Keep It Sweetly Simple!

Simple easy service with one of Canberra's most experienced celebrants. (I have married over 1400 couples.) Your beautiful, memorable and personalised alternative to a Registry Office wedding. Only one one-hour meeting required and the next time we meet, it's your wedding day!

31 May 2012

A most memorable way to remember your wedding

Hello, and welcome
     What’s the best way to remember your wonderful wedding day? I'm referring, not to your thoughts and feelings, but to actual physical items to trigger your memories and bring back the happiness of your special day.
Jill and Kie with gardenias in the Heart Garden 18 April 2012
     Of course there'll be lots of photos from your wedding, and you may have video as well. Visual images certainly stir our memories but there’s another way that we humans are wired, which makes memory access instantaneous. 
     It’s our sense of smell.
     Apparently in the configuration of our brains, olfactory input (aka the vibe of smell) takes us instantly to stored data about personal life experience. 
     You can probably think of certain smells in your own life that connect you straightaway with events from your past. Unfortunately, the bad are recalled just as easily and vividly as the good. Smells seem to reactivate not only clear mental scenes but associated emotions as well.
     With this fact of life in mind, I am now helping brides who marry in my Heart Garden, to actively register a perfume from their wedding with their joyful feelings on the day. Here’s how this came about:

On February 3, Samantha married Clayton.
It was such a happy day.
                  In her bouquet, Samantha had tuberoses. They smelled amazing.

I love tuberoses. I chose them as my own bridal flowers way back when, with little bunches of blue forget-me-not tucked in here and there. (My bridesmaids Mary and Liz wore differing shades of blue and carried bouquets of delphiniums.) When I smelled Samantha's bouquet, I was instantly transported to my own wonderful wedding day.
My little Grand-daughter
Molly makes freesia memories
at the wedding of her Mum
and Dad in the Heart Garden
on 23 October 2004
     There’s a huge old gardenia growing in a big pot on our verandah. Even on the day I write this blogpost – and winter starts tomorrow – this magnificent shrub has several blooms. I’ve been picking them lately and sharing them with brides, specifically for the purpose of anchoring a sensuous, memorable perfume to their wedding memories. I think they’ll find it easy to source gardenias in the future in many gardens, nurseries and florist shops, especially around the time of their anniversary. 
     And bouquets of roses. They're a popular classic with brides and they ‘fill the bill’ perfectly as memory joggers - if they are perfumed. In my own family, freesias are an 'olfactory' favourite.
     Last Friday morning, when Francesca married 
Aldo, I picked for Francesca, some wintersweet flowers (chimonanthus praecox), growing on a tall bush in the Heart Garden. The flowers are not distinctive but the perfume is strong, spicy and evocative. 

Francesca is holding her
bouquet of ever-lasting
roses, and a spray of
wintersweet
     Francesca loves flowers. She admired many late-autumn plants in the garden and I'm confident that she’ll track down a source of wintersweet in the future to take her back to the beauty, love and laughter of her wonderful intimate wedding with Aldo.
     
     And here's a really unusual 'aroma-memento'. Lucerne flowers!

Marcelle and Dean were married in the Gallery at Pialligo Plant Farm on March 10, with their large extended families as guests. They came from Cooma, where they are both farmers. Marcelle carried a bunch of lucerne flowers from their farm. Every March when the lucerne is in bloom, this couple will naturally think back to their very happy wedding day, 
    As usual with my blog, there are more photos that go with this post in the Slideshow to the right. There are also photos from some of the other weddings, large and small, where I've been celebrant recently and the bride and groom have given me permission to share their photos on the net. If, like me, you really enjoy looking at wedding photos, there are hundreds in the archives. Just click a link in 'Slideshow Archives' on the right and it will take you to my Picasa web albums. Your comments and sharing are welcome.
     Of course, there are many other ways to make your wedding a very memorable occasion without flowers, like combining all the people who are important to you in one special place at one special time, or playing your favourite music as your 'wedding mix'.
     If you'd like me to be your celebrant, sharing all the happiness - and perhaps the memorable perfumes - of your special day, I'd be delighted to be there for you. You can contact me in the email contact form, or email me directly. Or phone my mobile on 0406 376 375, or ring my landline 02 6161 0718, any day between 9am and 9pm. Or send a text to my mobile. 
     In my Wedding Pages (top right) there's lots of information about the simple service I provide on weekdays in my garden - or cosy green room, overlooking the garden. As well, you'll find detailed information about my full service for a larger wedding, with many more options. 
     I'm happy to answer lots of questions about the services I provide, and about getting married in general. Five civil celebrants have chosen me as celebrant for their own weddings and this is my favourite testimonial to the top service I can offer you.
     In my next blogpost, I'll be telling you about a new 'extra' available at Heart Garden weddings, already proving popular (at no extra cost).

     Till next time
     
     Sincerely
     Michele

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Nice post.
I like the way you start and then conclude your thoughts. Thanks for this nice information. I really appreciate your work, keep it up.
Regards,
wedding celebrants