Tenth Anniversary recap! AUSTRALIAN SURPRISE!

On September 7 (yes I know it was over two months ago, shut up, I've been busy), Matt and I celebrated our tenth anniversary.

Tenth.

We have been married for ten years (and two months, and two days).

Usually the first reaction we get when we tell people how long we've been married is incredulity, because we apparently don't look old enough to have been married for ten years. And it's true, we were basically little tiny babies when we got married. I mean, look at us:

We're wearing matching wedding diapers

The story of how we met and married is kind of epic, but the very, very short version is that we began corresponding over a love of Nine Inch Nails back in August 2000, and we met and fell in love when I came to the USA on vacation in April 2002 (for a recap of the tenth anniversary of that vacation, including goofy pictures, see this blog post). In December of that year, Matt came to Australia to meet my clinically insane family and propose to me, and in June 2003, I moved to the USA on a K-1 fiancee visa. Technically, when I slipped that engagement ring on my finger on New Year's Eve, we had been in each other's company, face to face, for a total of three weeks. A lot of people thought we were nuts to take the plunge, but we thought we'd be nuts not to do it. And here we are, still in love and having adventures, more than a decade later.

As I mentioned in a previous post, for our anniversary, we threw at party at PhilaMOCA for our friends, and played an Up Your Cherry gig with Jess Lennick guesting on bass, and Jamie Keagy from Slow Andy and Chris Braak contributing some guest vocals.

That was the plan. But as it turned out, a whoooole other subplot was unveiled that wasn't in the script. While we were setting up the space that afternoon, Matt got a phone call from his dad, who wanted to vet a couple of people with whom he had been corresponding for some time. "Matt, I've been talking with these Australians who claim to be friends of Melissa. They're planning on showing up tonight, and I just wanted to check with you that you do know them ... Jason? And a ... Linda Chesterton?"
"LUCY!? JASON AND LUCY ARE HERE!?"
"Don't tell Mel."

Jason and Lucy are my best friends in the whole world. We have a history that I can't even begin to describe, but it's long, and intense, and amazing. I hadn't seen Jason since he came to visit us five years ago, and I hadn't seen Lucy since I was last in Sydney in 2006. Of course, I'd sent them facebook invites to the anniversary party, because, well, I wanted to include them, but it was a wishful thought; I never dreamed they'd be able to attend. That's at least 20 hours of travel both ways, and thousands of dollars. Neither of them had been able to make it to our wedding back in 2002, and that was completely understandable to me.

But back to the linear version of events. Two of the first people to walk through the door at PhilaMOCA were my friends Julie and Meiling. This was unexpected. Back in 1998, Julie and Meiling had been Texan exchange students at the University of New South Wales, and they lived in share housing with Jason and me; Matt and I had stayed with Julie in Dallas on our Roadtrop last year, but I hadn't seen Meiling since she left Sydney (she now lives in Colorado). Needless to say, I was surprised:

Julie on the left, Meiling on the right. Photo by FIL Bill.

What were they doing here!? They hadn't even RSVP'ed! They were supposed to be in other states! This is very, very strange!! I hugged them, dumbfounded.
"Come outside, Melissa. We have a present for you." They took me by the arm and led me toward the street.

Why are we going outside to see a present? Did they buy me a car? But that's ridiculous. A car would be too expensive. And I don't need or want a car. We have two very nice cars, and I like them very much. Seriously, no car you could get us would be better than our cars. Such was the nature of my deep confusion.

I stepped onto the sidewalk and immediately my brain broke as I saw Jason and Lucy waiting to greet me.

Photo by Bill

Jason has a sound recording of the moment, and when I recovered my voice, all I could say, over and over, for minutes on end as we hugged and cried, was "What is going on!? What the fuck is going on!?"

Photo by Bill

Photo by Melissa Nicholson

In the aftershock of this moment, Jason pulled me aside to let me know that the surprises were still coming; unbeknownst to Lucy, her boyfriend (also named Matt) was flying to New York, where he planned to propose to her on Sunday. We had to figure out a way to get her to Central Park to rendezvous with him and a gospel choir. Shhhhh.

(This really happened. Skip to the end of this video to see.)

The only way I could mentally continue with the planned evening's events was to get extremely drunk. I'm actually pretty glad that nobody got a good recording of the Up Your Cherry Show; the few videos I've seen demonstrate that when I sing drunk, you can very much tell that I am drunk. Drunkenness affects the inner ear, and also the part of the ear that governs how intonation works. So embarrassing! But fun, as the pictures demonstrate.


Our official photographer Kendall Whitehouse was on hand -- here' a slideshow of his rockstar photos:



Also in attendance: amazeballs photographer Kyle Cassidy! Here are a few of the photos he snapped:



Here's one of my favorite shots of the night, taken by Matt's work colleague Art Noir, from our finale performance "I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper":

Photo by Art Noir

Things left behind: we received some really cool gifts, including lots of fun art, and some terrific entries on the "guestbook" we set up near the entrance:




The steadily more drunken offerings were typed on silk which I'll eventually get around to framing or making into cushion covers or something, and included OMG an allosaurus drawing by Bob Walters:

And the next day:

I love everyone. The end.