new zealand memo - vol. 2 - weddingness

Possibly one of my favorite things about New Zealand is that you don't have to wear shoes to many places that you would have to in most other countries. Grocery stores, chill restaurants, it's even normal to see people tramping about on glass shard infested city streets without any sort of foot covering. So of course, when Keiran and Mayana went to get registered to marry, we all clambered into Keiran's big blue van, and he jumped in the driver's seat sans shoes. Why all 9 of us were needed to go fill out paperwork for 4 of us to marry (Hana and Jake also registered at this time) was unknown, but those of not filling out the forms to wed were eventually told to remove ourselves from our loitering spot in the lobby. Keiran's shoelessness, on the other hand, was not a problem at all.

Not that Mayana and Keiran were getting married that day; the day was Monday, and they had to wait at least three days before they could marry (some sort of "cooling off period"?). So the wedding was set for Friday morning, to be done at the legal minimum, right there in the Office of Internal Affairs.

Keiran, Sondre and I returned from our manly house building excursion on Thursday night, dusty, muddy, smelly, bloody in some places, and exhausted. Keiran and Mayana went home, but Sondre and I were dragged to a kiwi indie rock show. In retrospect, the show was totally worth going to, despite near delirium levels of exhaustion. We boozed hard and late on strong kiwi beers, watching "The Mint Chicks" play their super loud and fast brand of art rock. By the time we stumbled home, we had about four hours before we had to be up and ready for the wedding festivities. Who gets married at 9:30 in the morning, anyway?

There was a celebratory breakfast downtown before we formed a small procession to the Internal Affairs Office. The bridesmaids were all in impromptu costumes of short skirts and/or shorts, with knee high striped colorful socks. Keiran was barefoot in his best black shorts and a nice black button up shirt. Mayana had a long black dress accentuated by a bright orange netting veil. Sondre and I were the boring ones, dressed in nearly normal attire. We paraded in a line two-by-two through the morning downtown Auckland buzz, singing "Going to chapel, and we're gonna get married" at high volumes.

Luckily, the Internal Affairs Office was nearly empty at this hour, so the scene we caused there didn't upset too many innocent bystanders. We were all invited to "the chapel", which was basically a conference room in the corner of the office. A very nice woman came in to officiate the service. The vows went something like this: "I, Keiran Donnely, see no legal impediment to this marriage taking place...". I was getting a bit cynical about the dryness of the whole proceedings, until I saw the look in Keiran and Mayana's eyes, and realized that as silly and goofy as this spectacle was, it really was a representation of their love. And that's cool. If you are a goofy person, you absolutely should have a goofy (or at least unorthodox) wedding. What would have been truly ridiculous would have been for these two to get married in some kind of super planned, formal, traditional wedding in a large church, with a long white dress, mountains of flowers, long church service, etc. No, no, no, for this kind of love, only a 9:30 am, barefoot, striped stocking, conference room wedding would do.

After the verbal service was completed, there was the all-important and romantic signing of the documents, which we all watched with the same fascination as the service. There was even some audience participation on this one, as two witnesses were needed to sign the documents. After this was completed, our marriage officiate congratulated the couple, and left the room. Seeing as we were apparently free to use the room for some period of time longer, we did the only reasonable activity we could, and had an extensive photo shoot with all the fun props in the room.
After leaving the Internal Affairs office, we climbed back into the blue van, which had been haphazardly covered in "just married" regalia, and drove off into the sunset.