Wedding Prep

Julia: Hi, my name's Julia and I am talking to Nathan about his wedding experience. Nathan, tell me how was your wedding day.

Nathan: My wedding day was, I guess, mixed. I think the build up to my wedding was quite funny. I didn't feel in control of my wedding so we went to several different, I don't know what to call them, wedding shops or wedding planning companies and they asked us how much money we could spend first and the first thing that comes out is how much money do you think you're going to spend on your wedding and I felt that was kind of like a real personal, a kind of an embarrassing question as well because...

Julia: You're British.

Nathan: We didn't really have much money. Well, yeah, cos I'm British maybe.

Julia: Can I ask you how much did you spend on your wedding?

Nathan: Oooh, it was I guess about, in pounds it would have come out at a guess about fifteen thousand pounds.

Julia: I've heard that's the average, I think, for a wedding. I don't know but...

Nathan: So I wasn't doing my wedding in England, I was doing it overseas and there was a few things I had to get to used to. And one of those things was the wedding company that we chose offered us some, some different priests to do the ceremony for us but they're not real priests.

Julia: Like a priests menu?

Nathan: Yeah, it's like a priests menu and you've got these like different guys who are playing the role of the priest for the wedding so I happened to know all of the guys in this menu and they said to me, they said to me ah so this guy's really, really popular. Barry priest is like the most popular priest, we really recommend him and I was looking at the picture thinking I know Barry priest and last night I went drinking with Barry priest and he, he didn't look like a very good priest last night.

Julia: You got married by your drinking buddy.

Nathan: But we didn't in the end. We avoided that but, yeah, all these different choices on a menu, I felt like a McDonald's menu rather than like, it was like do you want a large priest or a small priest or like do you want extra large candles or like small candles in your wedding ceremony lunch and different things so it was kind of, yeah, it was kind of McDonaldized kind of wedding where you had to choose this option or this option and it didn't feel very personal to me at the beginning.

Julia: Was it romantic, do you think it was romantic in the end?

Nathan: Is a wedding supposed to be romantic or is it supposed to be a party?

Julia: I'm a woman and I think it's supposed to be romantic.

Nathan: Yeah, maybe I let my wife down a bit.

Julia: Ceremonial, maybe ceremonial, was it ceremonial?

Nathan: Very, very.

Julia: What did you wear? Did you wear some special clothes?

Nathan: Like a morning suit, you know like in England you have a grey morning suit, top and tails, but we, mine was black and I felt like I was...

Julia: That sounds cool.

Nathan: And I felt like I was like kind of Reeves in the Matrix going in with this like black suit and long black tails and...

Julia: Did you wear shades?

Nathan: If I could have got away with it, I would have.

Julia: What was your wife wearing? Was she in black as well?

Nathan: She did two different dresses.

Julia: Oh, nice.

Nathan: And so she had this white wedding dress for the fake church ceremony and then afterwards during the lunch she got changed into a dress and it was made from, it was made from an old Japanese kimono.

Julia: Like silk?

Nathan: So it was all made of silk and it was bright pink with peacocks and flowers and things.

Julia: Sounds gorgeous.

Nathan: And she'd taken it to a shop and they'd converted it for her.

Julia: Sounds beautiful. Does she still have that then? Did she keep that?

Nathan: Yep.

Julia: Does she still wear it?

Nathan: Does she still wear it? If she had an occasion, there's never going to be an occasion where you can wear that dress but it's a pretty amazing dress to look at.

Julia: So I guess it's about the memory though, it's certainly, it's certainly a memorable occasion.

Nathan: Yeah, well, we've got videos, we've got albums, we've got all sorts of stuff.

Julia: Was it stressful? Was it a stressful experience?