Special dates in 2012 (a day/date you won’t forget) -

•  02.02.2012    Deadline for notice to be given for this date will be 1st January 2012.   It’s a Thursday however (read below for the drum on what I will do if you have your ceremony during the working week – Monday to Friday)!!

• 14.02.2012     Valentine’s Day – a favourite with couples - deadline 13 January 2012.   Falls on a Tuesday.

• 10.11.2012     I like this progressive date, 10, 11, 12.   Now, let me see….. WOW, it falls on a Saturday.   Don’t rush me!!!

• 02.12.2012     The juxtaposition of all those twos and ones!   It falls on a Sunday. 

• 12.12.2012     Observe the four twos in this date – very auspicious, especially if a birthday falls on the 12th of the 12th.   It is a Wednesday.

• 20.12.2012     Wow!   How easy would that be to remember - 2012/2012!   It falls on a Thursday and no self-respecting spouse is likely to           ever       forget       it!

Other memorable days favoured by couples to be married -

• Birthday of the bride or groom or much loved family member

• Anniversary of the day you met each other

• Anniversary of the day the groom or bride proposed (well, OK, we have gone past role stereotyping or pigeon-holing haven’t we girls?)

• Easter ceremonies are also popular I guess because of the balmy weather here in Australia then, as well as Spring.   In 2012 Easter falls from Friday 6th April through to Easter Monday 9th April

• Qld school holidays, for those of you who are Qld based – I look forward to the day when all private schools, states and territories of Australia come into line with one another, don’t you?    Then again, it might be a bit overcrowded on transport and in accommodation….. 

• In the year 2012 most learning institutions in Qld break up on Friday 30th March and  resume again on Tuesday 10 April at the end of Easter. 

• Most Qld learning institutions will break again for the second time on Friday 22 June and resume on Monday 9th July.

• Third term breaks on Friday 21st September (well into Spring) and resumes on Monday 8th October.

• Fourth term breaks on Friday 14th December and takes us through Christmas festivities and the dawn of another New Year - 2013.

Did you know that 2012 will be our last opportunity to have the above examples of repetitive numbers in it?   Yep, that’s right, there is no 13th month in existence of course.   The pieces de resistance would have to be 02.12.2012, 12.12.2012 or 20.12.2012, don’t you think?   The first one a Sunday but 2nd and 3rd dates a Wednesday and Thursday respectively.   Tell you what, if you have had the stamina and fortitude to wade through all of this, then you deserve to be rewarded!  If you mention to me when you contact me for a booking that you actually read what was on my website (brave) and you book for any day during the working week (not weekends), I will give you $50 off my fee of $400.   That’s a promise I will honour throughout 2012.  

Unless some bright geek or nerd comes up with a new way of measuring time to facilitate the memorability factor, it’s pretty much business as usual.   Just think!   The last time we had anything resembling the above repetitive patterns was a millennium ago.   1000AD.   One thousand years!   And the next time it will occur in our measurement of time will be the third millennium – 3000AD.    Considering the earth has had 4.5 billion birthdays, and we, homo sapien earthlings, have been around for only 200,000 years (not always in our present so-called refinement) to use any sort of measuring process to define time is meaningless.  

Another mind-boggling piece of info came to my attention recently when I saw a repeat of Andrew Denton interviewing Alan Alda (yes, he of “Hawkeye Pierce” fame in the hit series MASH).   I would so much like to meet both of them really – both charming, funny, and v.intelligent.   Apparently Alan (may I call you Alan?) was talking to a scientist friend of his one day and they were puzzling and waxing pholosophically over how long we might have as a species.   Apparently the dinosaurs lived for 200m years,  and that is an average life of a species I understand.   Yep, we’ve still got a long way to gooooooooo in the species’ stakes!   But then of course the Mayans predicted an end to life as we know it in 2012, didn’t they?   I know what I would rather hang on to.   This earth of ours is sooooo beautiful except for the inequality, terrorism and so on that still abounds.   When are we ever going to get it right!

Time certainly is a fascinating concept isn’t it?   Resistance is futile.   I guess what it does is that it makes us realise how little time we have here on planet Earth and should strengthen our resolve to better look after it, including our other animal friends who also inhabit it.   Live every day as though it were your last.   Dance as though there is no-one watching (not even your mortified teenage offspring).   Laugh a lot.   I can assure you that it is 99.9% fat-free!!  It could even be said to qualify for light deskercise!    I do know that laughter is the main cause of happiness in our lives.   Who knows what lies ahead?   In the future will we still be upright, will we still look basically the same?  Will we be space tripping and marrying or whatever far off on some distant planet in our galaxy or indeed another universe?  Will we be living and planning ceremonies in the outer stratosphere or should I say stratosfear?   A bit scary isn’t it? 

I understand our brains have more neurons than the brightest star in the firmament.   But we haven’t worked out how to use them properly yet.   So much collective and potential intelligentsia but so little time to develop it in one lifetime.   And who said that our animal friends do not have souls!   Quite frankly, I want to go where they go!   Crikey, I’m getting in too deep over my head here!  

Now where was I?  …….   Oh yes, waxing chronologically and meteorologically!   On the subject of dates and leading to the weather.   No matter what day or time you choose, I will do everything within my power to make sure you have the best level of care and commitment.   However, I cannot stress enough the importance of having a Plan B in place for an undercover destination if Mother Nature should suddenly decide to throw a hissy fit and cry (copiously), or even worse, on your parade.  A weather boffin I know forecasts a gloomy picture for our immediate months ahead.   He said “you aint seen nuthin’ yet”.   Ouch!   That man could clip a hedge with his tongue!   However, I’d be inclined to sit up and take notice, compliments of the La Nina factor - that lady is not finished with us yet!   All this whacky weather I think should be taken as a timely reminder perhaps of more endemic serious weather considerations ahead if we don’t co-operate and do all we can to preserve our beautiful planet.

Come to think of it – there may just be an opening for some enterprising young designer person to produce a range of elegant galoshes and matching umbrellas for brides and their entourages.   Skyscraper heels may not be exactly de rigeur over the coming months and year for those of you about to say “I do, I do, I do”.  

November 2011:

Have  I  been leading you all on a merry dance about the weather!   After having a particularly long and beautiful Winter and early Spring, summer heat hit us with considerable vengeance this month.   No lingering sense of Spring……just caboom!   And the driest November we have experienced in 20 years so sayeth the pundits.   So much for my forecast that La Nina had not completely finished with us yet!  Go for your lives, girls.   Bring out the vertiginous heels – the ground is currently heavy going in the wedding ooops weeding department.   Ours looks like a Garden of Weedin’ at the moment and it’s damn hard work removing them.   Just don’t read too much into my weather forecasts!

January 2012:

Well, here we are in the embryonic stage of 2012 with school holidays about to finish and Australia Day looming large on our calendars.   We will be celebrating the birth of our nation and are planning to have a very Oz day putting on the Barbie and polishing it off with Lamingtons and Pavlova all the while wearing Corky hats to keep the flies away.   We are also having an Oz quiz – no not the ’odd squiz’ – for which the prizes will be typical Oz icons – no, the Big Pineapple will not be one of them, nor will the Big Banana, nothing big nor valuable.   Should be fun!