A wedding is just not a wedding without a pirate or two

The wedding invitation looked like a tattoo but we were not surprised.  The groom is a famous tattoo artist after all, and the bride, well the bride is a beautiful, creative (the groom described her in his speech as “artsy fartsy”)  young lady who also happens to be the daughter of my husband’s step mother.

The dress code at the bottom of the invitation read “dress to celebrate” so we did.  We viewed “dress to celebrate” as “dress to attend a wedding that is not too formal and will be held on the cliffs of the beach at 5pm on a Saturday evening in summer” .  We are good with detail like that.  When we arrived at the venue we realised that our interpretation was just one of many.

There were two women dressed as pirates – complete with three cornered pirate hats, there was an Elvis with an afro, a Greek Orthodox priest (not an actual priest but just a regular man in an Greek Orthodox priest outfit – a regular man being a man with 28 piercings in his face) oh and there was a woman wearing a kimono with her face painted white.  There were also quite a few people wearing, you know, normal clothes but most of these people would step out of the shower in the morning looking as if they were fully dressed.  If tattoos count as clothes.

My husband wore pants and a shirt and I wore a dress.  We stood out a bit so I took off my shoes to blend in (handy really because they were very high and hurting my entire body).

The ceremony was absolutely beautiful – moving and emotional.  The love between the bride and groom was glaringly obvious. The setting was so magnificent it was almost surreal. We watched in awe-struck fascination as the celebrant explained the Polish tradition of sharing bread and salt after the vows are exchanged.  Much of the fascination was directed at the fact that one of the guests had wandered over to the bread and salt during the ceremony and eaten most of it.  I guess he was hungry.  After all he had dressed for the wedding like he had slept in the park for the last 7 months.

The reception was held in an equally magnificent setting just a few hundred metres up the road.  I was quite keen to see if the pirates would travel by ship but as it happens they just walked like we did but with high heeled, black, thigh high boots.

There was just one table, magnificently laid and decorated by a member of my extended step family who wore the brightest yellow shirt I have ever seen.  Ever.  He told me it was a Thierry Mugler shirt as if that would reduce some of my shock at the colour.  It didn’t.  In fact if I close my eyes now all I can see is his shirt.

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The reception was unique.  Most weddings I have been to the groom ends his speech with a toast to his bride, at this wedding he ended his speech with “fuck you punk rockers”.  It doesn’t mean he loves her any less, I mean he did say that every day with her is like a fucking holiday.  And he did look at her with the most intensely loving eyes.

It was different.  But different is not always bad.  I am not the most conservative person I know – that award goes to the poor Italian couple of about 89 years old who sat at the end of the table.  But, I was well and truly rocked by this wedding.  And when I say rocked I don’t mean just by the Polish Anarchist punk rock that we danced to.

I spoke to a man who had spent 5 years in Rikers Island Correctional Facility and two years in a Peurto Rican jail, I asked the man with the 28 facial piercings if I could photograph his face and it turns out the two pirates are Swedish sisters who work together – one as a tattoo artist and one as a tattoo removalist.  They were gorgeous and charming and only dressed as pirates to give the groom a laugh.  I read Psalm 23 off someone’s chest, I saw more ink than I have ever seen before and because my jaw was so close to the ground much of the night, I saw some of the most amazing artworks I have ever seen.  Even if the canvas was someone’s leg.

A highlight of the wedding would have to have been a Skype link up with the groom’s family in Poland.  Dressed in their suits and ties and projected onto a huge screen, the groom’s family attended the wedding in Sydney.  And no amount of ink, piercings, dress up or bravado could disguise the warmth, the love and the happiness in the room that night.  This crowd were all rockers, and they were all “out there” and they were all a little bit scary and intimidating to look at but they were all so human.

I was flattered to be part of this wedding.  Which is really good because when I first saw the crowd I thought I would be flattened.