Port Elizabeth, and the hot, dry ‘winter’ has been broken by a sudden storm; the wet, black sky torn apart by ragged lightning, rending thunder. Apparently, this is the worst winter drought experienced by the Eastern Cape in 70 years. (And we’re not missing much with regards the English summer: ‘grey’ and ‘miserable’ are two words that crop up again and again in emails from my English friends in the last weeks. And as one South African expat succinctly said: ‘Two weeks of sunshine and then it goes and #@&%s off for the rest of the year!!’) Hoping this blissfully summery weather will last another two weeks, we’ve arranged our wedding to take place along the banks of the lazy Sunday River in Addo next Saturday!
Originally, our wedding was set (and booked!) for December 2008 – at the citrus and rose farm, Avoca (where we’re still going to have our wedding.) Craig had taken me there for an exciting, sexy, fun, exotic and dangerous (‘angry bull elephant vs Citi Golf’ story – to be told at a later stage) weekend away. After a day of swimming in the dark, cold river inbetween roasting dry in the sun with only ice-cold beers to keep us company, we sat around the doringboom fire in the darkening pink of night and dreamed of how perfect it would be for a wedding. Unspoken thoughts of marriage stained our every word, as though they were blushing – we daren’t mention the word for fear of jinxing this perfect new love we’d accidentally bumped into again almost two whole decades after that first kiss.
Eleven years old, Standard Four. In the music room nogal! I remember scratching my name, coupled with Craig’s surname, on my wooden desktop. And they talk about self-fulfilling prophecies?! After a whirlwind romance of silly little love-letters and stolen kisses, high school separated us and we never saw each other again. Until that fateful ‘friend request’ on Facebook when we were both a year shy of 30.
“Are you the same Lisa Roberts I went to school with?”
And that was that. (Not really, but I could literally write a book were I to try bring you up to speed on what happened between then and now! Another time, maybe…)
So now, back to the wedding. Both of us are fairly relaxed when it comes to organising things, euphemistically speaking - and so, our wedding is a true reflection of our style of doing things: unpretentious, whimsical, laid-back, flexible, casual. We really only decided last night (!!) that we’d actually have a proper wedding in lieu of the court thing. For a whole host of reasons, we’re having an incredibly tiny little do – only 20 people or so. Finances are one of them, but that’s probably not the main reason. I think we’re really using our minimalist-style savings as an excuse to have this wedding as preciously intimate and meaningful as possible! If we didn’t have this fiscal reason to back us up, I have a funny feeling we’d have felt obligated to invite The World. Instead, only 20 guests are invited, and even then, there are one or two we are forced to invite only through sheer familial duty – but on the whole, each person means The World to us! (Craig and I are big on meaningfulness --- sentimental ol’ suckers!)
Oops! I’ve just realised what I’ve so unsubtly intimated: that you yourself do not mean The World to me and are hence not invited. Eish… How do I untangle myself from this faux pas?! I guess what I mean to say is that with Layla in our lives, we just can’t afford the time or money to have a huge bash. And that running around during the reception dinner, trying frantically to spend a few micro-milliseconds with each guest, is just not something we are capable of with a constantly hungry baby (i.e. still being breastfed meaning no-one can really look after her except me… Hence, why I suppose one gets married BEFORE one has a baby!!!) Anyway, the fact of the matter is that the only people invited are family members. Because if we didn’t invite them, then there’d be hell to pay!! (Now if you are a family member and you have been invited, then you’ll have noticed I’ve shot myself in the other foot now!! OK – so I can’t win. So let me just blame it on our blatant shortage of funds. Is that better? It’s too late now, because here I sit with both my feet in my mouth, having shot myself in both of them – not a pretty picture, huh?)
