A little bit of magic

Our honeymoon is gonna rock! For two nights of it, we get to stay at this romantic little place;

Magic Cottage, Takau River, Kerikeri 

Bath on the balcony overlooking the river = serious levels of awesomeness. Cannot wait to get into it!

For the rest of the three weeks we will be staying in either the back of this;

 or this;

Much less romantic and classy, but a hell of a lot more fun!

Calm

This week a massive feeling of calm has washed over me. I think it’s the result of a few things that have happened.

Invites and Ceremony Draft
Firstly, on the weekend we got our round one reception invitations out (Yay!). Best of all, I know that they have got to people, despite us posting them with insufficient postage on them. We also have managed to put together the draft of our ceremony and send it through to our celebrant. It feels so good having that done because, you know, I’ve heard that the ceremony is a fairly important bit of the whole getting married thing.

Holidays!
Flights and leave for our honeymoon have been booked. This makes me so happy. You know when you get to that point where you are just plodding through work and life thinking ‘just put one foot in front of the other and don’t stop’? I’m there. Just having the leave booked has given me the drive to keep on plodding on. I can almost see the finish line. The last holiday we had was in April, and that was only for one week. The last holiday I took that was more than one week was in November 2008! One month off is going to be bliss (even if one week of that is prior to the wedding so I’ll be busy)!

Makeup
Anyone that’s been reading this blog for a while will know how worried I was about make-up. I had my original trial a while back and felt okay about it after that. Recently I’ve started worrying about it again though. If I went back to the start of this whole wedding planning thing, I would make the decision just to not wear makeup I think. It’s causing me so much stress because I never ever ever wear makeup so I look so different with it. Anyhow, the day of our engagement shoot I had another trial. This time my makeup lady went for a bit of a different ‘look’ and did my eyes darker. And you know what? I loved it. There wasn’t even that moment where I needed to get used to it. I just looked damn good, if I may say so myself. So that has left me feeling nice and calm too. I’ll double check I’m happy with it when I see what it looks like in the photos…  but I’m guessing I’ll still be happy so I’ll make sure that she does it with the darker eyes on the day!

Engagement Session
Everyone should have an engagement photo shoot. Seriously. Best thing ever. Before it, I was nervous and more than a little apprehensive about having a camera pointed at me while I got cosy with my hubby to be. I’m guessing the first photos that were taken look more like photos of two rabbits caught in headlights rather than of two people being all in love and stuff. As the arvo went on we found that we relaxed a lot more and ended up having a blast. We also found that it was really nice to be able to spend some time together. As in proper time together - no distractions, no to-do lists, nothing… just us (and Angela of course). I kinda feel like I feel in love all over again.
After the arvo we had, I’m really happy that we have chosen to do a first look. If we get that feeling again, you’re not going to be able to wipe the smiles off our faces. The only risk is that if we end up so relaxed that we have a nana nap at the alter.

Here's hoping this beautiful calmness stays around for a while!

Life priorities and the new honeymoon plan…

I am still super dooper busy, but thought I’d take half an hour out to give my blog some loving. Sorry I’m a such a sucky blogger lately!  We're about to enter the no internet period of moving.. but hopefully that will only be for two weeks or so!

When I last posted about our honeymoon we wanted to go for a short and cheap break. One reason for this was because we really want to take unpaid leave and do a 3 month or so trip of Europe sometime next year. It’s something we’ve wanted to do for a while now and, to be honest, I get a little bit jealous with all my friends buggering off to Europe all the time. I guess that’s where life priorities come in though. I may get jealous, but really, we could quite easily do our holiday if we chose to but we always think things through and make the best decision for us at that particular point in time. I think it really is a case of the grass is always greener on the other side because if we were to set our priorities differently, I know that I would be even more jealous of the people that have what we have now. Anyhow, I digress. Honeymoon….

A few months ago my Grandad called to let me know that he and Nan wouldn’t be able to make it to the wedding. They live in New Zealand and are getting very old so I never expected them to come, but I was quite surprised how much effort it sounded like they had put into looking at ways they might be able to come (Grandad can’t fly that far anymore for various reasons and Nan is blind which makes things hard). I know that my other Nana would like to come too, but is getting too old to handle the flight now.

The last time I went back to New Zealand was in 2002 and it occasionally crosses my mind that I should go back and visit… but I always end up deciding that it would be better to go somewhere else instead. We are 99% decided that for our honeymoon we will head back to NZ for 2-3 weeks and spend some of the time visiting my family (it’s awful to say, but if I don’t go back soon it may be too late) and the rest on a camping adventure.

Unfortunately this will delay Europe by another year or so because we'll use a fair bit of leave doing this because it seems silly to just go for one week. I think it would be a good decision though - we’ll see my family and I can show Justin where I grew up. I go on about how our wedding is all about celebrating with our friends and family, so why not extend that to those that can’t make it and at least let my family meet my new husband! It’s definitely one of those situations where you have to sit down and get your priorities right…. and I think that we’ve managed to get them 100% spot on this time.

Now I just need to pray that none of my family have discovered this blog because we aren’t telling them our plans until it is 100% certain….

*Sings* I'm from the harbour, the Hokianga harbour.

Honeymooning on a Budget

We have just returned from a one week mini holiday in Kuala Lumpur. Such a cheap holiday - when you can get flights for two people return for $400 including all taxes and everything, it’s cheaper to go overseas than to holiday in your own country.

We are probably going to do our honeymoon on a tight budget too. With our wedding being at the end of November, it’s not really an ideal time for a honeymoon because everything will be getting more and more expensive as the holiday season draws nearer. There is also the fact that mister fiancé isn’t going to have much leave available… oh, and the fact that we really want to go to Europe for a few months, but the end of this year is not going to be a great time for us to take unpaid leave. Plus we will no doubt be broke from the wedding and broke because we will hopefully have a mortgage by then.

We also don’t want to not have a honeymoon. Given that we already live together and everything we don’t want us to just go back to our house the day after our wedding and slip back into the daily grind of life.

Solution: Cheap one week honeymoon.
Additional benefit: A short honeymoon means that we can go somewhere relaxing and not get too bored. I’m not really a sit by a pool and relax kinda girl but my fiancé thinks we should just relax on our honeymoon. One week of chilling out I think I can manage to enjoy without going crazy.

Here are some options that I can think of:

Fiji – I really want to go to Fiji. It’d be a bit of a trek from Perth – I think we’d have to take two flights. But a trek also means that we are unlikely to bump into people we know (on our flight back from KL on Sunday there were three people I knew on the plane). Apparently it’s hot and humid in December though which would suck.

Philippines – Oh Philippines how I long to visit you. I think I would be quite happy with this option but you never really see any cheap flights from Perth... I guess it’s a two plane trip destination. My other concern is that I’m not sure I’d be satisfied with only being here for a week and spending it relaxing. I want one or two months and I want to explore.

Phuket, Thailand – So many advantages - it’s cheap, December is one of the best times of year to visit, it’s not to far from Perth, and it’s in the same time zone (which I think is a huge benefit when you are only going for one week). There is a lot of potential to bump into people we know though… and that I do not want on our honeymoon.

Langkawi, Malaysia – Same deal as Phuket really I think… just a different country.

Islands off Queensland – This would be a great honeymoon destination. My issue is the whole budget bit though. I think this could actually be a really expensive option.

Broome, Esperance, Exmouth, Western Australia – There are many places in WA that are so far away (and relatively expensive to get to if you don’t drive) that we will probably never bother going otherwise. A local honeymoon would be great in terms of time constraints but maybe not so good for the budget - accommodation, food and activities in Australia will cost a bomb. The main disadvantage here is that for places like Broome and Exmouth it’s going to be damn hot in December.

 Where would you go for a cheap and relaxing honeymoon or holiday?

 

Top row: Fiji, Philippines
Middle row: Phuket, Broome
Bottom row: Langkawi, Brampton Island