Sunday, April 25, 2010
The big day
Anyway, here's a picture of the venue:
and here's a piccie of the happy couple:
A lot of people have said that it looks just like England. I don't know how to take that really...we went a long way to find somewhere that looks just like home! I hope our guests from the UK didn't feel cheated.
What I would say is that I'm very very glad that it didn't rain.
There was a 7 km dirt track to the estancia, which turned into a bog if it rained, and it was completely impassable, unless you had a big 4x4.
Back in November, we had asked the guy who administrated the estancia what happened if it rained, would the track be ok. Yes yes, he said, there would be nooo problems at all.
Turned out, that was a bit of a fib.
All the guys (wine delivery man, florist etc) said they couldn't get there if it rained...and to prove a point, it threw it down for the 2 weekends before our wedding and we tried to drive down there in our rubbish little hire car.
There was no way that it would have made it. After a bit of wheel-spinning, we turned back before we got stuck.
Looking back, I suppose we were a little blasé about the whole rain thing. The whole wedding was outside: outside for the church service, outside for dinner, outside for the dancing. If it had rained, we'd have been inside watching DVDs...except, thinking about it, I didn't actually see a TV in the estancia.
Anyway, how could it rain? A meteorologist marrying into the Solé family (pronounced like the French and Italian for sun), how could it not be sunny?!
For other people thinking of getting married, I'd have this advice:
It's probably best if you don't choose a venue about 13,000 km from where you live.
It's also best not to leave just 3 weeks to plan it.
If you follow these 2 bits of advice, I think you'll find things a lot easier...especially if your chosen venue is somewhere like Argentina where doing paperwork is a national pass time.
However, if you find yourself in trouble in Argentina, remember you can always 'persuade' people with pastries.
We were a little late for our blood test (by about 3 hours, but that's not the point. We didn't know what time we were supposed to be there and we got lost. Anyway...)
We were told we couldn't have the test and without a medical, there's no wedding. The conversation went something like this:
-Please?
-No
-Please?
-No.
-Have some pastries.
-Come on in!
As we bribed ourselves through the medical and civil ceremony, I began to wonder if the currency was actually medialunas rather than pesos. The fact they were edible, probably made them even more valuable, not to mention more tasty. Imagine if chocolate coins were real currency...I bet they'd taste even better.
I seem to be digressing. Back to the point:
As with most couples, Felipe and I were a little worried about how our families would get on, especially as they can't speak the same language. Turned out we needed on worried, the words 'house' and 'on fire' spring to mind. As soon as we realised that by not speaking the same language, it was impossible for them to offend each other, we relaxed.
One of the nicest things about the wedding was how well everyone got on. It didn't matter that they spoke different languages; Sign-Spanglish came into play, tenses were all wrong, languages were butchered, but everyone had a go!
By midnight, we'd all danced for approximately 6 hours, and we were all shattered.
Shattered, but very happy.
Wednesday, April 07, 2010
Cape Town
Well, we did it - we got hitched!
I'm going to have to do this a little bit backwards, as I don't have photos of the wedding yet, only the journey home! I do have a memory card with 950 wedding photos on, but as you can imagine, I haven't quite got round to looking at all of them yet...
We got married in Argentina, which likes paperwork and not trees. To get to Argentina from Doha, you can either go via Europe or via South Africa. When we went to Argentina in November, we went via the UK, which took 39 hours. It was horrible. So this time we went via South Africa, which took 40 hours. We must be mad.
The advantage of this extra hour, was that we could stop over in Cape Town on the way home, to have a mini-psuedo honeymoon.
I can honestly say that Cape Town is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. It is stunning; absolutely beautiful.
There was only one problem...as we arrived at our super-plush hotel the receptionist said, "I'm afraid your room's been cancelled."
Excellent.
Somewhere between the hotel and the holiday-booking website, there had been a miscommunication and the room had been cancelled. By a stroke of luck, there was a spare one, so major hotel-searching-hassle was avoided.
And by another stroke of luck, the weather was fantastic.
Table Top mountain was climbed (well...the cable car helped a little)
Bo kaap was checked-out
Penguins were viewed
Cape Point was snapped
and Ostriches were fed.
In fact the only real cloud we saw was on the last day, when we were leaving! Perfect!
In June, Qatar Airways are opening up a direct flight to Buenos Aires. This will take about 17 hours and therefore save around a day of my life. Thanks Qatar Airways!
