Cross St is one of those roads that I’m often on. The Dressmaker of the bridesmaids dresses works on Cross St, it has handy parking to Krd (which is where my store of the moment (Illicit) is) and is just generally one of those streets that occasionally appears in my travels.

What I didn’t realise is that the inner city community got together with the Chinese New Year Festival to put on the Cross St Carnival.

“We’re bringing together some of the most energetic bands, acrobats and dancers to stimulate your senses, some of the hottest crafts and sculpture for your browsing and buying delights and some of the tastiest of local treats. Aligned once again with the Chinese New Year, this will be a celebration of the liveliest, most colourful facets of our local community.”

And oh, there were MANY colourful facets! The usually drab street had been decorated up all festive like, and there were jugglers, stilt walkers, colourful stalls and bands and food goodness.

My favourite part, though, was Box Costume Making:

And it was a fairly fantastic surprise to find a carnival in full swing when I was walking back to my car (I’d just got the balls on my new piercing changed – they are all sparkly now, and wedding ready). This, in part, is why I love and adore Auckland. :)

Nikki Farquharson is a talented Graphic Designer, and has just put out a book: 65 Modern Proverbs.

When I saw this, I cracked up. There are many more gems hidden within its pages :)

Remember when I mentioned Quinn needed a haircut? Well, he got one. His head is officially now in proportion with the rest of his body.

He has gone from sad little emo, to clean cut do-gooder. As an example, he now responds to ‘leave’, which is something he usually only does with bribes!!

I’ve been to many weddings, lately. At least three since January. And I’ve got two more in the next month or so. It appears that I have reached that age bracket where everyone is now getting married.

My sister is in that phase where everyone is having 21sts, and I miss that. The crazy drinking and partying, the random nights out and hooking up with strangers and dancing till you couldn’t feel your feet anymore. Weddings are so very *different*.

More drinking champagne instead of tequila shots, less random and more formal, and everyone is all paired up anyway so there’s no hooking up with strangers without some serious carnage. There is occasionally dancing, but by then you’ve been in heels all day and you’re not quite drunk enough to not feel them and it’s all very silly. Much less with the wild abandon and more with the settling down and getting old.

Some of its nice – the food is great. Generally the setting is pretty, and everyone is all dressed up in their finest. Getting to see The Boy in a suit is fantastic, and watching the happy bridal couple publicly declare their love for one another is generally pretty special. I think I cried a little at the last two weddings, particularly when the grooms got all teary when they saw their brides walking down the aisle. I wish they wouldn’t, I always end up pretending I’ve got something in my eye.

And despite being the maid of honour for the out of town bride, you can easily forget how much work goes into the day. The numerous fittings for suits and dresses, smelling many flowers, scrutinising ribbon and designing placenames. There are a trillion, trillion little details to oversee, many millions of decisions to make, and when it gets down to it, alot of hard work.

The hardest thing a guest has to do is pick up a present and decide what to wear. Occasionally, this can be difficult. I am going to what I think is a Sikh wedding, and I’ve been asked to cover my hair, shoulders and legs. My usually wedding attire is a pair of heels, and a cute cocktail dress (of which I have many to cycle through depending on whose wedding it is and which dresses I’ve already worn). I have a firm belief that girls shouldn’t wear pants to a wedding, and that they shouldn’t wear black (it’s meant to be bad luck, see. Marriages are tricky enough as it is).

So for serious, what exactly am I meant to wear? I’m hoping I’ll pull something out of the air sometime next week, something that isn’t inconsiderate or culturally offensive but until then, enjoy photos from the last wedding:

The Bridal Party

The Boy and I

Me and K

The Boy and I aren’t a terribly romantic couple. Occasionally we make it out to dinner, and a couple times he’s got me some fantastic gifts which show his fabulous skill at picking up hints. But generally we are a pretty boring couple. One of our more recent dates involved us spending hours curled up in bed playing Little Big Planet together in our underwear. Like I said, not terribly romantic, but considering the ridiculous number of weddings we have been to lately and the stupid amount of cute and romantic that accompany other peoples special days, I’m pretty happy that we aren’t stupidly soppy.

So when I saw the fantastic promo for Kate Spade’s Bmine project, I snagged my own little note to send to The Boy:

It’s not terribly romantic, is straight to the point, and shows that despite our boringness, yes, I still would like to make out with him :)

Every couple of weeks a group of girls I went to school with and I go out to dinner, or enjoy a glass of wine while we catch up. Usually we frequent a cute little boutique bar in Mt Eden where by now the waiters recognize us and we know their menu inside out. Comfortable, familiar and generally very nice. Deciding on a change, though, last night we went to Mac’s Neighbourhood Brewbar.

As is standard for most Mac’s bars, the interior was gorgeous! It was plesant to the eye, funky and functional. It was also ridiculously popular, and when I showed up slightly early, I was left standing awkwardly behind people at the bar because, literally, there was no room any where else to appropriately lurk while I waited for the girls to arrive.

When K DID arrive (thank goodness, I’d already downed two wines by then) we found that, in fact, there was less space for two people to stand than one. In the end we perched at the end of a long table that wasn’t quite full (though it had definitely met it’s quota in young Russian girls wearing too much make up and big teased hair. Is big crazy 80′s hair coming back? Can it kindly go away?).

Lucky for us a group of chairs came free and we managed to snag them before anyone else did. However some strangers (conveniently lurking) asked if they could steal our spare chairs until the rest of our party arrived. We felt a bit silly ‘saving’ chairs when obviously others could use them until people came, which is how what was meant to be a girls night turned into K and I drinking with 4 men.

It was very odd, one fairly charming 42 year old gym owner from London was out drinking with his accountant (a 20 year old youngan who worked for his father) and a cameraman who covered Big Day Out, who the accountant at met at the bar while they where awkwardly waiting for friends. It was very very odd.

It got even odder when the London gym owner got all intense (he was a gorgeous black man with amazing muscles, style, tattoos, and a whole lot confidence) and charming and complimented my shoes (which were pretty awesome – new peep-toe stilettos that showed off the cute pedicure I had), told me I had a ‘naughty’ walk (which I think is his way of saying he noticed me stumbling around in the heels I can’t walk in yet), and then told me I had ‘heart’. And then he did that intense gaze thing that turned me back into an embarrassed and giggling 18 year old – it was incredibly ridiculous.

I was glad when the rest of our party showed up and I could gossip and catch up like was proper instead of having to find an appropriate response to intense gaze guy. He already KNEW he I was happily with The Boy, and I’m not very good at dealing with awkward situations like that. I tried to resemble ‘not interested ice queen’ but I think I projected ‘giggly high school student high on the attention’.

In the end I left when one of the girls did, slipping out quietly into the night before anyone could notice. And while I loved the attention, Big Black man from London was way too charming, way too intense for me to want to stay in his company. I prefer people that don’t reduce me to a small, giggling gerty, and I was happy to go home to The Boy who I’m glad is not intense, and whose gazes don’t freak me out.

And just to sure my walk wasn’t really naughty, I practised in the dark all the way back to the car.

Without wondering how long I’ve been working here, and how many hot chocolates I’ve ordered, at some point between then and now the coffee people have figured out how to spell my name:

Good for them! :)