know each other but now I guess I’m entitled to go to his wedding if I wanted to. I think it’s only been a year since they’ve been going out.

This Tuesday at work, what I thought is going to be a boring morning turns out to be quite an eventful one. I checked my Etsy account finding a sale from Melissa’s boyfriend, Nat. He left me a message there saying, “Are you going to be around next year’s February? Wedding bells might be just around the corner!”

I… was… ecstatic!!!

My quiet American friend Melissa had only met Nat a couple of months ago. Mel spent half her life on the computer so it’s nor surprising to hear that they had met through facebook. They finally met in person a couple of months later to find that they couldn’t stay away from each other.

When we met Nat, we immediately thought that he looks, talks, and thinks exactly like Mel. I thought this is kindda creepy, because I always thought that Mel is very unique, but at the same time, this is really cool stuff! I told my German friend, David about this via skype. His response was,

“So… Mel is getting married to herself?”- as if he wasn’t sure of what I just said or something.

“Well... more like the male version of herself.”

The couple is flying over to Boston this November to meet Mel’s parents, and if it all goes smoothly, then just like Nat said, there’ll be an extra wedding bells ringing by February. If they do get married by then, that means they had been going through the whole 3 process of going out, getting engaged and getting married within 9 months.

Half an hour later, I got an email from my friend Sally who is currently living in London with her boyfriend. “Good news! We’re engaged!”

…And apparently that’s not enough ‘good news’ for the week.

Today Greg sent me an sms saying, “I have good news! You better ring me back!” but then I never did cause my phone died and I never get that message. 4 hours later when I turn on my phone and did find out that there is a good news, Greg said to me, “Actually, I can’t tell you about it now cause they rang me back saying that they wanted to let you know themselves.”

…I think I nearly died with curiosity. My imagination ranges from my best friend Lyndell is pregnant to my friend Caroline (who is happily single) is going out with Greg’s cousin (which is just impossible really). It was really killing me! I had to ring Greg and begged him to tell me who's the person involved in this 'good news'. I think Greg took pity on me and have kindly rang the mysterious person and ask them if he can just break the news to me. But instead, they just went, "It's killing her? Good! Tell her we'll ring her on skype by 9pm, otherwise you can tell her"

Gaaargh!

I finally got a call from Skype… slightly past 9pm though. It turns out to be none of all of my guesses. It was one of my really good mate, Fizz who’s been living in Sydney. He is now engaged to his girlfriend, Sarah. He knew me well enough to know he’d get a mad reaction out of me when he break the news. I found myself taking deep breaths and yelled at him over and over again for keeping me in a torturous suspense, “DON’T YOU EVER DO THAT TO ME AGAIN!!!”

And guess what? They are getting married at the end of January or February.

So now, I am freaking out. How the hell am I going to get back to Australia this February?!?!?!

And by the way, later in the evening Greg said to me, “Maybe we should get married in February… it seems to be the way to go!”