The day of Wedding Part III dawned more obscenely bright and blue-skied than Wedding Part I and II put together. After bacon and eggs and Sunday papers we slowly got organised. Here's Gareth ironing his shirt. He was continually amazed by these marvellous things Australians have called LAUNDRIES. A whole separate room, just for the washing machine. In Britain this room would be sub-divided into three studio apartments.

Note indoor use of sunnies and hat.
Clearly not coping with Australian climate.

I only needed about ten minutes to get ready as it was the third wedding and I finally had the routine down pat. Hair, make-up, squishy undies. And I'd lost enough blubber since the previous wedding that I could now breathe in the frock unassisted and zip it up all by myself! Previously it took two strong men and a tub of margarine.

The day gets pretty blurry after that. We arrived at the cafe for the party and it was hot hot hot. I had totally forgotten the sensation of sun crawling over skin. It made me feel rather light-headed and nervy. My friends started to arrive and all I can remember is talking a lot of shit. I was so anxious that people would have a nice time, find the food and the punch bowl; be able to understand Gareth's accent and vice versa. I cannot recall a single thing I said all afternoon. I just remember floating around, kissing people hello, thinking how foxy my pals looked and how strange it was to see Gareth wearing sunglasses.

We conducted a mock wedding ceremony just to give things a sense of occasion. Kind of like those dramatic reconstructions on Australia's Most Wanted. Jenny was my bridesmaid, Belinda was Gareth's Best Girl and the amazing Mattay became The Good Reverend.

Jenny led the way down the "aisle" and spontaneously bellowed the Wedding March, "DUN DUN DUN-DUUUUN!". This caused me to cackle and forget all about my vow to Act Cool And Classy so I wouldn't look demented in the wedding photos. Bugger.

I had just recovered my dignity when Matt welcomed everyone to the Wedding and pulled out a priest collar from his pocket and plopped it over his head. I had no idea where he got that from; it was genius.

I'd knocked up a script the night before, it was all very fluffy and tame so as not to alarm the elderly guests. I may as well cut and paste:

WEDDING CEREMONY THINGO

Cast:
RM — Reverend Matt
MS — Mothership
S — Shauna
G — Gareth

RM:  We are gathered here today to celebrate the marriage of Shauna and Gareth. Marriage is a sacred institution, one that is not to be entered into lightly. Therefore, since today is Shauna and Gareth's fourth wedding this year, we can all be safe in the knowledge that they are pretty serious about it by now.

So, who takes this woman away from this man, and then gives her away again?

MS:  I do.

RM:  Thank you Shazza. Now if the bride and groom could join hands, we can begin the vows.

[S & G join hands]

RM:  [Turns to G] Gareth David, do you promise to keep on loving Shauna, in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer; even though she always leaves bits of food on the plates when she does the dishes?

G:  I do.

RM:  Excellent. [Turns to S] Shauna Lee, do you promise to keep on loving Gareth, in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer; even though you still can't always understand his Scottish accent?

S:  I do.

RM:  Do we have the wedding rings?

[J hands ring to S, B hands ring to G]

RM:  Gareth, please take your wife's hand and repeat after me. With this ring, I re-wed.

G:  With this ring, I re-wed. [G puts ring on S's finger]

RM:  Shauna, take that Scotsman by the hand and repeat after me. With this ring, I re-wed.

S:  With this ring, I re-wed. [And vice versa]

RM:  I now pronounce you, once again, husband and wife. You may kiss the bride!

CROWD GOES WILD. THE END.

And then there was mingling. Captured here is a moment of confusion with my Auntie remarking how she never knew I had a friend who was a man of the cloth, and me explaining how Reverend Matt was not a real Reverend.

(Photos by the famous JinkyArt. They specialise in photographing kids, but kindly agreed to snap our party. We're good at acting immature anyway. I implore you, if you don't have children you should go out and GET SOME, just so Barb can take photographs of them.)

So I hope everyone had a good time. I mostly remember The Mothership's laughter bouncing off the walls. She has a great bunch of mates and they're always up for a good time. I know I sent out the dorky Thank You cards long ago, but thanks everyone for coming along. And thanks to everyone far and wide who were so tops during the whole wedding process; I wish we could have invited youse all. Right now here in Scotland it's turned dark and chilly and everyone seems so far away. It's a year ago on Monday, see. I've gone all mushy and pathetic.

Let's get on to the most important bit... THE CAKE!

You may recall The Mothership's request for a thistle to plonk atop the cake alongside a sprig of wattle, so to represent Oz and Scotland. This sparked alarmed emails from readers who thought I'd try and smuggle a plant past Australia's notoriously strict customs officials. But I found a nice fake one. Unfortunately all the local wattle had died off so we used some other native fluff.

The cake did look a treat. This may be the only photo from the day in which I am not grinning or gurning like a moron, because I was hypnotised by this vision of chocolately goodness.

Phwoar.

Rhiannon came to stay this weekend and that was as good excuse as any to attempt another pavlova. You may remember the first one, a Delia Smith concoction that ended up looking vaguely obscene due to a poor arrangement of strawberries.

This time I did The Mothership' version. Her pavs were always perfect, but something went horribly wrong here. We followed her instructions to the letter but ended up with this squidgy chargrilled frisbee. The outside didn't crisp up at all. It looked and felt, as Rhi said, "a plastic dog turd from a joke shop."

I scraped it off the baking tray and Gareth briefly wore it round the house, toupee style.

Now Rhi's gone back in London. Sniff...

Here's a theory: The fancier you make your wedding invitations, the more you increase the expectation that the wedding will be of corresponding fanciness.

Like a few months ago a friend of Gareth's got hitched. The event was announced by a posh, creamy envelope swishing through the mail slot. The two of us gawked at the invitation in horror. The embossed lettering. The silk ribbon. The date spelled out in proper words. The lack of exclamation marks.

Finally, Gareth broke the silence. "How SHIT were our wedding invitations compared to this?"

"I knooooooooooow!" I howled.

We really did have rubbish wedding invitations.

Some background if you're new around here - Gareth and I eloped last March in the madness of Las Vegas. This was followed by parties in both Scotland (July) and Australia (October).

Neither of us have ever been comfortable with being the centre of attention at social gatherings. For example, I loathed birthday parties as a child. Why give your classmates insight into all that dysfunction? Why try and meet their lofty expectations vis-a-vis party games and party food when you will no doubt fail them before you can say Home Brand Lemonade?

I initially felt the same about our wedding festivities. At least if your kiddy party was a fizzer, you could pap off the blame to your parents. But now we were the grown-ups, and I was consumed by this imaginary pressure to provide a Good Time for All.

Luckily Mary, my Mother-in-law-ship, was on the case - she'd organised the venue, the food, the flowers and the ceilidh band. All we had to do was the invitations. I knew Gareth was my soul mate the moment he uttered my exact thoughts and fears: "We better not make them too fancy, we don't want to get people's expectations too high!"

I think I may have set them just a tiny bit too low by knocking up the invite in Microsoft Word in under ten minutes. We did jazz it up with a photo from Wedding Part I complete with Elvis impersonator, but the effect was lost once it had been churned through the photocopier. And for the final note of crapness, I mailed them off in poo-brown envelopes that I'd found up the back of the stationery cupboard at work, so ancient that I had to glue them shut.

Invitation before spellcheck.

Wedding Part II turned out to be a nice event. A good time was had by the guests in proportion to the expectations set by our lo-fi invitations. I never really stopped think how rubbish they actually looked until Wedding Part III. The Mothership was at the helm this time and called me up to ask, "What are we doing about invitations?"

"It's under control," I said breezily, "I'll just edit the date on the Scottish invite and email it to you. All you have to do is hit Print!"

"That doesn't sound very classy."

"People don't expect me to be classy!"

When we arrived in Australia the week before the Big Day (which is now actually a year ago. I'm right on the ball with these blog entries, hey?), I was calm and serene. I was not feeling in the least bit stressed about the connubials. After all, I was a veteran by then! I was more concerned with catching up with friends and getting my mitts on my first decent mango in two years.

But this all changed at Jenny's house. She was cooking us dinner when I saw the familiar picture on her fridge. Gareth, Elvis and me. But it was in colour. On fancy marbled paper. With elegant fonts.

"Oh no," I squawked. "Is that the wedding invitation?"

"Sure is! Your Mum did a great job eh?"

"She did do a great job! That's terrible!"

"Why?"

"It's far too fancy," I whined. "It's too nice. It sets false expectations! People will show up thinking it's going to be a really fancy wedding but it's just a wee party with me trying not to burst out of my dress and they're all going to be disappointed and HATE me!"

I should have known The Mothership wouldn't just stick the invitation through the photocopier. She always has to do things properly. Now I had to deal with all this pressure. I started thinking about my friends who were travelling from far flung corners of Australia for the party, and calculated that the greater the distance one had to drive to get to a wedding, the more one should expect to be shown a good time! I'd say this expectation increases by a factor of ten for every 100 kilometres travelled.

And the prettiness of the invitation made it look like a Proper Event. Before when it was just a crappy Word document, I didn't have to take it seriously. I didn't have to worry about Wedding Politics, and who I had or had not invited; who I had or had not offended. I didn't have to think about the Family Issues I'd been ignoring for years, with the paternal side feuding to the point of Jerry Springer-ness (actually I wish they would hit each other over the head with chairs; some mild concussion or amnesia would do everyone some good). The Word document meant no pressure and low expectations, so I'd be able to tell any offended parties, "Oh you didn't miss out on much! It was just a naff little party!". But now I was wracked with guilt and panic.

The Mothership reassured that my worries were unfounded. People weren't expecting a Broadway production - they were just happy to come along and catch up with everyone; to eat and drink and find out if my Scottish husband was real or imaginary. But for the days leading up to Wedding Part III I was a melodramatic mess. It had taken six months, but I was finally having my Bridezilla moment.

To be continued!

After all these years I finally figured something out yesterday. Why lever-arch folders have those big holes in the spine. It's so you can hook your finger inside and easily remove them from the shelf!

What ingenuity! And all this time I thought it was a wee porthole for the papers to peep out of.

Sadly, this has been the state of my brain this week. Almost as profound as the day I discovered the marvellous invention that is the staple remover.

Apologies for all the waffle and obituaries lately. I shall reboot brain and post properly on the weekend.

What a sad week! RIP Peter Brock.

All remaining Australian icons should just sit very still and not do anything. Don't go out. Don't touch anything!

If you're not Australian you might wonder, Peter Who? Well, Peter Brock was quite simply a motor-racing legend.

There's a race in the town where I was born called the Bathurst 1000, in which mighty V8 cars drive round and round a mountain-top circuit for one thousand kilometres. It's a strangely captivating event. I'd always get up to watch the start and vow not to waste six hours in front of the telly, but inevitably I'd be sucked in to the epic drama, all the speed and smoke and smashes.

Brocky won Bathurst an incredible nine times.

And he wasn't just ace behind the wheel. He was, as one of my aunts has repeatedly declared, "a complete spunk". When we first heard the news of his passing, Gareth asked, "Was Brocky a larrikin too?". He'd not heard of the word until this week when the media repeatedly used it in reference to Steve Irwin. Oh no, I explained. Brocky was a gentleman. As dashing and debonair as one could possibly be in a loud shirt smothered in sponsor logos.

I moved back to Bathurst for university and got to witness Brockymania close up. I loved those few days when you'd be woken by the low rumble of race cars up on the Mount. Bathurst is normally a quiet town but once a year its population swells, much like the way Edinburgh goes manic during the Festivals. Except with more beer guts and flannel shirts.

Everyone in Bathurst seemed to look on Brocky as an adopted son. One time my friends and I went down to a Meet The Drivers session to take pics for our photojournalism class. The queue for Brocky was three times longer than for any other driver. He charmed the pants off everyone from mulleted petrolheads to tiny kids to salivating housewives, all tan and sparkling brown eyes as he signed autographs.

Another year I was working in a coffee shop in a shopping centre, bored out of my tree watching customers screw up their faces as they choked down my cappuccinos (Note to coffee shop owners out there: Never hire someone to make coffee that doesn't like coffee. They have no respect for the beverage). There was a sudden clutter of teaspoons and excited whispers, Brocky! It's Brocky! There goes Brocky!

People poured out of the shops and trailed after him. Turns out a local radio station had set up outside the supermarket and were doing a live interview. I can't remember a bloody word he said; I just remember how the crowd gathered round in an adoring semi-circle, clutching their shopping bags or lapping at soft-serve cones, as Peter Perfect turned on the charm.

Momo, who is a legend in her own right, is quite possibly Brocky's greatest fan. She wrote a beautiful tribute today that left me misty-eyed. He really will be missed.

The first time I saw Steve Irwin was when he'd just rescued a wayward croc in an island village. To chill out afterwards he went for a surf. In his khaki shorts. And safari shirt. And his work boots. I couldn't tear my eyes from the telly as he crouched on his board, gurning his way over the waves.

My friends Matt and Monkey had a talking Steve Irwin doll, complete with miniature plastic snakes. You pulled a string and he sqwarked, "POISED! Ready to strike!". Not since Tracy and her two-story Barbie house and Sale of the Century boardgame had I been so jealous of a friend's toy collection.

Gareth and I made the pilgrimage to Australia Zoo last year. The sprawling park is staffed by hundreds of Steve-clones, all running round in their tiny shorts and booming accents, cradling koalas or feeding the crocs. I imagined their employee inductions, all lined up like a choir with Steve out front, "Now repoit after moi, DANGER DANGER DANGER!".

He made us laugh and he made us cringe, but above all I will remember him for his wild enthusiasm. Nobody has said it better than Ed:

"The world, in its own strange way, needed a guy like Steve Irwin, however vigorously self-promoted, if only to remind the human race that, no matter how picayune or crazed your interests, it's worth getting excited about. It's worth it to sometimes leap into the deep end. It's worth it because nobody else out there will."

FRIDAY LAST, 12:10 AM:  We were trudging home from the train station after seeing Demetri Martin at the Fringe. As is the usual fashion for a night out in this town, someone intoxicated clod had bought a box of hot chips then chucked them away after a few bites. These babies had been abandoned outside a hair salon.

As an experiment, I took a picture of said chips with my wee cameraphone with intention of following up on their fate in the morning.

FRIDAY LAST, 7:00 AM:  This time I was going to the train station. But definitely still trudging, since I was off to work.

Unsurprisingly, the chips were gone! If you peer closely you can see the outlines of their greasy corpses on the footpath.

So who scranned them all? The answer was in the chip box, which now lay in the middle of the road.

SEAGULLS! Check out those beak holes. Don't ever try to come between a bird and its fried potatoes.