We have been to three weddings in six weeks. That has to be a record or something. I am almost expecting a framed certificate or a free set of steak knives or something by way of congratulation and commisseration.

Weddings are interesting affairs (for lack of a better term). First, there is the family. I am quite convinced that everyone thinks their own family is a little bit nuts. Then you meet other people’s families and you feel so much better about your own. I’m reminded of a sign I saw in a family home ‘as far as everyone knows, we’re a normal family’. Some families are normal, but there are always, and I mean always, family members that talk way too much or ask the most impertinent questions or dress like they’re doing a bit-part in Happy Days or can’t remember the name of the bride or the groom, or both.

Then there’s the ceremony. Wedding ceremonies should be fun and entertaining. They are often formal too. I recently attended a Mongolian wedding ceremony, where the bride and the groom wore costumes that looked quite similar to each other, and it wasn’t a tuxedo. I’ve attended two weddings where translators have been used, which means you get the slightly disconcerting effect of half the room laughing at a joke told in one language and then a few seconds later the other half of the room laughing as it is translated. A recent wedding had grass down the aisle. Seriously. And these were not sheep getting married, but people. And, truly, there was a sign that said ‘do not walk on the grass’. Seriously.

Then there are the speeches. If you ever want to teach someone how not to give a public speech, take them to a wedding. I mean there are some truly awful, and sometimes quite disturbing, speeches that you can hear at a wedding. There’s the jokes, which might be appropriate for the 15 year old boy at your table, but not for his grandmother, and there’s the insinuation that the bride or the groom are either so perfect that he or she has ‘walking on water’ as one of their life achievements, or they’re so not perfect that the speaker feels it necessary to list all their unlikeable qualities.

Then there are the people you find yourself seated with at the reception. I once attended a wedding with the friends of the bride’s parents. There is nothing I like more than talking about other people’s children or, in the same conversation, how many Asians there are in New Zealand (truly, these people were amazed - there are Asians in New Zealand! Remarkable! Who would have thought??) Or you find yourself at a table with someone who is getting progressively drunker as the night wears on, which is entertaining for everyone around them and embarrassing for them the morning after. Or you find yourself at a table with someone who has lost (or never had) the ability to make conversation. After asking twenty questions where the response is mono-syllabic you just give up and try and cut the steak on your plate that was recently defrosted and microwaved and is now doing a passable impression of a gumboot.

And of course there are the presents as well. What do you buy someone who is getting married that someone else won’t buy them? I mean, how many coffee plungers or trays or chocolate fondue sets does one couple need? I very much like the Chinese way of doing it: a red packet with money. That’s it. The couple then spend the money on something they set fit (often paying for the wedding or the honeymoon) and don’t have to find a space to put yet another appliance they neither need nor want.

But, having said all that, I do quite enjoy weddings. Not always, sometimes they’re a bore, but most of the time they’re fun and entertaining in ways they were never meant to be. So it’s appropriate really that I’ve got one of my own coming up. I get to plan a wedding. My own wedding. I get to decide what type of food I don’t want to serve my guests, what type of presents I never want to receive, and what type of people I don’t want to give a speech. But I also get to spend time with two families - my present one and my new one - and enjoy their quirks and know that ‘normal’ is just a state of mind.

But best of all, at my wedding I get to celebrate the rest of my life with the love of my life. And whatever you might make of the theatre of a wedding ceremony, when it comes to it, it’s all about the couple at the front who say ‘I do’. That’s the bit I’m looking forward to the most.   

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The gypsies are in town. On a park near where I live, in which - incidentally - an elephant is buried, there are gypsy buses and tents and super-sized camper vans.

I saw them driving onto the park last night while returning from work. There, with their drivers in plaid shirts, no shirts, or ripped shirts, these buses, some of which were the size of small houses, pulled onto the buried-elephant park, pulled out their cigarettes, and pulled together their gypsy friends. And all of this in Karori. It bears noting that Karori is, or would like to think it is, one of the poshest suburbs in Wellington.

Though, I am told, that there are gypsy buses in ’south Karori’. ‘South Karori’ is a term used with derision by those who live at the ‘city-end’ of Karori in the same way you might speak of someone who hasn’t discovered personal hygiene. ‘South Karori’ may as well be on another planet all together. It does, so I’m told, have its own climate.

Meanwhile, in the land that gives us half a population that thinks it has been abducted by aliens, George W. Bush, and Paris Hilton, we have a controversy in the cosmetics industry. A brand of perfume that uses none other than Jesus Christ for its celebrity endorsement (”looking good for Jesus”) has had to be withdrawn from the market after complaints by the Catholic church. I think the feeling was that it wasn’t an entirely appropriate use of the name of the Son of God and WPWJW (What Perfume Would Jesus Wear) has yet to come out in bracelet form. The Christian market just isn’t ready for that kind of aromatic rapture.

And it was Valentine’s Day yesterday. So everywhere - and I mean everywhere - there were men holding flowers for their “special friend”, with the look of having just been hit over the head with a baseball bat and looking slightly dazed; or there were women, who were also holding flowers but who, universally, looked either irritated, panicked or teary-eyed. And flowers were everywhere.

I went into the florists across the road from my work on Valentine’s Eve (like Christmas Eve, but earlier in the year) and there was a queue out the door and the florist in the shop was quietly swearing under her breath.

I picked up a bunch of roses and was told that they would cost me an arm, a leg, both my kidneys, and my grandchildrens’ inheritance. I put them back and smiled and bought a cheaper - and in my opinion much nicer - flower. And a soft toy. Yes, I bought a soft toy. As you do. On Valentine’s Day.

There were soft toys there of every colour, shape and persuasion. There were large ones, small ones, and exceptionally ugly ones. And there was the woman behind the counter cursing her ribbon supplier for giving them the wrong kind of ribbon (I know the feeling; don’t we all?). And everywhere there were petals and lovers rushing hither and thither, buying something for their Valentines.

And so there was the smell about the day - the smell of flowers and of love, but also of Jesus (thank you, once again, America, what would we do without you?) and the sweet, sweet smell of marijuana blowing in the wind from that park in Karori where there is a dead elephant and a whole lot of gypsies. It’s a wonderful world.

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