ALT-2 Personal Experiences of Eloping
Stepping onto the plane which would take me to the other side of Australia, I was nervous. No, terrified. I had been on two plane trips in my life, both had been only an hour long and on a medium sized plane. This trip was going to take hours, in a large, full plane, not to mention the fact that I was about to go the furthest distance from my family as I had ever been. I was beginning to wonder what on earth had possessed us to decide on this course of action?
4 months prior to this moment, my partner had proposed and we had begun planning a wedding for the 25th of August, 2007. I knew little about organizing such an event and the more I looked into each option the more I panicked. One night, after I had complained about one venue issue or another, my fiance suggested we should simply elope to Broome, which we were considering as our Honeymoon option. We had a search on the net and found Broome Weddings, which specialized in elope/honeymoon packages. We talked to my parents about this option so they could save to come with us if we decided to go with it but were met with not so positive reactions, though I knew they would come if that's what I wanted. Not long after we got the surprise of our lives when we found out I was pregnant with our first child and if we'd done our maths . right, our little bundle of joy was due in August.
We decided an August baby and wedding was too much, that we had to move the wedding forward if we really wanted to get married as once there was a baby it would have been so much harder to ever get around to it. I emailed Broome Weddings to ask about available dates earlier in the year and we fell in love with March 25th. We arranged our flights and the girls at Broome Weddings did the rest, which was perfect for my baby addled brain.
After many hours of tense flying we touched down in Perth before boarding another plane which would take us to what was seemingly the very end of Australia. Arriving in Broome was a shock to the system, it was hot and humid, the sky was dark with clouds threatening rain. At 20 weeks pregnant, I didn't take to my first impression.
Nothing seemed to go smoothly from the moment our feet touched the ground. We waited 2 hours for pizza after a long day flying. We got lost on our first walk, we had a horror bus ride into town where I had to stand up the whole way. It rained. No, it poured, turning the streets into red rivers, then the sun would come out and it would be so hot you could barely think. And this was in the first day and a bit or our stay! I rang my dad, crying and begging him to fix it all, but he said he couldn't and I suppose it would have been hard from NSW as they couldn't afford to come at such short notice.
We got into a routine of getting up very early to go out and do our tourist activities and getting back to our apartment for the hottest part of the day. Slowly I started to feel better about being there.
Every day it would suddenly pour down with rain before clearing up just as quickly. The day of our wedding, it rained and rained. As I got my hair done the hairdresser assured me it would stop soon but it continued on and on. Our original plan had been to marry on Cable Beach, but as the rain had been pretty full on for so many hours we were given the choice of having the ceremony in front of a Pearl Lugger and we could go to the beach for some photos afterwards if the rain subsided for long enough.
We got dressed and amazingly the rain stopped in time for me to get into the car taking me. Our ceremony was quick, because we had decided I would not cope well with the heat in my heavy wedding dress and everything we needed to say we could say in private. It went smoothly, with the small exception of the celebrant trying to marry me to Thomas instead of James. We had our photos there and as it had yet to start raining we were rushed down to Cable Beach for some beautiful sunset photos.
Our photographer's timing was perfect, we were finished and climbing up the stairs as the rain began again. The day was finished with a delicious meal together.
It was the most perfect day. Eloping to Broome has been the biggest adventure I have ever experienced, especially when we later found out we had been on Cyclone watch that whole day and for the days following our ceremony. To top it off I got quite ill with terrible cramps the day we were leaving and thought I was losing our baby, however it ended up being gastric caused by our wedding night dinner!
I wouldn't change a thing and look back with such happiness. It was a time just for the two of us and while it was full on, it was perfect!
