In what might be one of the most touching moments from the Mundi Mundi Bash, a Broken Hill couple renewed their vows on Saturday morning – the date of their twenty-third wedding anniversary.
Allan and Michelle Pearce – who met in 1993 – headed out to the Bash sign at sunrise and took part in a Celtic handfasting ceremony – which they’d found out about online – in a personal moment between the two, the song from their wedding, Trisha Yearwood’s You’re Where I Belong, played.
While it was a day of celebration for the two, it also came with its own bittersweet feeling. The day before their wedding on August 19, 2000, the couple found out their unborn son had passed away. The child’s ashes were scattered over the clay pans at the Mundi Mundi Lookout, a spot the couple frequented, and a reason why they wanted to do the ceremony at the Bash.
“Our wedding day was a bit of a bittersweet experience, and that’s the reason why we chose to renew our vows to mark not so much a unique part in our marriage, but just to redo it in a way that wasn’t tainted by memories of our original wedding day. It was just a great place to do it,” Allan told the Truth.
Michelle said, “it was something that we could put just that sweetness to it for us”, adding “there was a song that Wendy Matthew sang, You’re The One That I Love, and we got up and danced to that in the middle of the aisle, and we called that our bridal waltz. We just did things that were just for us. Even though there was 12,000 other people [at the Bash], it felt very intimate to us.”
