April Fools – a sad tale

It turned out to be an interesting weekend just gone. I mentioned earlier that I was going to a wedding in the Riverland on the weekend. There were quite a few of us driving from Adelaide to the wedding and staying in various places around Berri.

The bride and groom had organised taxis to ferry all of us to and from the wedding venue so we didn’t have to drive. While we were waiting the corellas (cockatoos) who hang out by the river during the day were making their way over our heads to their night-time abode. They make a huge noise and there’s no way you can miss them unless you are deaf.

As a joke I put my coat over my head thinking one of them would shit on me. It was a half-hearted effort at covering my head and just after I took my coat off I felt a plop on my  head. Sure enough, a corella had shat on me. Fortunately it was only really minor and most of it ended up on the ground and a friend wiped the dirty spot on the back of my head with a tissue so my one and only weekend wedding outfit escaped unscathed. Apparently it’s good luck to have a bird shit on you. Here’s a couple of photos of the corellas.

On to the wedding. Weddings are great fun for me normally but this wedding wasn’t so great for the bride and groom. The bride had been suffering from gastro the previous day and was still suffering on her wedding day. She did manage to make an appearance at the wedding ceremony, but only just. Most of us could tell it was a real effort for her to even be there.

Her bridesmaid had brought out a bucket for her and the bride kept looking back at her bucket, probably willing herself not to throw up. Luckily it was a short ceremony so after they were pronounced husband and wife they stood in front of us and smiled for the cameras and she ducked back inside not to be seen again that evening by any of the wedding party. Someone came out shortly afterwards to fetch the bucket.

In a way it was hard to really enjoy the wedding party because I kept thinking of the poor sick bride. She got taken to hospital later that evening and was dosed up with morphine.

At the recovery barbeque the next day she was looking and feeling considerably better. The talk at the barbeque was of a re-enactment. There were two schools of thought about what the re-enactment should entail. I liked the idea of the guests, both male and female, wearing wedding op-shop dresses but have my doubts as to whether this will go ahead or not.

I really wonder whether people should get married on April Fool’s Day – I have my doubts.