Travelling Bead 2: Dance me to the end of time!

Wedding Belle and a Handsome Groom

Two days pre wedding, local hotels and homes were filled with our family and friends. My children arrived from Perth. Mel and Sophie from Melbourne. Sherry from Albury. Lynette, Sheridan and Melody from Perth. Uncles and aunts from Queensland. We were devastated that Carmen, the sister in law I wanted to love forever, didn't come. We begged, we pleaded, we ignored her excuses and protestations, we pretended we didn't care. But we were cut to the core. First she said yes, then she said no, then she said maybe, then she said yes, then no, then internally, we said Vancuno. Or some similar Italian curse.

Neither did my brother and sister in law come from London, and that cut too because they didn't come to my first wedding. Perhaps he doesn't believe in me? That love has finally settled in my life? But we do have plans to see him on our honeymoon in Italy, in about 5 months. Reno and I went at 5am to Flemington markets to buy our flowers - what glorious smells and shouts and colours. I chose roses, waterlilies and peonies. In between I baked 50 chocolate filled meringues, just because I could, and because I wanted to. Baby Noa arrived with Mama and Papa and got her share of cuddles and kisses and once again took to Reno like a duck to water. The rain came down in buckets, and Oxford Falls lived up to its name. The grass turned vivid green, the trees shimmered and the council did a fabulous job of trimming so much verdant growth. But the grounds were sodden, the rocks covered with moss, and it would have been impossible to put a hundred guests in the cottage on the grounds.

Don't worry cara, the sun will shine for us, promised my prince. You must believe in me.

December 8th 2014. Two years to the day that I returned from Venice to a brand new relationship that came at me from nowhere but promised me so much. That I fought so hard against, but ran towards with so much passion.

Gail - my sister in arms and geography, and I stayed at a beach front hotel, with Lynette and her girls, my longest friends in Australia, and Sherry who stood by me while the idiot/cafuno/slug/moffie/betrayer trashed my life, came from half way across the country. We gathered for a raucous pre wedding dinner where I toasted my self, and my sistas, unable really to believe that I'd get married the following day. To a man I really wanted to be with. To a man I'd decided to be with - not because I was homeless, or financially compromised, or pregnant, or because society expected it of me, or because I thought I'd be losing my looks or my waistline or because I wanted a baby, or wanted someone to look after my baby.

I was marrying him because I understood, finally, the importantance of commitment. Of promising to be there - no matter what - until my last breath. That I would l love him in many, many different ways, on many different days. That the challenges would hurt us, and perhaps harm us, but that neither of us would take the rug or the lifeboat from under each other's feet. I was marrying him because I couldn't conceive of another way of showing him how much I loved him. I wanted to marry him because Tina Turner showed me how to do it. To stand by him.

I was also marrying him because the thought of him walking off into the sunset without me really rattled me. It wasn't about ownership - I had done that. I liked the freedom in our relationship, to become who we wanted to with the knowledge that we believed in each other.

I woke at four am, to a dark but cloudless sky. I lay there thinking that from today onwards, everything would be different, but also the same. I didn't want to waste a moment of it. I walked down to the beach, along the shoreline, my feet in the creamy waves. I was all alone on a long dark beach ... watching my footsteps in the sand, single now, but from midday, always alongside Reno. I'd wanted to swim, to do a ritual Jewish cleansing (a mikvah) of the past to enter the present, but the strong backwash scared me - who'd eat all that food if I was washed away ? Who would Reno marry instead of me?

Instead I took the car he'd given me for a wedding present and drove alongside Narrabeen lake where ducks skimmed over the misty surface, to our wedding venue. The garden was shimmering with early morning sun and the grass steamed. The rain had washed everything, and had disappeared over a horizon to go and torment another pre wedding.

It was the most glorious day I'd seen in a year.

I walked around for a while, knowing that when I returned it would be festooned just the way I wanted it to be. I met my gals for breakfast, quite relaxed that I was due to be married after so long. Thirty years without a husband, but with adventures and misadventures in between, with nobody I wanted to spend more than a few months with. Of course there were a few who hung around for longer, but that was because I had to lose children, and homes and cars and businesses to get rid of them; this stuff takes time.

I've just realised there when one important letter is removed from married, it makes the word - marred. When the I goes missing, I'd be marred. Something to consider! Would Reno take the I out of me, as so many had before him?

Was I nervous? I tried to feel some anxiety, some terror: I've excelled at being a runaway bride. I've never had any qualms about marrying Reno. I'm sure we'll have collisions as we're both very headstrong and determined people: he's an alpha male Capricorn Italian Australian who is built metaphorically and physically like the Great Wall of China. I'm a perfectionist and a Libran and I like multiple choices where he is linear. But I need his wall and he needs my balance. And he has a very gentle and patient way of talking our collisions through.

So I washed, and plucked, and tweaked and smoothed for my Day. Gail, my matron of dishonour, laced me into my magnificent gown. My makeup was applied by the professional that Reno found for me, although I'd protested that I wanted to do it myself. I wore a short black veil with some gardenias and a slash of red lipstick. I spritzed myself with Elle parfum, pouf, ready to marry. In the background, the wedding planners were stringing up chandeliers, adorning tables with fruit and silver, and festooning the trees with paper lanterns to complement the parasols I'd bought for the day.

I walked to marry my prince. The sun was blazing, dazzling, amazing. The guests had arrived, dressed to thrill, as requested. Well, some of them had. If they got sunburned, I wasn't going to be responsible.

Reno was waiting. He'd chosen Emerson, Lake and Palmer's "Fanfare for the Common Man" to herald himself in. Our guests cheered. He jumped and leaped, and ran and twirled, holding his children Alex and Jordan by their hands. Both of whom, it seemed, tried to hold him back, but he chafed at their reigns. This was a long way ahead of the purple haired angry teenager who told me, as she tried to push me down an escalator, that she'd managed to get rid of all her father's other girlfriends. I even thought I'd succeed in befriending Reno's first wife, but that screeched to a grinding halt when he told her we were actually getting MARRIED. After 16 years apart, she still believed they had unfinished business.

When I arrived in my divine black and white dress, to the beautiful strains of our beloved friends Robyn and Adrian playing Lakme's Flower Duet while Denese sang, our guests hooted and cheered, clapped and whistled. Reno looked divine in his Casa Adamo white suit; Alex in her black sequinned dress and the red fascinator she wore just to make me happy. The day was splendid, gorgeous, remarkable, great fun. We had a Buddhist ceremony under a Jewish chuppah with Sicilian dancing. We were bound by cords, and vows, and Denese sang Ave Maria as I'd always wanted. Rhondda and Clyde - my friends from my first lonely Sydney days - were our witnesses. Mel and Sophie came from Melbourne, Mel to walk me down the "aisle". Baby Noa was our "flower girl" dressed in a black tutu. Reno's little nieces were sunset coloured pompoms. Gail was our matron of dishonour, even right down to a very politically incorrect speech that I barely remember but everyone else does! Everyone left far, far too early ... right after they'd finished their tottering platters of food (leaving little for most of the guests) and gorged on the vintage tea so we didn't even have time to play the music we'd spent four months putting together.

So Reno and I were left alone, under a late evening sky, and a brilliant sparkling chandelier. He put on our special music, and we danced alone under the stars and lights, making our own magic. What a special way to end a magical day ... and start a marriage.