Wedding day in Paris!

Wedding in Paris!
Part One: Getting ready

Karma & I woke up around 7am and lay in bed for 40 minutes watching a black French man and an Italian looking French man do some very light cardio on a workout channel. They were completely out of time with each other, wearing very odd clothes and definitely not burning more than one or two calories. Strangely it was quite mesmerizing.

We got up and had showers which were quite odd, two showers and two toilets for the whole floor, separate from the bedrooms and every time someone had a shower it flooded the whole floor of the bathroom making it quite dangerous on crutches. I’m getting used to using one crutch for small distances so my balance was better for the wet slippery floor.
We chucked on some comfy clothes and head out for breakfast. We were greeted by the owner of the hotel who spoke very minimal English, we tried to ask him if there was a florist nearby but when we said: ‘flower’ his response was: ‘croissant?’ Yes, a bouquet of croissants! Delicious.
We eventually managed to communicate to him that we needed to get some red roses for a bouquet and he said that he would sort them out for us and deliver them to our room by 10am! Perfect.
We continued on our way to find a cafe, everything in the area seemed almost scary so we skipped a few cafes until we found a less scary bar. I swear the French are alcoholics, cafes seem to open later in the morning than bars, and happy hours seem to go for around 5 - 6 hours! Happy day more like it. We walked into the bar and ordered a ‘cafe noir’ a black coffee, so we thought, but they could not understand us. 10 minutes later we managed to use hand signals to show what we wanted.
We sat and drank our coffee on the streets of Paris, I’m still yet to have a good coffee here.
We grabbed some bread rolls, butter, orange juice and champagne from the super market on the way home and sat in bed scooping butter onto the bread using the roll. The manager of the hotel came back up to our room to give us a basket of croissants and let us know our one red rose was here, unfortunately we wanted 7. He said: ‘Oh la la’ and ran away. At this point we had no idea what was happening and what was being ordered.
My Granny woke up just in time to help us sort out what was going on, she spoke fluent French and we managed to order 7 red roses to our bedroom door.
There was 8 of us staying in the same hotel, myself, karma, Granny, my auntie and uncle Sophie and Dan with their two kids Isaac & Eve, also my cousin Gemma. The manager kindly ordered us an 8 people taxi for 11.15am to take us to the Eiffel Tower. It was amazing how much this man was helping us!

Gemma had already done her make up so she sat and turned the 6 perfectly wrapped red roses into a beautiful bouquet! My Granny gave us some of her napkins and a French hankie to use for decoration but none of them wrapped around.
Karma & I spent the next hour doing our hair and make up, getting ready and trying to write my vows! All which we done in perfect timing for the taxi. Nothing was running smoothly at all, but it was still fun.

The ride there was fun, he took us on a mini tour of Paris, we went past the Louvre, down the most famous street in the world and drove around the Arc du Triumph.
Although I did forget the money for the celebrant and for the taxi, then I dribbled orange juice down my face. I’m all class. So I had to scrounge the money together and promise to pay everyone (Thanks Karma & Granny!!) back when we got home.

We got dropped off on the river side of the Eiffel Tower and had to make our way through hundreds, almost thousands of people. Me in a beautiful wedding dress, hair & make up done in Paris, on crutches. Several people stopped me and started taking photos of me. It was a very odd experience.
We met up with Nathan, Dafydd & Nathan’s sister Courtney, who had travelled from another country that morning just to be there for the day. Which meant so much to Nathan & I. This made having to plan a two part wedding worth it, seeing how happy Nathan was to have his sister there.
The next step was finding the celebrant we had never met before only seen photos and talked to via email. Karma managed to call her and impersonated me because I was to nervous to talk to anyone, she was waiting at the East pillar of the Eiffel tower, the boys ran ahead and met her.
We decided to do the ceremony off to the left hand side of the Eiffel tower near a beautiful flower bed on the grass. It was a bit away from all the crowds so it was a more intimate wedding. It was a perfect spot, there were people sitting on park benches watching us, children running around laughing and my auntie had contacted my mum, dad, sister & my puppy dog Scarlet on Skype so they got to watch the entire ceremony! Half way through I heard mum shout out ‘Where’s her crutches?!’ (I was standing on one leg trying to balance)
I was so self conscious being on crutches and so nervous, but the celebrant made us feel very comfortable, the world around faded away and it was just us.

Wedding in Paris!
Part Two: The Ceremony & Lunch

To get legally married in Paris, you have to have lived there for at least 40 days before the ceremony and fill out a load of paper work and documents to make it possible. The celebrant suggested that we legally get married in Australia beforehand to make it easier. Which was upsetting as it wouldn’t feel real in Paris, but in the end it was absolutely perfect. I always wanted two weddings so that both my family in England and mine and Nathan’s family in Australia were given a chance to come.
So we legally got married by a celebrant called Sunny at Naomi Honey Reserve on Shelly beach in Australia, which was beautiful. Followed by a BBQ at my parents house after. Mine and Nathan’s parents came along with our siblings and Nathan's Nan, which meant the world to us. It was small, intimate and beautiful.
I wore a summery white dress and we did the legal vows only, with a quick and straight forward ceremony, in Paris I wore my wedding dress, we read our own vows and the ceremony was incredibly personal and detailed.

I had been in contact with the celebrant, Aude Abudie, for around 6 months before the marriage, she had sent us questionnaires to fill out asking what we liked about each other, who our guests were, how we met etc. She used all of our answers to make a personal speech that had me welling up from the start. It was absolutely beautiful and very personal which made it very special.

The ceremony went for about 20 minutes, when it came to reading our vows Nathan made his up on the spot, stopping every so often he looked like he was struggling, I only found out later he was incredibly hung over, I couldn’t tell if he was about to cry or about to throw up. Either way, he did well, his vows were very sweet and from the heart.
I had prepared my vows a few hours before the ceremony:

‘On this day I vow to give you my heart and always call it home.
Together we have made it through so much and I will stand by your side until I take my last breath.
I will help you love life, together we will explore the world and all it’s beauty.
Not a day goes by that you don’t make me smile.
Words can’t describe how happy you make me.
Ill love you forever.’

We said our: ‘I do’s’ and husband kissed the bride.

It was only after I had kissed Nathan that I found out he had spewed several times on the way to the Eiffel Tower. The taxi had to pull over for him. His sister Courtney, who was taking photos for us (Which looked absolutely amazing on the camera) got some lovely photos of the spew which had also splattered up his pants.
We got some lovely group photos in front of the Eiffel Tower before heading off for lunch.
I was told to pick up my tickets for lunch 15 minutes before the sitting, but typical me, I had forgotten my ID and to print out the booking confirmation and didn’t know where to get the tickets from, the line to get up the Eiffel tower was around a kilometer long. My auntie Sophie and Granny to the rescue, they both spoke fluent French so Sophie called the restaurant to see where we had to go, something I wouldn’t have thought about doing. By this point I was so frustrated with myself for not planning it better, but it wouldn’t have been fun if it ran smoothly, it was an adventure.
We found the ticket booth and luckily had no problem getting our tickets for the lift up to the restaurant which was on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower.

We finally got up to the restaurant 50 minutes after our session was booked in for. We waited for a while for anyone to take our order for food or drinks, which was frustrating. Nathan and I sat at the end of the table by the window looking down, I’m not the best with heights so I was feeling a bit dizzy, but the view was definitely worth it. Karma on the other hand was about to have a breakdown! She was not coping with being so high up, she felt dizzy and like the Eiffel Tower was moving. Just after our order was taken, this strange lady came over, spoke very little English and started taking photos of us. She kept pointing at people and showing them what pose to do, it was very awkward. She didn’t explain why she was taking the photos either and then she just disapeared. Our food came out with our drinks all at the same time, entree, main and desert, there was very little room for any sort of movement and the food wasn’t very well presented. I got macaroni for my mail meal and it was basically a bowl of pasta with 8 small pieces of pork and some peas, luckily Nathan & I always get two meals we both like and go half-half when we go out. So I also got to try the chicken and mash potato which was heavenly!
The desert was also delicious, chocolate mouse, one of my favorites. Unfortunately, Daffyd’s salted caramel custards had curdled and Karma’s cheese platter was four cheese sticks in a bowl.
Bit disappointing but it was Still a great experience.
After food, the photography lady came back and showed us all the photos she had taken, they had come out looking great. Sophie & Dan brought the photos so we could all have a copy which was lovely, it also came with one complimentary photo.

A few of us decided to head to the top of the Eiffel tower after this, Karma at this point was terrified but it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity so she soldiered on and decided she’d give it a go.
We did a lap of the entire first floor trying to find the lift up, until we found a section that was barred off but it led to the lift we needed to get to, so we tried to sneak past but there was a ninja security guard who jumped out and stopped us. She explained we needed to buy tickets to go up, our meal ticket only took us to the first floor. They were only going to be 4 euros each so wasn’t to bad. She disappeared and quickly came back and explained in French to Granny that the ticket office was closed so she’d let us on for free, she probably felt sorry for the freezing cripple in a wedding dress.
We got to the second floor and had to get off the elevator onto a second one to take us to the top, only to be told it was closed for an hour. She wouldn’t let me on anyway incase of emergency I couldn’t get down the stairs. Which was strange because there was no stairs from the top to the middle floor and I was already half way up. Karma was incredibly nervous at this point and I was feeling quiet giddy so we were more than happy to go back to ground, to safety.
Looking up from the bottom the second flood didn’t even look like it was half way up the tower. I don’t know if I could have moved off the elevator that high up.

We were all feeling quiet exhausted by this point, especially Nathan & Daffyd who’s hangovers were catching up to them, so we decided to head back to the hotel. 6 of us decided to catch a taxi and the rest went by metro because it was cheaper.
We were standing on the side of the road trying to hail a taxi, several bike taxis which could fit maximum 3 people insisted they take us, wasn’t happening. We stood there for a good 20 minutes, cursing at taxi’s for not pulling over. Granny went down and asked the riot police where we could get a taxi from, we found out we were standing at the drop off zone and the pick up zone was 50 meters down the road. At this point we saw another bride drive by in a beautiful white car with ribbons and flowers, whist I stood on the side of the road on crutches trying to hail a taxi with my pukey pants husband, I felt so classy...
Walking down to the pick up zone we saw a heard of men jump over a fence and run across the road like scattered monkeys, they were running away from the police with their cheap products under their arms because they were harassing the public. It was quiet funny to see.
We eventually found a 6 seater taxi, Coutney jumped in the back, me in the front seat and the others in the middle. We were all so tired we were almost delirious, laughter echoed through the taxi causing the taxi man who spoke very little English to hold back from laughing at us.

We all stumbled up the stairs of the hotel and threw our clothes off as soon as we got in the room wanting to get out of the suits and dresses and into some comfy clothes.
Nathan however, passed out and curled up in a ball at the end of the bed. I wanted to go for dinner with the family but when Nathan woke up he wanted to go home and change, which was fair enough. I wasn’t game enough to catch a taxi home on my own at that time of night, I'm sure I would of been fine, but I didn’t want to take any chances as my luck lately has been awful.

We said our goodbyes to Courtney as she headed off back to her own traveling adventure and both passed out in bed.