00:00The town I'm from, it's so flat and so dry.
00:04Whereas I come from a place where it's just water and it's so wet.
00:09My family are farmers.
00:12My family all used to be fishermen.
00:15Complete opposites.
00:19I'm so excited to show the blend of Finnish and Australian traditions.
00:34I'm from a really small little country town called Knambull, which is in rural New South Wales, Australia.
00:42I come from the Åland Islands, which are an independently governed part of Finland.
00:47The island where I grew up, it's called Chyrkogårdsø, and it's a very small island surrounded by 30,000 other
00:54very small islands.
00:55I am actually the 17th generation to come from this one island.
00:58We have people coming from every side of the world.
01:03It's not an easy place to get to. It's at least a six hour journey from the mainland.
01:11We've decided to actually start our journey together in Australia.
01:15That's because this island is a big part of my heritage.
01:18We taught to bring the wedding to Finland to show our little slice of heaven.
01:24At the island, our tradition is to have a three day wedding because it's so hard for people to get
01:29out there.
01:30Once everyone arrives, we're having a big welcome dinner and we're going to have songs that are part of festivities
01:35in Swedish speaking Finns.
01:37The tradition Snaps Visor means that we're all sitting around long tables, we sing together and then we drink Snaps.
01:44It's a big part of my culture.
01:46The women stand up and say hallelujah, then it's the guys' turn.
01:51Hallelujah!
01:53Hallelujah!
01:55Hallelujah!
01:57Hallelujah!
01:59Hallelujah!
02:00Hallelujah!
02:02Hallelujah!
02:03Hallelujah!
02:11The next day we're holding a mini championships where we'll be taking the Finnish world championship events, which are some
02:18crazy things like wife-carrying competitions,
02:20and Nokia phone-throwing competitions, and then we're also including axe-throwing and clay-shooting.
02:27Island life, basically.
02:41One of the traditions I really wanted to uphold, which was logistically quite hard, was to not see each other
02:47the day of the wedding.
02:49My bridesmaids and I will have to travel the night before the wedding to the island where the church ceremony
02:55is going to take place.
02:57Victor and his groomsmen will be getting ready on his family island.
03:05I'm just so excited, I'm so ready.
03:08I've chosen to wear something very sentimental, but I can't really discuss it.
03:14I know that Abby's sort of brought in a few traditions from Australia.
03:20She's going to wear our grandmother's wedding dress that has been sitting in my grandmother's closet for many years.
03:26Grandma can't quite make the journey across, so I think it's a really nice way of bringing her to the
03:31wedding.
03:33I'm just a crying.
03:36I'm just a crying.
04:00A lot of the men from the Orland Islands used to be seafarers and they used to work on these
04:05massive tall ships that were actually stationed to go between Europe and Australia.
04:10And my dad when I was younger actually made a very clear point.
04:13Make sure you go and find yourself a wife from a far away island.
04:16Don't go to the neighbouring island because they're going to be your cousins or something.
04:19I think so.
04:33One tradition quite typical to the Orland Islands is actually to have a wedding rug.
04:37Coming from the fact that it used to be quite cold in the winters and newlywed couples would need a
04:43rug to stand on and stay warm.
04:52My sister is going to join the local violinist play in front of us as we're walking down from the
04:57church.
04:59It's a tradition that the boats then sail to the wedding reception.
05:04Sailing there is actually a cultural thing for the Orland region because you have to travel by boat from one
05:10island to another.
05:22We have to face the wind now.
05:34Wow.
05:36There we go.
05:36Wow.
05:37Now we're going to see it.
05:39Come on.
05:41Yeah!
05:47Welcome to the micro-firm, Katie Nell from Bloomberg.
05:52For those of you who don't know, I did all the chasing.
05:56And when the time finally came, when I thought he'd kiss me goodbye, he gave me a high five.
06:06I've actually been offered by Victor's family to wear his family crown, which has been in their family since 1946.
06:16My grandma wore that and my auntie wore it as well.
06:19It's a very big honour for us.
06:22And it's our wedding, Abby. Let's do this!
06:31We really wanted to have a blend of what the island itself is really strongly embedded in and also bringing
06:37in my background.
06:38I think it's important that we remember our traditions and now when we have two cultures colliding that we can
06:44show each other the different traditions we have.
06:47Thank you very much.
