We did it!

The Wedding was last night, and it went great. Thanks to Nicole and Lee, it went without a hitch (well, except the bit where the earwig climbed out of the toothpick holder and dived into the sweet chilli sauce while people were choosing food off the plate). We got lots of compliments on the food and there was more than enough of it (could have had at least 100 pieces less, I'd say) although there was that mid-service panic where all the first hot food had been served as well as all the cold food, and we were waiting for the next hot food and all the people were 'starving'. Like I said, in the end there was plenty of food though. We had an early drama when we couldn't get the oven lit, luckily the racecourse staff were around setting up for the Barossa Cup the next day and managed to get the thing going - it was very nice to have a huge double gas oven to work with (actually, Nicole worked with it - between her doing all the heating, and Lee doing most of the serving and dishwashing, I mostly got to just walk around looking lost). Did I mention how great they both were?
Kids all were okay - apparently Sophie was a bit difficult to get to sleep for Paul, but she slept through to 6am so that was nice for me. I was home in bed by 10.30 (one of the advantages of living 2 streets away from the function). I was very glad that Nicole was motivated enough to get us started doing dishes during the quieter times, as there was hardly anything to do right at the end of the night.
The food took a long time to serve, even with such a big oven. We served the first at 7, and were still putting food out after 930 (and that didn't even include the sweets).
It was extremely satisfying, as well as incredibly UNstressful for the most part (I was only stressing that I must have forgotten things because it seemed like there wasn't much to do).

Funny though, it's done now and it was such a mental milestone for me that I keep thinking that now it's time for mum and dad to come home. But they're only a third of the way through! But of course it will go quickly - Nicole and Raff are going to KI in early November so we will get Rufus then, which is two-thirds of the way through, and then next thing we know it will be December and they will be back! (sorry to speed it up that way, guys).