What, Where, When

Questions, questions, that keep rattling through the brain.

What?  A Wedding.  What type?  My dad is Greek Orthodox.  So am I, technically.  Mr Vexation though, not baptised.  And mean Greek Orthodox church won’t marry non-baptised people.  Mr Vexation’s family’s background is Presbyterian.  Uniting Church is starting to sound good, yes?  If you’re my dad, then no.  He wants a Greek wedding.  Never mind the above mentioned hiccup in that plan.  “But they don’t go to church!” he says.  I say: “Neither do we!”  Well ok, we might go at Easter, and weddings, but that’s about it.  Anyway, even Greek tradition says that the wedding happens at the groom’s church.  Which means Presbyterian.  I’m calling Uniting Church a good compromise.

Where?  Well, that is a dilemma.  Do we have it close to home in a crusty looking church, but has better parking and price?  Or do we have it in a nice church that nobody can get to because it’s in ‘The City’?  It almost seems like that’s the only two options, with nothing at all in between.  We’re going to go on a church stakeout this weekend to have a look around, because not all churches have their own websites!?  Who woulda thunk that a church wouldn’t be up (or is it down) with the new technology?

When?  Early next year.  We’re thinking March or April.  Possibly around one of the public holidays to allow people who are travelling extra time.  But there’s also Easter to consider.  And Lent.  My dad’s family (making life complicated; they’re doin it right) are good little Greek Orthodoxes and follow lent.  At least for the final week.  Which is better than the whole seven weeks.  Ack.

Who’d get married?  This is hell complicated and we’ve barely even started.

Finances are Go!

We opened a bank account today to start saving for the wedding.

Amusingly, the lady who helped us at the bank shared Mr Vexation’s family name.  It’s a pretty common one but we still had a giggle.

We have finally been able to deposit the $200 that Mr Vexation’s grandpa gave us!  I have to admit I was getting worried with Mr Vexation walking around with the pretty green notes in his wallet…

Now I have to think about how much of my $$$ will be deposited.  Hmmm….

This ain’t gonna be pretty…

We started considering an engagement party.

We’d like something small (yes, we agreed!), so we thought perhaps a do in the backyard, with a lamb on the spit – OK, you’ll understand why this is considered ‘small’ soon enough, and generally just casual foodz and drinks.  That way, we save money we can then blow on the wedding

Small do, remember.

We started on the guest list.  Counting only family, that is, Mr Vexation’s sister, both our parents, Mr Vexation’s grandpa and his wife, my god parents, and our aunties, uncles and cousins (not cousins’ kids though!!), we had 100 people.

No friends.  No workmates.  No neighbours.  No young’uns (except for Mr Vexation’s nephews).  Small gathering, remember?

Now of course not everyone who’s invited will show up.  A large chunk of our families live out in the bush, farming and stuff, and wouldn’t be able to make it.  People are interstate or overseas, and probably wouldn’t make the trip just for an afternoon do.  Ok, we didn’t even include the overseas people on the original list.  Others simply won’t be able to make it, or won’t want to (losers :p).

We’ve culled down the family members to only the ones likely to be able to make it, who live in our state, but then compensated by adding friends.  We’re now at 58 people.

We’re not sure whether to keep culling, or whether it’s safe to add some of the local family back.  There’s only one toilet at Vexation Estate; are we going to have to hire more loos?  If so, where do we put them?  Do we tell people to BYO chairs?

If I’m this distressed over a small engagement party, how am I going to cope with wedding planning?

Ack!

Wow.

Was starting to wonder if this was ever going to happen, but it did.  Mr. Vexation officially became my fiance on 22 February 2009.  We kept it fairly quiet while we waited to tell family and such.

How did it happen?  We went hiking at Morialta National Park.  At the lookout overlooking what is normally the First Falls (not so much at the moment, given summer, drought etc etc), Mr Vexation got down on one knee and proposed.

Did I know it was going to happen?  I had an inkling while we were walking around, and looking out from one lookout to the one where we’d had our first kiss – cue AWWWWs – I remember thinking that would be a nice spot for Mr Vexation to propose, but hmph, like that was going to happen.  Even though he had mentioned on New Years Eve that he’d like to get engaged this year.  But while I wasn’t thinking, yup, he’s going to propose, as we got closer to the point where he did I started to wonder if he was.  Not sure why.  Something just sort of clicked into place.

We’re very excited, as one might expect.  But I foresee stress in our future.  Weddings are stressful to organise, I understand, and I’m sure we will get stressed about stuff along the way.  Good thing I have this Vexation Nation blog to vent at!

When is a clarification not a clarification?

When MaxoidDrea makes one.

“Basically, we’re not changing our EULA, which everyone agrees to when they install our games, and says that people cannot profit commercially from selling modifications of our pixel people game, but some people ignore it and do make money, and everyone should respect that.”

Umm.  Right.  So I suppose, seeing as we can ignore EULAe so easily now, EA will not mind if people go around pirating the game.  No?  Well why not change the EULA if paysites are ok?

I will not be buying The Sims 3.  There, I’ve said it.  I’m sure Mr Vexation will be overjoyed to hear it (although he may be disappointed that I’m not getting rid of The Sims 2).  And I’m not alone.  There is now an open letter and  petition which we can sign online will be printed and posted to EA on 31 March 2009.

Go!  Sign it!  Protest the lack of clarification!  Protest the leeching of chilluns pocket money by big fat greedy paysites being given the greenlight!