Our Wedding

Peter and I were married on 30 November 1999 - a new marriage to start a new millenia . . .

Peter and I at the Turtle Pond at the resort in Fiji - where were we NOT married!

We flew into Fiji, ready to get married . . . but there were a few hiccups along the way.

Peter - always the backpacker - decided to bring some food with him. Never mind we were staying at a 3 star resort with a restaurant; he thought it'd be handy if we could prepare our own room. In addition to the coffee and Vegemite he always traveled with, he also threw in a canned ham and a few cans of baked beans. The ham was immediately confiscated at the airport. I just laughed.

We'd arranged to stay at a resort about an hour away from Suva by bus. We took a taxi there from the airport and checked into a lovely ground-floor room with a beautiful garden view. It was by far the nicest hotel either one of us had ever stayed in. When we checked in, we mentioned that we were there to get married, and that we'd like to meet with their wedding planner. Later on that day, the resort sent a fruit basket up to our room.

We'd read quite a bit about Fiji in preparation for the trip. One of the things we read that turned out to be not entirely true was that it was safe to drink the water at the resorts. We found out the hard way that this wasn't true - we both ended up with fairly severe cases of dysentery after just one day. After that we switched to bottled water, but it still took a while before things were back to normal.

We met with the wedding planner to discuss what we wanted - a simple beach wedding at sunset. However, the next day we were told that her son had broken his arm and so she wouldn't be available to help us plan the wedding. We decided to make the arrangements ourselves for a wedding at the local register's office.

That meant filing the paperwork ourselves. Thankfully we'd read through the process, and understood what had to be done. That also meant a few trips into Suva to get it all taken care of. While we were in Suva, we discovered that the movies only cost about $1 per ticket. Choc-tops were also only $1. So we fell into a very comfortable routine of going to one or two movies a day. After all, going to the movies was already one of our favourite things to do; and the cinema was air conditioned, while Fiji itself was hot and humid - Peter's least-favourite type of weather.

Because there was a delay between the time we had to apply for the license, and the time we could get married, it wasn't until Tuesday, 30 November - about 5 days after we arrived - that we could actually get married. That morning, while he was reading the paper, Peter said to me, "If we hurry up with this whole wedding thing, we can make the 3:00 showing of The Bone Collector."

I thought that was a horrible idea. " We are not going to the movies on our wedding day," I said. This remains one of my biggest regrets - how cool would it have been to waltz into the cinema in my wedding dress and watch a movie?

Peter also proposed to me that morning, just as we were leaving to get married. I said, "Nope, I don't accept your proposal!" Then I grabbed the box with my wedding ensemble and we left in a taxi (not the customary bus we had been taking - we thought the day deserved a taxi) to go to the register's office.

I wore casual clothes to the register's office, planning to change once we got there. But once we got there, the entire atmosphere had me second-guessing the plan. It was too . . . Administrative. I started to cry silently, and then not so silently. Peter asked, "What's wrong?"

I said, "I don't want to get married this way."

Peter said, "But I want to marry you today!"

It is the single most romantic thing he ever said to me. He said it so plainly, so plainitively - and I recognised in that moment that he really did want to marry me. That he wasn't just doing it for me. That he was looking forward to this commitment.

He went over to a nearby desk to speak with the woman there. He was gone for about 15 minutes. When he came back, he announced that her uncle was a minister, and that she'd called him and he'd agreed to marry us at his church. So we caught a taxi to the Church of All Nations.

The Church of All Nations was located in a building which had once been a cinema. I thought this was terribly fitting, since one of our first dates was to a cinema which had once been a church! The church was in the process of remodeling the cinema to fit its needs, but it still looked very much like a cinema.

Once inside the church, we met with the church secretary, who was absolutely thrilled to host a wedding. She asked for our names. She liked Peter's name immediately; but when I told her my name was Quimby, she made a face and said, "That's such an ugly name! You look like Princess Diana. I will call you Diana instead."

I really didn't look anything like Princess Diana, other than having short hair. Peter wasn't particularly fond of Princess Diana either. But we let it go.

She showed me into the projecting room to change into my wedding dress. I touched up my hair and make-up. When I came out she handed me a bouquet of red fabric roses. She'd found them and dusted them off for me, because, she said, every bride needs a bouquet.

We waited a while for the minister to come. It was his day off; he was coming in special, just to marry us. He arrived, and showed us into his office, and asked two staff members to act as witnesses, to meet the legal requirements for a marriage. Because we hadn't met with him beforehand, we hadn't been able to give any input into the vows - and because he was doing us a pretty big favor in marrying us with no notice, we didn't think it was appropriate to ask that certain parts of the vows be left out. And so on that day, I promised to "love, honor and obey" Peter.

Later, I told him, "I had my fingers crossed for the "obey" bit. He replied, "That's okay, I had my fingers crossed for all of it."

Remember how I mentioned our little dysentery problem? It came up during the ceremony. Peter was turning greener and greener - I could tell he felt sick. As soon as the ceremony ended he excused himself. The poor man managed to hold it together just long enough to marry me. But he was so sick, he almost had to excuse himself to be sick during our vows.

The minister who married us - Epeli Ratabacca - was Fijian. So was everyone else at the church. Like most Fijian men, he wore a lavalava. Later I joked that if my grandpa knew we were married by a black man in a skirt, he would've rolled over in his grave!

The ceremony over, we asked the church how much they wanted for their services. They told us that they never charged for weddings, but we gave them $50. They seemed grateful. Then after changing my clothes, we went back to the register's office to file the necessary paperwork and pick up copies of our marriage certificate. They only cost $1 each, so we bought a few extras. Then we found a phone booth, so that Peter could tell his parents. "We just got married," I heard him say, and I heard his father reply, "Oh, good-o!"

After that we found an internet cafe to break the news to our friends and my family. Peter found an email there from his friend Itai with the subject heading, "Jokes." He replied, "Speaking of jokes, Quimby and I just got married." For several weeks after we got back, Itai wasn't sure if Peter had been telling a joke or if he was serious and we really were married. The fact that our Fijian wedding license looked, well, not terribly authentic, didn't help matters any!

Once we'd informed everyone, we took a taxi back to the resort, where we told them the news. They sent another gift basket of fruit up to the room. That night we treated ourselves to a nice meal in their restaurant, followed by pineapple fritters for dessert.

The following day we got dressed up in our wedding clothes and asked a staff member to take photos of us. Those, along with some photos that were taken by a staff member of the church during our wedding ceremony, are our wedding photos.

We also wrote out postcards and sent them out as our wedding announcement. Of course by the time they arrived, everyone already knew we were married; but at least they got a postcard from Fiji informing them of the news.

After our wedding, we stayed at the resort for a few more days. While we were there, we continued going into Suva every day to watch movies - we finally saw The Bone Collector on December 1. But after a few days, we decided to move on to Lautoka, to see another part of the island.

We stayed in decidedly less glamourous accommodation in Lautoka. What I remember most is the swimming pool - or, more accurately, the three guys who decided to go swimming in the pool, while I was in there, wearing tighty-whiteys instead of bathing trunks. Wet white underwear leaves nothing to the imagination. I left soon after they jumped in.

From Lautoka we decided to take a day trip to Treasure Island. The trip was all-inclusive of drinks, lunch, and any of the activities we wanted to try. We took a Hobie catamaran out for a spin. That was fun. Peter really enjoyed learning how to steer the boat by the wind. I remember we spent a lot of the day speaking with an English backpacker. She was very nice, but she felt a bit sheepish when she learned we'd just gotten married, and apologised for intruding on our honeymoon! We didn't feel that way at all; we enjoyed her company.

I'll never forget our plane ride back to Melbourne. Just before take-off two women got in who were bright red. They'd gone snorkeling the day before and had gotten terribly sunburnt; they were miserable the entire trip back. We were also seated across the aisle from a couple who had been at the resort with us. They were delighted to discover they were seated next to the couple who had just gotten married!

When we got back to St Kilda, we walked in to the apartment to find a wedding cake, a bottle of sparkling cider, and two champagne flutes from my friend Emma. It was such a lovely and unexpected surprise.

Our marriage was simple and inexpensive. I think all-up, including airfares, accommodation, and the honeymoon (an extra week in Fiji) it cost about $4,000. But for us it was perfect. We got to incorporate our favourite things - each other; movies; travel to a country neither one of us had been in before. Spending money on a big party was never really "us," and we knew that no matter where we had the wedding, either his family or mine wouldn't be able to attend. We felt the important thing was to be married, not the marriage itself. I have never regretted eloping, and I whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone who is planning a wedding.