It’s been 8 weeks since my last online purchase. 8 cold, depressing weeks. I have one more afterpay payment and after that….nothing. I will owe no more money on the buy now pay later platform and there is nothing to fill the void my parceless mail box has created. What do people without shopping addictions do when they’re sad?

The ‘for real this time’ kill order on internet shopping comes after the shocking discovery that weddings are fucking expensive. I looked at a thing called wedding favours the other day. Super cute idea where you give your guests a little keep sake to take home after the wedding. Something to remind them of all the fun they just had thanks to you. Ideas include but are not limited to: stubby holders, delicious jams, a big arse cookie. Pretty much if its smallish in size you can pop your name or a cute message on it, give it to your nearest and dearest for sometimes as low as $5 and call it a favour. If you have 100 nearest and dearest though, you just spent $500 on biscuits. Biscuits you cant even eat because your allergic to Gluten and happiness.

I went in to this imagining a beautiful, chill, CHEAP paddock wedding. I have friends and family members who would surely give me the green light to borrow a spit of their land for an evening of revelry. That’s certainly cost effective. Those attending could bring their tents or swags and camp out. Yet another fantastic money saving idea. All we would need is some kind of weather protectant to protect us from the unpredictable Victorian weather and we’d be sweet!

Then I got the quote back. Not being dramatic or anything, but I literally died.

I have been planning this paddock wedding since before I got engaged. I have a secret pinterest board coincidentally created around the same time chef and I started dating. It’s heavily dedicated to a paddock wedding with a super cool white circus tent with 903 pins in it. Nine hundred and three! Do you know how much time went into selecting each individual picture of other couples weddings, and pinning them in this carefully curated virtual board for later pondering? Am I supposed to just give all that up because I’m poor with expensive taste? The notion is simply absurd!

After discovering a tent was going to cost around 80% of our wedding budget, it was back to the drawing/pinterest board. A devastating blow to be sure but with the right amount of consoling, pats and treats from my ever loving I would survive this.

After wiping my tears I decided it was time to do some serious googling. I donned my keyboard warrior attire consisting of sweatpants, band tee and those obnoxiously fluffy bed socks and I locked myself away in my office dungeon where I spiralled into bridezilla madness. I have honestly never looked hotter. Nor have I ever sent off so many enquiries. I was sending them to everyone. There was no plan anymore! No method to the madness. Just pure madness. The only rule to this new past time of mine was If they can’t be emailed, they won’t be contacted. Because I absolutely was not calling anyone. What If they actually answered and I couldn’t just leave a voicemail? I’d have to talk on the phone to someone who wasn’t my mum! Ew. No. Got the sweats just thinking about it.

It had gotten to the point where I’d spent so much time staring at my screen I was starting to lose focus. I even posted an ad for a celebrant. Not on purpose, I thought I was using some new fancy search engine. I entered in the dates I was requiring the services of a celebrant, the location of my wedding. If the wedding had a theme, what I was looking for in a celebrant, my contact details, a brief back story of my relationship….And now I see it. But at the time I genuinely thought this elaborate search criteria form was going to narrow down the field and procure a list of suitable candidates for me to email ‘Hey, what’s your digits?’. Imagine my surprise when it retrieved no candidates at all! The ad was up for 3 weeks before I realised what I’d done. Several celebrants responded to the ad via my spam email account. So that’s several celebrant’s I can no longer consider. My over thinking anxious brain would never allow me to reach out now. It’s been nearly month, they probably think I’m ignoring them. That I’m a stuck bitch and they hate me. So I guess this was in fact still an effective method of narrowing down that field.

I’d gotten myself a little off mission, but eventually I managed to re-focus my attention to what I deemed to be priority number 1 of wedding planning. A venue. Can’t have a wedding with a physical location to actually hold said wedding. I quickly learned that cute furry things strongly influence my decision making skills. We found a beautiful property in my home town complete with accommodation for guests and a large shed to hold the festivities. It was essentially a blank canvas for us to decorate how we pleased and oh my did the pinterest mems come flooding back. I briefly considered a career in event management whilst mentally filling the space with all my favourite things. But this wasn’t what sold me. This place has animals. Sheep, goats, cows, chickens AND…….FUCKING LLAMAS!! And you got to cuddle, pat and feed them! I was sold. This was it! I never realised just how important having cute furry friends involved on our big day was to me until it was shown to me. A common reaction of mine I’ve discovered. I see it, I want it, I’ll die if I don’t have it. Apparently I am an adult toddler.

Sadly Noah’s arc on land was not to be our location,. After a very mature conversation with my fiancé and absolutely no tantrums thrown on my end, we decided whilst very beautiful this particular paradise was out of our budget. It’s ok though, less than a month later we found our perfect place. We’d actually been here a numbers of times with friends and family, enjoyed delicious food and fabulous drinkie poos. I’m honestly not sure why we didn’t think of this stunning place sooner. It’s 100% our vibe.

It’s like walking in to your friends mums house. You don’t knock because you and Barb are tight. Treats are already made available on the kitchen bench/bar. Any moment now you’ll be asked if you’re hungry and would you like a sandwich? The decor is the perfect amount of slightly dated, bright and beautiful to make you feel completely relaxed and at home. I absolutely adore this quirky colourful venue. To add to the appeal, it’s priced well within our budget and the staff absolutely nailed the art of pretending they were totally cool with the ridiculous dietary requirements for myself and my kin. The Aston blood loves a good weird inconvenient intolerance to make any chef instantly hate you. So the smile whilst repeating the line for the seventh time “sure, whatever you need” was much appreciated. Spit shake and a non-refundable deposit, and that was that. Venue is booked! Prepare yourselves for the rants, gloats and sobs because we are well on our way to actually having a wedding.

This is the way.