I am absolutely speechless and was for most of yesterday. This is a rare thing and I’m not used to feeling this way!
The party to basically end all parties happened right here in our backyard. It was a mix of meet Bill, catch up with Jenelle and celebrate our engagement and it was very big because we are having the actual wedding in New York. It has been crazy – flying in 24 hours before, getting things ready, making sausage rolls at 7am in the morning. But seeing over 150 family, friends, colleagues, old acquaintances was an absolutely amazing experience. We don’t have any photos to share yet – we didn’t have the opportunity to take any photos ourselves and thankfully my gorgeous friend Adam bought his camera and took many! We also had Tony Marin drop in later into to take some photos as well.
My throat is raspy, croaky and dry from talking so much. At about 9pm I realized I hadn’t even had a drink of water or something to eat the WHOLE TIME – I didn’t have the chance! I wanted to take in every single minute! I am so amazed that so many people took time out of their Sunday afternoon to spend time catching up and celebrating with us all!
Bill was amazing, meeting all these strangers and getting questioned left, right and centre and doing this all on a few hours sleep. I think I am in a bit of shock that we managed to get everyone here and that mum, dad and Matthew did such and amazing job at making it all happen. We had a band, a WHOLE pig, four legs of lamb, cases and cases and cases of beer, dozens of balloons that looked so beautiful, a now empty spirits cupboard, way too many empty wine bottles, we filled a very long street with cars, cooked 100 dim sims, 200 satays, 48 pasties, over 200 sausage rolls, 24 mini trifles, cakes, cupcakes a multitude of finger food platters, we danced to classics, we danced to Arabic music, we had fairy lights, we talked, laughed and cried. It was beautiful!
And now our holiday begins!
Today we have been cleaning up and decompressing everything. The party hire guys came to take the marquee, we’ve swept up cigarette butts and taken away loads and loads of garbage bags and recycling. Tomorrow we are going to the Old Melbourne Gaol, dropping into Parliament, checking out Question Time, I have to go to the dentist and Bill is going to down some real good Melbourne Coffee. We have an awesome lot of stuff planned over the next couple of weeks and I can’t wait to share it all with you. Bill did some stellar reporting during is late night jetlag sojourn while he couldn’t sleep and you can read it all here.