The best thing about the trip up to Picton for me was stepping out onto the observation car, letting my hair blow around, and smelling the sweet clover from the paddocks. Sheep dotted the green hills. Cows dotted the green hills with cow patties. And soon, there was the Pacific Ocean on our right. A gray day, but nonetheless, a picturesque scene.

   At Picton, I checked in at the ferry terminal and cruised for three and a half hours to Wellington, New Zealand’s capital where the first thing I did after checking into the hostel was catch a bus down to Te Papa, the museum of just about everything. The exhibit “Unveiled,” 200 years of wedding fashion from the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, was on view. The gallery was awash in carefully preserved lace, tulle, and various weaves of silk. 

   Among the notable gowns was the Christian La Croix gown “Who Has the Right?” and the iridescent purple taffeta Dita Von Teese wore when she wed Marilyn Manson. Gwen Stefani’s self-designed gown was there, too, but the real highlight was getting to see meticulously preserved hand-made Belgium lace and hand-worked satins. The light was dim and photographs were not allowed, so I spent a lot of time with my nose nearly against the glass, evading gallery security guards while trying to see whether that silk was cut on the bias or if that skirt was a jacquard or a taffeta.

   Three New Zealand designers created gowns for the Te Papa “Unveiled” show: WORLD, Lindah Lepou, and Jane Yeh. Check out their gowns and comments here.

   I stayed until they were ready to kick me out at 9 p.m., but got to speak with a gallery docent about not just the gowns, but the social sensibilities that fashion embodies. In our culture there is this idea of The Gown, The Wedding, The Day, The Man, usually in that order. When I edited a weddings publication for the Kansas City Star’s magazine division, the intent of the advertising sales people was to push that fantasy, the dream, the dress that’s too expensive but get it anyway, the wedding that costs $50,000 but do it anyway, even though that’s a down payment on a house, The Wedding must be done. The groom seemed like a prop. And having been once divorced at that point (an unlikely candidate for a weddings publication, but there you have it) I well understood that there is something that follows the orgy of conspicuous spending and that is called A Marriage.

   Once again, Elizabeth Gilbert’s name came up and this idea of The Man and how this idea of romantic love is perpetuated in young girls’ minds. Prince Charming and his cohorts ride in and take her away from all this. I used to believe that this protestation of feminists and their ilk was really sour grapes; they were just a bunch of lesbians who didn’t want a prince, anyway, so they’re going to tell the rest of us that there really isn’t one. That might be true. My prince came in with a white BMW in which, after five years, I drove off into the sunset.

   Anyway, when I edited the magazine I made sure that there was always some sort of article that reminded couples (read: brides) to prepare themselves for the inevitable post-wedding let-down. Now that you’ve spent an entire year (or more) of your life planning for one day, what now? What happens after that adrenaline rush? Now that you’re not the center of attention, Little Miss Bride, what are you going to do?

   But even those thoughts hovering around my awareness like so many soap bubbles over the happy couple didn’t stop me from being fascinated by the gowns. I have the convenient excuse of being a seamstress, so I can look at these garments from the perspective of design and workmanship, which I think is part of what the exhibit is supposed to be about. Never mind that there was a big screen showing footage of several society and royal weddings and that there was a cluster of women ranging from 15 to 50 sitting transfixed on red velour upholstered divans draped all around with tulle.

Because at the end of the day, after all the social analysis, there is beauty and there is love and that’s what people want to see. And there’s really nothing wrong with that.

   Since I didn’t get to see more than “Unveiled” at Te Papa, I resolved to return the next day – after my “Lord of the Rings” tour. If you know anything about the “Lord of the Rings” film trilogy, you might know that Peter Jackson directed all three films. You might also know that he is a New Zealand native, and all of the films were shot here. What you might not know, however, is that Peter Jackson pretty much built the film industry in New Zealand, which is in Wellington. In fact, this effects industry is so good, Steven Spielberg has started coming to New Zealand instead of calling up his buddy George Lucas at Industrial Light and Magic. Hopefully that information helps dispel the idea that I might be some sort of nerd.

   However, the tour guide, Jack, was. A nerd. And a happy one at that. He worked in Information Technology for 20 years, for a government agency, sounded like. And now, he said, “I can’t really remember why.” About eight years ago, Jack and some buddies started Rover Tours, a service that shuttles paying customers around for half-day or full-day tours of the Lord of the Rings filming locations around Wellington. I took the half-day tour which started with Jack picking me up at the hostel, taking one look at me and stating, “Oh, it can’t be her. She looks much too stressed to be on holiday.” All the better reason for this tour, Jack. And don’t worry, the antibiotic is working.

   We were barely out the door before he launched into how he was horribly crushed, that he got terrible news that day:  he learned just that morning that the casting call for The Hobbit is at 1 p.m. January 28 and neither he nor any of his partners would be able to attend because they have cruise ships dropping multitudes of cruisers off for tours. Personally, I thought that getting your company on a cruise ship’s excursion menu is a pretty sweet deal, but I didn’t say that.  Instead, I made the appropriate sympathetic noises, especially when he said that they are looking for men with large biceps. I was glad that Jack knew his biceps were not big.  Maybe then he didn’t feel quite as bad about missing the casting opportunity.

   One stop and five people later, we were off to the first of the sites, the Great River Anduin where, you might remember (or you might not) the Fellowship of the Ring ended up camping, and where Boromir ended up getting killed, etc. Jack had a whole binder of stills from the film that showed the locations quite well so we could compare what we were seeing with the actual scene. Next, we were off to Rivendell, the home of the elves, where Frodo, thanks to Elven Princess Arwen’s desperate ride, recovers from the wound received from one of the Nine Black Riders.  (Digression: Liv Tyler, who played the elf princess Arwen does not ride. Hates horses. That whole thing was done by a stunt double. Christopher Lee, who played Saruman also hates horses, since one of his best friends died being thrown from one. Just some fun facts. Christopher Lee also happens to know exactly what sound a person makes when he’s been stabbed in the back.)  

    Jack had a hobbit-sized sword, either a faithful reproduction or one from the movie – and a cloak for anyone to pose in. Martin from Canada was happy to oblige. Then, a spot of tea (or Elevensies, as the Hobbits would say) and off to Isengard where there is still a barely visible indentation of the road that Gandalf traveled to the Saruman’s tower.  We had to guess what the final location was. I got it first – the road through Fanghorne Forest where the first Ring Wraith comes hunting for Frodo. For those of you who remember, it’s in the first movie; it’s the “get off the road” scene where the horse and undead former king stand above them. Fabulous stuff. At the end of the tour, we all got a map that Jackson drew of the two islands with all the sites highlighted. And a good time was had by all.

   After lunch, I stopped by the Portrait Gallery of New Zealand which, funny enough, displays portraits of those who have been important to New Zealand’s formation and progress; among them is Sir Edmund Hilary, the first man to reach the summit of Mount Everest. But in the very back of the gallery, behind the wall, around the corner, was a small exhibit of daguerreotypes. These were not old images, but current portraits, the exhibit  “Reflecting Mana”- portraits of Tainui by AlanBekhuis.  The images were provided courtesy of the Paul McNamara Gallery, an important collection of ten daguerreotypes which complements the main exhibition. They are intricately made on silver sensitized with the halogens iodine and bromine. Alan’s specialty is to mount daguerreotype portraits, framed and lit in their own boxes. His authentic leather wooden cases are of exceptional quality and are used internationally.

   The daguerreotype is named for Louis Daguerre who created the first form of photography. The technique is juuuust a bit fussy. Take a copper plate, coat it with silver gelatin and polish it to a mirror finish, then load it into your frame and let the image develop. It is immediate, and incredibly fragile – the image can be rubbed off by a finger. The pay-off is that daguerreotypes are three-dimensional, have a depth that photographs just don’t show.

   Once I finished chatting about the daguerreotypes and the method with the gallery manager, I returned to Te Papa to an exhibit called “Blood Earth Fire” which concerned itself with the volcanic environment of NZ and where I got a review of natural science. Ready everybody? The earth is made up of a crust, a mantle, and an outer and inner core. Everything gets hotter the farther you dig, but we’ve never really gotten very far into the crust. Here’s the thing about New Zealand: the crust here is half as thick as anywhere else. That means that convection currents of the hot mantle make that crust less stable, and it’s easier for the crust to shift (earthquakes) and for molten stuff in the outer and inner core to get out (volcanoes) in the Central Volcanic Region, or CVR.

   New Zealand broke off from Australia a few years ago (somewhere between 65 and 80 million) and since then has been rising and falling depending upon the tectonic activity of the millennia. The Pacific Plate picks on New Zealand, too (not just us over in North America) sliding under the Australian plate, forming the central Alpine Fault. And I think that we all know that fault lines are where earthquakes come from.

   Anyway, it was all very fascinating. After that, I went to Cuba Street, yet another hip, young, edgy, snazzy neighborhood with people who sport tattoos and piercings in interesting and unusual places. A few vintage shops are there, along with a few touristy souvenirs shops. Cuba Street is also a pedestrian mall, so buskers are out in number, too. A young girl was singing – up on stage, alone, with a rudimentary sound system, and two homemade boxes covered in construction paper, hand-lettered: “I’m saving up for a new piano.” Sheesh. How can a person not throw a coin or two to the cause? But the best busker by far was by the train station – see the guy to the right in the kilt with the bagpipes.

   That was pretty much it for Wellington. In the morning, I caught a coach up to Lake Taupo, smack dab in the aforementioned Central Volcanic Region.