I know I don't post a lot of personal life stuff, but it's been a big weekend.

To be more accurate, it's been a massive weekend, a huge prior week, and a big few months leading up to it.

But all the stress and organising and backup plans and workarounds lead to an amazing ceremony (and a killer reception/after-party) where I married the love of my life, [Nikki](http://nyx.id.au/).

![Az and Nikki smiling, being married by Jenny from Encompass Ceremonies.](/img/2021-11-16-my-wedding.jpg)

Nikki and I got married at [Queen's Gardens](https://perth.wa.gov.au/en/forms-and-payments/Hire-and-Bookings/parks-and-gardens-hire/venues/queens-gardens), a lovely public park near where we live. We were wed by Jenny of [Encompass Ceremonies](https://www.encompassceremoniesbyjenny.com.au/), a wonderful celebrant and one of Nikki's old colleagues. It was in front of our family, some close friends, and a variety of onlooking birds including swans (and cygnets), ducks (and ducklings), and even a curious white ibis/bin chicken.

It's been a long time coming; we got engaged on the 12<sup>th</sup> of April 2019 and had set the original date for our wedding to be in November of 2020. Of course, a lot of things changed in the leadup, including the [global COVID-19 pandemic](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-04/charting-100-days-of-the-coronavirus-crisis-in-australia/12197884?nw=0&r=HtmlFragment). Our original plan involved a ceremony on Saturday afternoon at Queen's Gardens, followed by a reception and after-party that evening at the [Sewing Room](https://web.archive.org/web/20220302153204/https://sewingroom.com.au/). But with the borders closed and our entire bridal party unable to attend we decided to postpone it by a year.

We ended up changing the schedule as well, putting the ceremony on a Friday and having the reception and after-party on Saturday. This meant people who couldn't make one event had the opportunity to come to the other and celebrate with us a bit. The after-party was to be a night of hard rave music by some of Perth's sickest DJs (also our good mates). The general idea was that each subsequent section could have greater attendance, slowly expanding the scope from family to friends to even random mad lads we'd met on nights out.

Of course, the pandemic isn't over and various political issues (vaccine rollouts, quarantine issues, etc) have led to more lockdowns and our bridal party being once again stuck over East. This time we decided to go ahead still, and get married with just the two of us standing up there. This meant we got ready together, we arrived together, and we got married together because to us marriage isn't the start of working together - it's a commitment to continuing what we've always been doing. We're sad that our loved ones couldn't make it, but we'll make it up to them when restrictions are eased and we can finally see their lovely faces again. On the plus side, we were able to stream the event thanks to the wonderful folks at [Pachamama Gatherings](https://www.facebook.com/PachamamaGatheringsAus/) and should hopefully have the video up soon.

Missing bridal party aside, it all worked really well. I have a bunch of crazy stressful stories about last minute changes and issues but the truth was: I married the person I love and we both had a wonderful weekend celebrating with people we care about.

PS: We decided to grab dinner after the ceremony at the place we first met, [Newroz Kebabs](https://www.facebook.com/newrozkebabsEastPerth/) in East Perth.

![Az and Nikki getting ready to order their wedding night dinner at Newroz Kebabs.](/img/2021-11-16-my-wedding-dinner.jpg)