A Wedding to Remember

Today was Jeremy (my cousin) and Asumi's wedding. The week leading up to the wedding my brothers and I had been practising our accordion trio quite a bit, and I had also been trying to improve my violin solo!

It didn't help that yesterday, I had to spend the entire day at uni for training for the Student Ambassador position I'd be taking on the following week during Orientation Week. We pretty much just had to sit in a lecture theatre and listen to a few people from the various departments/services talk about what they do, have a little tour around the university, and get paid for it! Oh and they also provided morning tea and lunch for us! It made me really want to stay at uni beyond this year!

On that night before the wedding and on the morning of the wedding, I was still frantically arranging music for our accordion trio! I managed to arrange some James Morrison music along with some Phil Collins, Backstreet Boys and Aqua (we never got around to playing Barbie Girl though!).

Admittedly we left for the wedding a bit late. We only got to the vineyard about ten minutes before it started at 3.30pm and we went straight to the field where the wedding would be held and set up our instruments. 

There weren't many seats to sit so most people gathered around. 

My dad who was leading the procession on his bagpipes began playing all the way from the other side of the field by the main building. He slowly made his way to the platform, followed by the two flower girls and then Asumi in her kimono and her father.

The actual ceremony was quite quick! The celebrant got the bride and groom to read some vowels before requesting the rings, doing the whole 'I do' and then the 

"You may kiss the bride!"

It was already time for my violin solo! I was standing to the side of the platform playing Largo from "Xerxes" by Handel as the bride, groom and the parents signed the book. I don't know how I sounded but fortunately I didn't stop or screw up!

I had to quickly switch to the accordion and Hamish and I played the Wedding March as Asumi and Jeremy walked back down the aisle! 

After the ceremony Jeremy and Asumi took group photos with their workmates, friends, extended family (that's us!), immediate family, parents...us Anderson brothers only just managed to get a photo together with them, with us wearing our Chinese hats!

We were just mixing and mingling for a little while after Jeremy and Asumi left to take some photos as couples. We weren't too sure when we were supposed to start playing our accordion music though, as we were asked to play in the background while they were off-site. Once everyone went into the building we finally started playing music!

Not too many people really took much notice of us playing music except for the few who took photos of us, and a young boy who came right up close to us to stare at us, which was much appreciated!

We were given warning that Jeremy and Asumi were about to return, so Hamish and I got ready, and as everyone was asked to stand, we played the Wedding March as they entered the building. We couldn't see what was going on, so we just kept playing and playing as everyone remained standing! I think the bride and groom had reached their seats long before we got to the end of the piece and so the MC (Martyn, our cousin) asked everyone to be seated as we kept playing! We took that as an indication to stop playing of course!

Our family was seated with the then-deputy principal of Jeremy and Asumi's high school, as well as Jeremy's grandma and aunty. It was cool as at each seat there was a name printed on a card!

Martyn started off the evening by giving a speech before we all got served the entrée which consisted of a lot of seafood such as oysters and mussels.

After the entrées, it was time for the speeches. Jeremy's mum and dad (my uncle and aunty) both gave some touching speeches, before Asumi's dad gave a speech. This was followed by Jeremy's speech and Asumi's speech. She was quite moved by the whole event! There were quite a few toasts along the way, with one making use of the sake sets! Each family got their own sake set. Because we don't drink alcohol, we didn't pour anything into our sake cups and just toasted with empty cups. When my mum was playing around though, she found an orange liquid inside and asked if the sake was orange, only to discover it was actually orange juice! 

We were then served dinner, which consisted of lamb, beef and vegetables. There was a little concern the meat wasn't cooked properly, but we discovered it was supposed to be cooked like that so it was all good! 

After dinner, anyone else could make a speech, and so Martyn went around the room getting people to give speeches. As usual my dad gave a speech which went on and on about the family tree! He was originally planning to talk about how multicultural our family has become but he must've gotten a bit side-tracked!

Graeme and Samuel, my cousins and Jeremy's brothers gave a bit of a speech with Graeme ending with this joke for Asumi:

"Knock knock. (Who's there?) Jeremy, and he'll always be there for you."

hahaha that was quite.....touching....

Asumi's classmates got together to give a speech before dessert was supposed to be prepared but it was then decided that the first dance would take place while dessert was being prepared. Asumi and Jeremy danced to 'Can't Help Falling in Love with You' by Elvis Presley after the bouquet toss which got a bit brutal!

It was back to dessert aterwards, which was buffet! I could only handle one serving before feeling quite bloated! 

After a short break, we went into the room to do a bit of dancing, and watching Jeremy and Graeme pull out their dance moves! Asumi's older sister who was still in her kimono was dancing hard-out as well which was quite amusing!

People eventually started leaving and it was soon midnight when we had to wrap everything up and finish.

When we finally got everything packed in the car, my mum and dad left in one car ahead of us while us brothers were in another car behind. As we were pulling out of the driveway we saw our parents' car go down into the ditch! Our dad turned too widely and drove into the ditch on the side of the road! We were trying to figure out what to do when fortunately our cousins came back, telling us the road had been closed by police due to a major accident. They helped push the car out of the ditch and headed off in the opposite direction. 

We had no idea what the alternative route was, had no cellphone signal and our petrol was low, so we decided to drive in the opposite direction and hope it'd lead us back to the main road. Aonghas was adamant a turn-off we passed would get us there, but once I found where we were on the map, we discovered it would've led us nowhere!

Fortunately we made it back home safely!

Congratulations to Asumi and Jeremy though upon getting married! It feels quite weird thinking of Jeremy as being married, because I've always imagined us cousins to be young and now with Jeremy married, it's like we're all growing up and moving apart! Well hopefully not, but we'll always be family and now Asumi is part of ours too!