A Perfect Day

Today is our wedding anniversary. Twenty five years ago, in a small sandstone church in high summer heat, DH and I were married. It was a wonderful day - at least we thought so. However, if either of us had been the superstitious type we could have been forgiven for thinking that we were not meant to marry:

1. On the day we announced our engagement to my parents my mother collapsed and was bed-ridden for months. It was never found out what had caused her illness;

2. On our way to see the minister to plan our wedding we narrowly missed being hit by a car. A husband who had had a little too much to drink did not like the way his wife had parked the car and decided to show her how it was done. After hitting the car in front and the car behind, he then shot across the street and hit a tree just as we were driving past. The tree hit our car but did no damage. We stopped to help the injured driver and didn't get to see the minister that day;

3. A few days before our wedding I broke my engagement ring when my hand hit a glass door. If you look closely at my wedding photos you can see the ring bent over. I didn't get it fixed until we returned from our honeymoon;

4. A day or two before our wedding, a gas oven exploded in DH's face, singeing his hair but causing little other damage. DH has thick hair so it's not noticeable in most of our wedding photos that some was missing;

5. Finally, on the day of our wedding, our official photographer went to the wrong church. I was asked if I wanted to wait for him to turn up but I decided not to and the ceremony went ahead.

Thankfully, we've always been able to joke about such things!

On our honeymoon we went on a lake cruise. We promised each other that for our tenth wedding anniversary we would go for a cruise on Sydney Harbour. It never happened. On our tenth wedding anniversary I was 8 months pregnant with our fifth son, DH was working up country, there were bush fires raging all around, and I'm not even sure DH managed to get home for the day.

However, now we can say that we finally got our cruise. Earlier today we sailed on a paddle steamer. The sun was shining, the breeze was light, and it was a perfect day. Perhaps for our fiftieth we'll get that cruise on Sydney Harbour, but for today I'm satisfied.