The party begins...NZ Practise Wedding!

Since Charlie proposed to me last year, we spoke about having a New Zealand wedding party before the real deal in Sweden. We were after something that 'is us': in the mountains, lots of food, lots of booze, lots of friends with minimal planning required.

About 50+ friends joined us in Craigeburn the 10 July. A few keen ones arrived the night before to help us set up. Dugall (on the picture above) and Katie arrived with the hand-pull beer from Townsend Brewery destined for the party the next day. However, we simply had to conduct some quality assessments of course. A few litres later, Charlie was pretty confident that he loved the beer. As a result of this, the skiing that we had hoped to do the next day fell off the agenda. The Saturday turned into a very relaxing day in the Environment Education Centre, where we had the party. My health was still not 100% as a result of the contagious Hen’s do the previous weekend. It was nice to take it easy, sample Clare and Dave’s magnificent muffins and work on my pickled herring.

I usually don’t like theme parties too much, but this time we thought we need one. Kiwis love dress up parties and most people would have a stock of a range of different costumes at home just in case. The theme of our party was Sweden/England/Swenglish. We had some great outfits:
Mike still not in character, Pete as a Knight, a few vikings (Warwick and Charlie), Leslie as a wizard and Caspar as an arrogant explorer of Queensland, Bartle-Frere.

Mike in the background as Björn Borg, Katie as a Swedish safety match (tandsticka) and Dugall as the Swedish Chef (of course). Robin Hood, Caspar as Sir Bartle-Frere and my Viking man. Mike and Heather were very innovative and came as Swedish surstromming - fermented herring. When people spoke to Mike he always interrupted with - Pardon, I have bad herring! Mike, there is a real "dad-joke" warning on that one!

Clare and Dave as..I don't know what. Dave was the cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland. Alice looks a bit different from what I remember.
The dinner arrangements worked out like clockwork. In NZ it is common to have “Pot luck dinner” when everyone brings a dish. In socialist Sweden it is called “Knytkalas”. Since I didn’t want to end up with 25 chocolate cakes (Charlie wouldn’t mind I think), we split people into bringing Starters, Mains, Desserts, Nibbles and breakfast for the following day. I can’t believe how well it worked out!! We had sooooo much yummy food and no one had fist fights for space in the kitchen. I consider that a success!

Warwick's delicious sushi

Jan brought the CHOCOLATE FOUNTAIN - now we are talking party!

To make the party feel a bit more like a Practise wedding, Megs, who is working towards becoming a real wedding celebrant, organised a great little ceremony for us. Megs asked all the guests to come up with some suitable vows for us. We got some great ones. My favourites were:
-I, Charlie, promise Veronica to love her almost as much as my bike. or
-I, Charlie, promise Veronica to always flap my giant ears to soothe her during hot summer nights.

-I, Veronica, promise Charlie to never go to bed angry (or in flannel pyjamas)

This is what I looked like after all the eating! I was totally stuffed and ready to dance off some of the sugar we had been lapping up in the choc fountain.

The dinner was followed by more beer and lots of dancing. We were testing out music for the Swedish leg of the Wedding. My voice was starting to fail towards the end of the night and I found it easier to keep on dancing so that I didn’t have to speak. I think I didn't stop for about 3 hrs straight. In the end I was beaten by the pop and whistle couple Neil and Ruth and they were lost out to Colin Meurk who was the last man standing on the dance floor. It was a great party!