Some pre-wedding festivities with my gal-pal

Once upon a time, there were two best friends who spent 15 years:

• consoling each other through break-ups and bad hangovers (note: it was usually me with the bad hangover)
• cheering on important achievements like successful first dates or cooking ventures
• steeling each others nerves for job interviews or exams
• learning the lines of our favourite movies in order to quote them for our amusement at a later date (Home Alone people. Watch it.)
• discussing the merits of Sex and the City, and further, how what we learn in Sex and the City can be applied to our actual, everyday lives
• calming each others ridiculous, borderline-psychotic anxieties via hurried and exasperated phone calls at work
• giving each other a good telling-off when the other goes off the rails (note: more often than you think.)
  
  

After all that drama, there was no way in the world my best friend Leah was going to miss her chance to be maid of honour at our wedding, despite moving thousands and thousands of miles away to London. Alas, she was absent for a lot of the planning (don't think she missed my bridal tantrums though - thank you, Skype) but she came back home two weeks before the big day armed with a truckload of festivities to help make our limited time together extra special.

I'll be honest. In the week before the wedding, i was stressed. Even though i told myself I'd take everything in my stride - i didn't. Sorry. I mean i don't think i turned into a bridezilla or anything, but i couldn't stop myself from worrying about...well, everything, although the torrential rain that week was a particular source of despair.

The remedy according to Leah? High tea and cocktails. Damn smart girl. So we took ourselves, our mothers, and my other favourite people - Maria and Jack - to the delightful Observatory Hotel for afternoon tea to celebrate...me! The bride! Woohoo! (Those were the days...) I've had a lot of high teas in Sydney, but i still say the Observatory does it the best. 

Here we are, dressed the part and looking totally and utterly relaxed thanks to the complimentary champagne. Now that i know the pain of paying for a wedding, I'm no longer ashamed to say that I LOVE FREE STUFF!

The Observatory Hotel has all sorts of weird and wonderful teas. I think i had white jasmine. Then again i could be completely making that up.

Jack passed on the tea and champagne, but he did enjoy a vanilla milkshake. The message in his eyes here is very clear: "This is all mine. Back off."

My page boy and I. Too bad he wasn't so gorgeous on the day, but that's another story.

My mum could not be persuaded to give up her champagne to the bride to be. Luckily, i am just as selfish when it comes to bubbly - they call that being a chip off the old block.

I wasn't as drunk as i wanted to be after high tea, so our next stop was the Blu Bar at the Shang-ri-la Hotel in the Rocks. It has quite the view of Sydney, something Leah had missed after a year of being away. As for me - well. I'm neither here nor there about views. Just pass me the cocktail list.



Even our mum's got in on the act, knocking back not one but TWO cocktails EACH. I know. Pick your jaws up off the floor, readers.

Meanwhile, Leah and I were in our element with cosmopolitans and olives and fetta cheese. These ARE a few of my favourite things.

It felt GREAT to eat, drink and be merry with someone i had really missed in the last year. It wouldn't have been the same without her with me on the day, but more than that, it was so nice to have some time to catch up and do what we've spent 15 years doing over and over again - discussing our lives to death. Would we have it any other way?



I'm writing this from home, sick and miserable on the couch, but seeing these pictures have cheered me up no end so I'll leave you with one of my favourites of me and Jack from the day. CUTE RIGHT!!!???