health & fitness.... & badges.

I've gone a bit exercise mad lately...
I'm still on holidays until mid next week, so that's part of it, trying to get as much in as I can before school starts, riding 'the high' of exercise endorphins, and hoping they'll motivate me to keep going once I'm exhausted from teaching...
And I'm sore- I'm sore and I know my body is asking for a break, but I'm kind of hooked. For once, I'm feeling leaner, looking like I can see muscles in my arms start to appear, doing complicated side-planks with relatively little difficulty, upping my weights in pump classes, doing two classes in a row and walking away fatigued but 'lean'.... Previously, going to the gym every day or other day wouldn't really yield results, so it'd be hard to keep going, so it's really nice to be seeing changes. I've lost a couple of kilos, too, in the last couple of months (I'm not in any rush, and I'm not adhering to any 'wedding weight', and realistically, if I loose another 2-3kg I'll be pretty happy in any case, so it's not like I'm racing to loose 10kg and am going to be bitterly disappointed and eat away my disappointment), and clothes that hadn't been fitting are fitting again - that's super exciting.
But this is where I need to be careful. Because I push myself, I like to be on-top, to get everything right, to be the best, and then I break, and have to stop for a week instead of a day. I just know that even with one day's rest, I find getting out to exercise again the next day is hard for me- I need to ride the wave while I'm on it.

In other news- I've picked my wedding dress!!! It's this one.  Nic knows he's not allowed to click there. For some reason they picked a photo of the model with her leg in a weird position and it makes her look chunky.. or the dress looks chunky or SOMETHING. But it's gorgeous, and simple, and me, and perfect for a garden ceremony, then running around the zoo taking photos. And it's not -too- expensive, comparatively to the cost of gowns in this country.

I also... may have ordered badges.
Yes, ok, this is frivolous (and I basically yelled at my Mum about how hiring a limo was stupid and a waste of money and I'd rather go in my Man of Awesome's Skoda for all I care, a car is just a car), but it's also cool. I figure, people who help out with wedding things/shop for shoes with me/help assemble flowers/just generally look after us, get a badge. eg. Jenny will be shopping for shoes with me. She's not a bridesmaid, and I'm sure she'd like to be, so she can have a badge. Yay! Also my Dad & his partner? Team bride badge. Nic's Dad? Team groom. Right? I think it's fun.
Look, here they are! Sadly enough, the dog on the team bride one is an ACTUAL SILHOUETTE of our dog.
Yes.
I'm not entirely sure is this is lame, or cool.
Possibly lame.
But you can't really get much more 'custom made' than that, can you!?

diy till the cows come home

I saw my Mum (and puppy!) yesterday and talked wedding. My Mum tends to flip-flop between being mildy interested, and completely disinterested in everything ranging from my entire life, to just the wedding, so it's always a difficult call as to whether she'll be engaged or not.
Anyway, yesterday, this is what she said:
"I'd really like to be involved in your wedding"
I nearly fell of my chair. She said it in a sincere way, not because I'd been rambling on and on about DIY that, and 'we'll be making this'.
Next thing I know, we get home and book in a dress-looking-date next week. No procrastination, she wants to get right down to business.
Ah, ok, Mum. This is what I wanted, to be fair, but it's really, really tough to trust that she's not just going to drop off the planet and be completely nonchalant about it again come next week.
We'll see.


I made a list yesterday of all the DIY projects we've decided to do. And thinking about them, I think we're doing them for mostly the right reasons (eg. because we want to, because no shop could make what we want... and occasionally because to buy/have made what we want would be too expensive to be justified ($1,000 minimum spend on flowers? I think not)).
Here's how it looks, and how it's going so far:

A list of projects we’ve decided to take on:

Invitations, RSVP cards, Info cards - printed, addressed
-> also, envelope inners, return address stamp, tied with twine, ribbon or belly band???

Status: Created in photoshop, need to be printed somehow/somewhere.
Streamer background
-> dyed streamers
-> white lace
->free standing structure

Status: Started! Waiting on dyes to arrive from the UK, need to get more fabric and begin making the structure. This is a high-priority project.
Yay flags
-> approx 50. Calico w/ iron on transfer? Or painted stencil? 

Status: Not happening, yet.
Animal place holders
-> wooden animals? Dates written on in silver?
-> Mouths carved.
-> Names printed and cut from cardstock. 

Status: Given up on plastic animals for now. Need to go to the market and look at their cheap imported-from-China wooden animals. Wondering if people should just take their animals home as favours. When I told Mum about our favours idea, she said: "What, is it like a lolly bag?" and had no idea that favours existed. Ah, how things have changed.
Favors
-> Paper bags
-> Animal stamp, thankyou stamp, name/date stamp?
-> Tea (in air-sealed/plastic bag?)
->Tied with twine. 

Status: Not started
Guestbook
-> several yellow streamers
-> Black fabric pens (do these exist?)

Status: Not started
Programs
-> How/what? Vistaprint? How are they going to be interesting? 

Status: Don't know enough of the day-of schedule yet to make these, and need a brain-wave of how to make them nice.
Flowers
-> Bouquet x 1
-> Centrepieces x 12ish?
-> Real or fake?
-> Flower boxes

Status: Made enquiries about flower boxes. Nothing else yet.
Centerpieces:
-> words, painted.
-> mason jars
->table animal pictures.

Status: Words acquired. Need to be painted. Have a slowly growing collection of mason jars.
Seating chart? (some kind of zoo map...!!!)

Status: Emailed brother who is a wiz with photoshop to see if this will be easy for him to make.

Photobooth
->Props!

Status: Yeah, not yet.
Menus
-> Painted and stuck books. 

Status: Lower priority, have a small collection of cooking books to use, but need to finalise the menu before doing too much with these.
Ring pillow book:
-> Book with centre cut, ribbon, painted or covered.

Status: This isn't a hugely high priority, so, we'll see. We have plenty of op-shop (thrift shop?) books so we can paint and use one of those.

In the meantime, we've booked appointments to meet with 3 celebrants over the next week or two. I found it a really weird experience to be choosing celebrants. You go to a website, right, look at photos of people, and try and decide who you'd like to look at, if they have a website, etc. It's shopping for people. It weirds me out.

We know who we want as our photographers but they said they don't book more than 8 months out, so I'm holding out from hassling them, hoping they hold true to their word and don't book our date before March (8 months before the wedding).

streamers!! pt.1

Before we begin: anybody around here use a Mac and have iLife11? Specifically iPhoto? Does it make anybody else want to rip their brains out with a fork? Mine seems to be having issues importing 10 photos.
10.
I mean, one of the main features of a photo program has to be the ability to get photos from point a to point b (program), right?
If you can't do that properly, you're in serious trouble, my friend.
In fact, it's at the point where, as I'm importing my 10 photos, I might as well go have a long shower, take a nap, or go for a jog because everything else is freezing.

Anyhoo. According to the Interwebs I'm not the only one having issues, so I suppose that makes it less frustrating.
On to wedding-y-related stuff.
Over here, we've kicked into high-mode DIY.
We have a lot of projects coming up, so we might as well ride the enthusiasm while we still have it!
This was our project this weekend, resulting in blue and green stained hands when we went to the gym.

Streamer background! So, at the moment it's just the dyed cotton streamers, and probably about 1/3 of the total we'll end up making. But it was sort of our test-run, and I think they turned out beautifully! We want to hang them from a dowel or rail, and maybe use some yellow streamers as our 'guest-book', for people to write on with fabric pens, and then we can add those ones to the other and have a beautiful bright wall hanging. We're both super excited about this project. We imagine them behind us during the ceremony, then moved inside to cover the dark weird wall in the reception room... plus, if we have to go indoors due to the weather, we can use this behind us so it's not like we're just having our ceremony in the entry-way of our reception room. I think we'll be making some darker ones, and possibly having some cream/white ones in there, too.
Super excited.

Also, along with the invite (which I've changed a little since I uploaded it here), I now have RSVP and information cards to go along with it. Can you guess the colour theme?

(our surnames are not Antelopes nor Frog, but they fit)

(tempted to move the 'What's to eat?' question up, turn it sideways, and have it coming out of the tiger's mouth, there... but then the other ones would probably have to go wonky, too)

 Plus we also bought 6 wooden word signs (I'm a literacy student/English teacher. I looooove words. I love words on signs. Oooh, and these are caligraphy signs too. Pretty!) which we're going to paint white, maybe with a pearlescent finish? Or maybe just shiny white? Or something else. I don't know yet. The words are, from memory: love, joy, forever, imagine, laugh and dream. They'll be going on the tables somewhere. Possibly on books (words leaping out of pages! Yeah!) or between, or something or other. Not sure yet.

But it's all super exciting. Apparently at some point in the next couple of months I'm meant to book a florist (if we go down that route). How does one go about booking a florist???

too old for this...

On Friday night, some girls from Uni invited me to 'go dancing' with them at a club that plays 90s music. Nic was going to be away for the night so I thought I should actually be social and go.
So I did.
Oh Lord.
It's been a long time since I was in a place like this. Say maybe... five or six years. Well, look, not much as changed as far as I can tell, though it was... odd.
So, get this: girls dressed up in short dresses and huge heals. I saw one stick-thin girl cross the street in these massive heels and teeeeeeny tiny shorts, and I thought: why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we have to bear all, torture our feet, plaster our faces with chemicals, when the guy next to her was in jeans and a t-shirt?  I thought about this the other day when we were at the beach. It suddenly struck me: picture a middle-aged man, overweight, beer gut, at the beach. He'd be in shorts, right? Stomach hanging everywhere, hairy chest, arms, legs, back, pink as a lobster. And our reaction? Well, we wouldn't have one, would we? Because that's fine, and normal. Now! Picture a woman- middle-aged, overweight, in a bikini, pink as a lobster. For most of us, I'd imagine the reaction would be quite different. And if not for us, then probably for people on the beach. I know my mother would have a depreciating thing or two to say. That's not fair, right? What's up with the double standards?

Anyway. Back to the club. We're all dressed up and packed in to this dance floor. Most of the people there looked to be between 19 and 27, I guess, except for one older gentleman who went wild for 'Walking on Sunshine', arms flailing wildly in the air, expression of glee plastered on his face. The music being played at this club seemed to give otherwise sane and reasonable people an excuse to regress to highschool and sing 'Barbie Girl', 'Blue' (by Eiffel ...65?) and various SpiceGirls songs at the top of their lungs, hips jerking and occasionally trying to sexy-dance.
I'm sorry.
You cannot sexy dance to Wannabe.
And I think that was what confused me the most, was that a song came on, and I wanted to yell "LAME!!!" but that was the point, right? Don't get me wrong, it was fun (but too crowded. Dancing when someone else's back is pushed up against your back as they writhe back and forth isn't so hot), but my brain was having a hard time processing.

Might have to try and include some lame 90s (though to be fair, most of the songs our group knew where very late 90s to early 00s) in our wedding playlist.
And speaking of, I think we've decided on our 'walking down the aisle' (and I'm still not sure in what fashion we'll be doing that, yet), leaving the ceremony, and first or last dance music.
Yup, I'm making progress, y'all. This thing will be planned by April. Then it'll be down to all the DIY stuff we've foolhardily taken on.

welcome the new year and all it brings

Hey!
It's 2012.
How did that happen?
This is a big year. The world is meant to end, right? I think subconsciously Nic and I have taken that onboard and are cramming so much stuff in, just to make it worthwhile.
The other day I designed our wedding invitations, more or less. Yes, there's still 7 or so months (um..) before we need to actually have them, and Lord knows I'm changeable (like it one day, hate it a month later), but I like Photoshop, and I like making stuff, and I liked making them so much that for a minute there I had a glimmer of being able to do it more than just for fun. Maybe I'll put them below the cut, you can let me know what you think. Then I just have to figure out how we go about getting them printed up. We'd both love letterpress but I don't know how much $$$$$$ that would be.

I'm filled with a sense of trepidation about the wedding, in some ways. Not about getting married to Nic, although it's a very final and 'definite' thing to do... more that... you know, you always read wedding posts about people whose family came together and laughed and had a great time, and it was a real celebration and community thing, right? I don't even mean in the lead-up to the wedding, I'm assuming I'll get no help there except from Nic... more on the actual day, particularly for smaller, intimate weddings....I think I have a vision of my mother (or even other members of my family), gloomy, judging, making snide remarks about the food, the fact that we're having butter chicken as one of our mains and a vegetarian gnocchi as the other (quelle horreur! untraditional food!), or that there isn't enough wine selection, or that we served people canapes instead of a sit-down entree, etc etc. All these things, even though she continues to go on and on about her spit-roast backyard wedding...
I just want people to have fun, and I think I'm going to kill myself by stressing out about whether they will or not.
And then there's the feeling that Nic and I have sort of 'hermitised' ourselves. Which is to say, we have two really close friends, and not a whole lot beyond that until we get to 'people we're friends with at work', and 'people we talk to sometimes when we say 'let's catch up!' and it never happens'... and again, those stories of a community of people, of friends being there for one another, helping out, sharing the joy... I can't see it, and it makes me sad. And maybe when it's needed it will come... I don't know.

I've had two wedding panic 'oh crap we forgot something vitally important and it's the day of the wedding!' dreams already. Yesterday I made a timeline. I think I feel a bit better now.

Click below if you want to see the invite. If you could let me know what you think, if it needs any changes, etc, that would be fabulous. Of course it looks a bit less awesome without our surnames as it sits up nicely next to the ampersand, but so it goes. And the actual one has the password for the website, too, but it's not finished yet.

OH! I need to do a NZ post of some description. I'll knock that up a bit later.

so the diy bonanza begins...

So, since we now have a location, we decided to start getting things rolling on the wedding side of things.
Contemplating colours, we considered macaw birds, rainforest-type things, and then I found this picture:

{via}

And I liked the colours- the dark blue, the turquoise, the yellow. I put them into kuler, it gave me colours. I figure they might be a tiny bit seaside for our rainforest-room wedding, but whatevs. We also want a splash of purple in there. We're not really going traditional, here, we want to brighten up the room.

So then we started thinking about us. About our lounge room full of books. I'd seen books used as centrepieces before, I figured we go down that route.

Cue spending $40 on $2 books (that's a lot of books) from op-shops, and a heap more money on sample pots of house paint in said colours, glue, brushes and sponges....

We now have books drying in the colours. We figure we'll stack them up, maybe 3 or 4 in a pile, then put some tea-lights or flowers on them. 

We also got some tall & skinny cookbooks, which we'll glue most of the pages together (leave some select few non-glued and 'white wash' over the writing and pictures) and in the middle, have a ribbon marker, and the menu. Menus in books! How novel. (get it? That was an UNINTENTIONAL pun, y'all).

The last project I started working on this weekend was a wacky idea based on this image:

And I thought: yes! We were already going to incorperate plastic animals into the setting somehow (the wedding is at the zoo after all). So we bought a pack of 5 wild animals for $1 (so, if we have 50 ppl that's $50 on place-holders + some card stock and better textas than I used below) and I painted them- one test white lion who has taken FOREVER to dry, and one test silver gorilla, who I wanted to come out more chrome than shiny, but oh well, I think he looks more 'classy' this way.

Cos, y'know, having plastic animals feature at your wedding is high class.

All I had were whiteboard markers, so the writing on the cards looks terrible, and I don't know if I'd have coloured or white card, but you get the idea. Test run! Also, the lion needs another coat of paint, so he's a bit splodgy. But you get the idea.

When the books are dry, I'll stack 'em up and see how they look, too. It's all happening! How exctiting!

jobs, dresses, spiky-things.

That's an ECHIDNA. He was at the zoo. I like them- they're one of my favourite Australian animals.

Things are coming together around here, despite the fact that I still don't post as much as I'd like to. I suppose I feel a bit like I don't know what I'm writing for, and have a bit of the 'who cares what I write?' hat on at the moment. Blogs, like lessons, need purpose (gag). So. Riddle me this: Should I write more about teaching and kids, about wedding planning (which is finally starting to kick off), or a combination of the both with some gardening and cooking thrown in? I think I still prefer the latter. This feels like some kind of ongoing conversation with myself. The blog, that is. Maybe that's ok.
But it feels rather self-absorbed.
OH WELL.

photoshop mad...

So you know how last time I said we'd decided we were getting married at the zoo? Well, turns out our ORIGINAL date, 10/11/12 was still free. Me being me, however, I needed to make sure there was nothing better. Nothing against the zoo, I just have to exhaust all my options to be completely comfortable in the choices I've made so I don't spend ages second guessing myself.
So we went to some really adorable venues today- like, super rustic, very Australian and probably what we'd originally be looking for... BUT... they didn't do anything for us, we kept saying: the zoo is better. We love the zoo.

SO....
Zoo it is!!!

Which means I've been spending the last 3 hours or so photoshopping like crazy (because I can), since we have overseas people we'll want to get save the dates to earlier rather than later... I want to keep hush hush about the zoo till the invites go out cos it's cool, so our random STD mightn't make sense but hey, it's fun and I think it's pretty. I think we'll get it printed on post-cards and then glue magnets to the back so people can put it on their fridge.
Infact, that could mean that the superfluous stuff (eg, everything except "Save the date!" and the date) could possibly go on the back...

Anyhow, if you'd like to see what I've done, click below... If you have any suggestions, if you think I've gone overboard with the fonts/borders/glowy stuff, tell me.... I'd appreciate it!

Arg! This thing is becoming real, FAST!!!

random picture sunday

...because who doesn't like a new feature? Ha, not that it'll be lasting, but I feel like saying something, and don't have much to say,

That being said, though, Nic and I went to the Melbourne Zoo yesterday to check out their wedding bonanza, and it's awesome. The room which would fit our guests is small and intimate and has a beautiful 'rainforest' outlook and MONKEYS. Yes. We will dine with monkeys. The room felt a little dark, but it was done up for a cocktail wedding at the time and not decorated or anything so might be 'brighter' when there's tables and candles and flowers and stuff....
Also, the ceremony would be in a pretty little grassy area with a tree and bushes all around, and they're apparently going to make it much much prettier between now and our wedding date, so YAY. And they fence it off to the public while you have your ceremony. PLUS, then you get to waltz around the zoo with your photographer and get photos with animals in the background, and trees, and Japanese gardens, and climbing a massively old fig tree and pretending to ride elephant statues and all sorts of things, PLUS imagine the puns!!! Oh, the puns. PLUS, you can pay more for an 'animal experience' so rather than standing around drinking and eating canapes, you can stand around drinking and eating canapes with SUMATRAN TIGERS IN THE BACKGROUND GETTING FED. Yes. And if all that hasn't EXPLODED your brain by now (and my use of caps, italics and bold is surely about to), if we book before the end of the year I GET TO FEED AN EDIBLE BOUQUET TO A GIRAFFE. Yes. A giraffe. "Don't stick your neck our for us- we'd love you have you at the wedding" (This chick doesn't look so thrilled about the giraffe, but I will be.)
So... the challenge for Nic and I will be balancing the right amount of cheese and hilarity, with the right amount of not-going-over-board. So far I want everything to be animal/zoo themed, which, having had a look around the internet last night, people seemed to think would be 'tacky'. I know I'm not meant to take the advice of the internet so, friends- is there such a thing as over embracing the zoo theme?
Also, the cost of the zoo is a bit more than we had wanted....
But...

I bring your attention back to the giraffe, and the sumatran tigers.


Finally, here is the random picture for today, because it always makes me laugh, and I don't understand who, in this tiny little fishing town on the north cost of Washington state, thought this was a reasonable idea.

There is also a female version in a bikini. That might be next time's photo. 

every day i'm shufflin'

via weheartit

Last night was the wedding of my cousin - I mentioned it in an earlier post. Here's my thoughts:
The ceremony, conducted by a rabbi in a synagogue was funny. Like, best rabbi ever. A sweet ceremony, where they didn't dwell on the formalities, but cracked jokes. I also am weirdly attracted to blessings/things being sung rather than said. I missed the couple sharing vows (particularly since my cousin, the bride, didn't say anything during 'their' speech either) as I reckon it's probably really sweet when they're written by each other, but it was still lovely.
The reception was full, and it was a bit out of order from what normally happens (opening with drinks on the patio, then the traditional Jewish dance, which was omg so much fun and went on forever... but my mother and I circled, stood on people's feet, spun, got trampled by the guys, got hot and sweaty and sore feet, and kept going and going. I told Nic I want it. If I want anything that harks back to whatever Jewishness I can claim, I want that dance.
Then entree, then speeches, then dinner by 9 (finally!), then dancing. Oh, lord, the dancing. I got Nic up and we danced. Then Mum came up and she dances like Elaine from Seinfeld (bit uncoordinated), but I shook my booty, shuffled to that LMFAO song, had Nic in hysterics, and well, felt like I looked pretty damn fine.
I also spoke with my brother (he's 3 years younger than me) more than I think I have in the last, I dunno, 20 years. I may have convinced him to come meet Darcy and then for us to all go and get pancakes but I'm not sure if he's ready to accept that being friends/close with your sister isn't that uncool, and that I might actually be fun to hang out with sometimes.
But oh, the dancing. I quickly switched from wedges (ladies, I don't wear heels. Like, ever. Not even small ones. I rarely wear ballet flats. So, the fact that I stayed in wedges for a good few solid hours including dancing is a feat (ha. ha. get it? because i'm talking about shoes) to comfortable shoes.

It's all made me sort of question (as weddings are wont to do) what we want from ours. Dancing was such a blast- my cousin barely left the dance floor. So maybe there is a re-evaluation in needing to spend money on setting that up- either with a DJ or a band... instead of an ipod... That being said, the atmosphere with 300 people is going to be remarkably different to the atmosphere with 50 people.
Then I think about running away and getting married, but I think I'd like to have the party. I think... when we have a location set, it'll be easier. I'll know what kinds of invites to look for, dresses, etc...
I was talking to Nic about the ZOO the other day again (shouldn't the word zoo be all in capitals. Anyone?) and coming up with some great animal puns that could go on our invites if we got married there. [warning: puns ahead]

How about these:
We couldn't bear for you to miss it!
You'll have a roaringly good time.
Come and see us seal the deal!
We ain't lion, it's going to be great!
It'll be wild!
Don't monkey around, come to our wedding!
Don't be a cow, come to our wedding (ah ha. Ok so there aren't cows in the zoo, whatever.)
We'll have a whale of a time (no whales either, whatever, don't care).
Come join Nic & Em for a beary special event.
Come and see the mane event at our wedding.

And so on.
And so forth.
On that note, it's certainly time for bed now. I've exhausted my brains trying to remember/think of those puns. Definitely need to organise a trip to the zoo sometime soon to see if I can put any of them into action.

the kittens... my god, the kittens.

I don't know what I did wrong in life to end up with two kittens, or who decided it was a good idea, but I could do without the 7am zoomies on and over the bed, the consistent digging around under furniture to get to a lost toy mouse, the having to stickytape carboard to the bottom of each whitegood we own (otherwise too many toys go under), the continual tripping over Darcy as he inevitably positions himself directly behind you when you're in the kitchen, AGAIN....

I AM glad, however, that neither of them seems to need brushing (not sure what that's about,  but it's a win for lazy people), they don't seem to cough up hairballs, and 6am (touch wood) is the earliest we get woken up by their antics (I've read horror stories of people being woken up at 4am).

On Sunday, Nic and I are going to my cousin's wedding, from the 'rich side' of my family. The ceremony is in a synagogue. I think the only synagogue I've been in was in Krakow- a tiny little affair in the old 'jewish part' of the city before the holocaust. I ate a tasty bagel around there though... anyhoo. So, it's apparently going to be quite orthodox, her dress apparently costs a fortune, the reception is being held at the yacht club (and the ceremony is at 2, reception at 6.30.... I didn't think it was normal to have such a huge gap between events...?) and Mum suspects she's invited 500 people. That being said, looking on the yacht club's website, you really can't trust my mother and her judgey-judgementalism, because the club can only seat 300 people, so unless my cousin is leaving 200 people at the ceremony/standing outside/waiting on the beach, I don't think she's having 500 people. So I'm trying not to get all judgey-judgementalism ala my mother, because my cousin is going to be having this outrageously expensive wedding that's going to be so traditional, because that's what she wants, so good for her... but it's still... difficult. Like, if she's spent $10k on her dress (again, my mother making these claims, so let's take them with a grain of salt), that's the most I want to spend on my wedding.

It's funny though, because every time I bring up the wedding, Mum goes on and on about how fantastic her backyard BBQ spit roast was. Which is fine, because it probably was fantastic, but it's like she's trying to push me to do the same thing. Imagine if I wanted the big dress with 300 people, and the whole shebang! It's only just good enough that I want a small wedding without all the hooplah, informal... I don't even have a backyard, but she keeps going on and on, like eventually I'll wake up and go: "Actually, that's a great idea, Mum! Let me set up a marquee over my veggie patch, have a few people around for beers, and make sure I keep the car races on the TV in the background shall I?"

So hey, this post ended up being less about kittens, and more ranting about weddings & my mother.

holy bananas....

YO

Long time no see y'all.
I'm writing this as a tentative 'I might be back a bit more' thing because, I might. I'm about to graduate from my Masters, but theoretically won't have a 'real job' till term 1 next year (school starts in Feb down under) so will have plenty of time to kill between now and then AND, since I won't have assignments due any more (cue cheers), I won't have to worry about writing them, and having them sap my energy.

SO

I suppose the best place to start is a bit of a recap of the last, oh, 3 and a half months.

feet up

I think I'm really preparing to get settled in to the house. That is to say that I just went to Target and ended up getting a couple of tank tops with boob-support so I can slouch around the house without a bra on, while I'm not at Uni (or work).
To all that have just arrived, hello, welcome, usually I don't give you much insight into my chest, but apparently today's the day. Anyway, I don't think I've ever been so excited about a piece of clothing that nobody except Nic will see, but there you have it.

So after a fair amount of badgering last night, I managed to get Nic to email me his priorities for the wedding. In fact, he spent about 20 minutes over on his laptop madly typing away, to the point where I didn't actually know what he was doing and had to double-check to see if he had understood the assignment.
Here they are, more or less, with a little editing from me. This is almost kind of like a guest post, but one that took much pestering for the guest to write.


1. Location
2. Not having it uptight, not getting focused on the details, and just letting it go. Be as it will.
3. (Maybe this should be part of two) Feeling like a 'real person', or that the day is about us, and not worrying about what everyone else is thinking or doing, or if they are happy or not. Maybe - acknowledging us for us?
4. Having some friends! And friends that aren't my friends or Em's friends, but friends that are ours.
5. I want for it to be colourful, happy, and to be like a big friends/family get together type of thing, with some formal aspects, like the vows and actual 'marriage' i guess, but also just like friends, sitting around, dancing, eating, drinking, being merry. A campfire would be fricken awesome. And not HAVING to do stuff, but choosing to dance and be silly, and wear cool shoes that don't necessarily go with a suit, and wearing a hat... Cool stuff.

running away to the mountains.

After looking at some other potential venues last weekend, and having had lunch with my Mum again the other day, I was beginning to solidify the fact that I didn't want to do this traditional wedding thing.
And I don't mean that I didn't want a traditional wedding... Because we all knew it was going to be offbeat, anyway... but that I was beginning to want, less and less, to deal with the hassle of the big hooplah that is the wedding. Of worrying about catering for people having to drive 'too far' from the city (as my mum said, again, when I suggested a place that's about an hour and a half out of Melbourne, and I had to remind her that half of Nic's family (beside the immediate family all being overseas) are at least a 6 hour drive from Melbourne itself.)... of worrying about costs, of etiquette, of my mother being uninvolved... literally and emotionally.

So Nic and I were laying in bed last night, both of us tired and about to fall asleep, which seems to be when we have our best discussions sometimes. I said:
"I think I'm about ready to throw in the towel on this wedding thing. I mean, not the wedding (I meant 'marriage' here), but the wedding."
Nic looked at me from across the pillow, confusion smudged across his tired little face. After all, I'd just said I wanted to throw in the towel on the wedding thing, not the wedding, but the wedding.
Which he kindly repeated to me, to make sure I knew how ridiculous I sounded.
"Not the marriage, but like, the whole ordeal that is the wedding."
You know things aren't good when you're using the word ordeal to describe something that's meant to be fun. Ok, so the planning probably isn't 'meant to be' fun, but the wedding itself should be. Nic looks at me as though I've lost my marbles (this happens often).
"I've said this ages ago! Just the two of us should go somewhere and do it, and then we'll have the party later, some time! You said we couldn't though, cos your family would tear us a new one!"  He's so eloquent, my fiance.
"Well, they probably would," I reply.
"Weddings are so trite and traditional. I don't want people to sit there and go Wtf are Yay flags, and why are they doing that? And being bored or confused. I want to get married and then have a party later!"
We discuss this for a little while- I don't necessarily want it to be just us, but with a select few people, sure! Somewhere awesome, in mountains. Nic feels it should be somewhere (in mountains) that's special to us, not just randomly in the Swiss alps. Nic tells me he's desperate to wear the ring, to do this, that he can't wait. I tease him, in a sing-song, mocking kind of way: "You wanna be my huuuusband".
"Nah," He replies, eyes closing tiredly, "I just want to wear some bling."
I love him.

i don't know what organdy is but...

Having more or less decided, yesterday, that I like knee/tea length dresses (I'm talking wedding, here), I googled 'tea length wedding dresses' today with that vision in mind, and came across Posh Girl vintage.
Browsing through the images I found this:

Go to the website to see more photos because this one alone doesn't really do it justice, I don't think. {via}

 And I think I'm in love.

Although it's not tea-length...It's got beautiful laze, sleaves, the waist would probably be in the appropriate place (not too high, not too low), and, once I keep going to the gym and eventually my body switches on and actually loses some weight, the waist would be fine (it's about an inch off now. Can't be too hard, right?) (My measurements are based on me getting my Apple power cord for my computer, wrapping it around various parts of myself, then measuring that against an A4 sheet of paper, then converting it to inches. In other words: My methods are flawed.)...

But like... I could actually see myself in this dress. I don't know if I'd get somebody to make it, if it turns out to be hideously expensive (no prices up yet), or whatever... But for a fairly plain, white dress... I can't stop drooling. I feel weird. I feel weird loving a dress so much on first sight.

Honestly.

I'm still staring at it.

I can't do my job because I'm staring.

And drooling.

....holy crap.

why get married?

Do you ever have an idea as you're trying to fall asleep?
I mean a great idea- something that makes you almost compelled to get up, switch on the light, and write it down before you forget? Except only, you're all curled up with your future husband and the dog has sandwiched your legs in place, and the kitten is lurking around somewhere and you're liable to tread on her if you go anywhere because damnit, she's dark and she blends in.
That happened to me last night, and I think is was relating to writing a post today, since I didn't write anything yesterday (and was apparently wracked by guilt, if my sudden pre-sleep lightning bolts were anything to go by). Regardless, I can't remember what it was that I was thinking about so I'll have to default to my backup plan, which is something I've been musing over lately, and that is, as the title suggests:
Why get married?

maybe australia isn't for us...

I'm feeling less and less like I want to get married in Australia, and more and more somewhere with scenery like this:

{via}

Um, hello Mountains!

Or somewhere like this:

{via}

 

{via}

Or, hello awesome circle of friends-and-family:

{via}



{via}

Uh... I'm picking my jaw up off the floor now. Can you see this scenery? Realistically, these places are all a little 'dry', hence the pictures higher of the couple near the lake with the tall, tall evergreen trees, deep and green and damp and beautiful.

Cos here's the thing. I want people to come to our wedding. I want my family and friends, and Nic's family and friends to come. So, realistically, this means we can't really go more than 2 hours out of Melbourne. Most people are already going to be travelling as it is. But... I don't know. We love mountains, and water... How important is scenery? How important is it compared to having as many people as possible there? How far will people travel? What is a reasonable drive to expect of people? (because places we would consider wouldn't have airports nearby)...

And oh-em-gee this whole wedding is in the most spectacular place. Oh, BC, I miss you :(

And, um, YES...

I would so love a wedding shot, cliff-top, like one of the favourite ones of Nic & I... but only imagine if we were wedding-dressed and being awesome. Shyeah.

Now get me up there in a wedding dress!! Ok so we had to climb a mountain to get where we were, but it wasn't that difficult...

Anyway, I love mountains.

Nic loves mountains.

I would love a mountain wedding.

(Mountain marriage!?)

Edit: Compromise!? What if we were to take a friend who is a photographer-of-sorts up to the Grampians (National Park where above photo was taken), with our wedding getup, and do like a post-wedding-photo thing... Though, then my hair won't be as pretty, I guess. But it could be done! We could hike up the mountain with packs full of wedding dress 'n stuff.
Maybe....
Maybe that's a silly idea. Idunno.

some wedding details I love...

So I stumbled across this amazing wedding on GreenWeddingShoes, which I only go on so very occasionally.

There are so many details I love- these two photos for one thing..

{via}

Check it out. It's awesome.

And then as I went further and further into the post, it got more and more awesome.

a wedding in apricot...

I am aware that there's a lot of 'competition' amongst women. Recently, I have noticed it specifically regarding wedding stuff. The judgments passed among women about weddings they've seen or been to. How this was tacky, or that was cheap. How her dress didn't have enough beads, or how they should have had flowers in the church. To this end, I am very aware that when writing about the wedding Nic and I went to last night, that these are not judgments based on the 'worth' of the wedding, but based on my own personal tastes.

Because here's the thing; the bride and groom were glowingly happy. In their speeches they thanked everyone for making this such a special day. How everything was perfect and beautiful. And that's the important thing. And I am sick of people competing and judging and saying what should and shouldn't happen. And I know that, compared to the wedding we attended yesterday, ours is going to blow people's minds.

"bridentity"...

This is just a quick one, because I think it's funny.
So the wedding isn't until November 2012. That's about 21 months away. That's far enough away that I haven't really thought seriously about STDs (*snicker*), don't want to buy a dress because 21 months means a lot of potential body changes (particularly with gym memberships), don't even want to book a venue because who knows what can happen even in the next 9 months, let alone 21... So, much like life, in a way, I'm in 'wedding limbo', where I don't feel like I can go anything much until we're 18 months, or 12 months out.

So, that being said, I find it really amusing that since becoming engaged and starting back at work after the trip, most people at work seem to have forgotten everything about me, save one thing.
"So, how's the wedding planning coming?".

At first it was exciting, and kind of cute.
I'd blush a bit maybe, smile, and shrug, tell them my general vision, that I've tried on some dresses, where we're thinking of having it, etc.
But now it's like, every 2nd day.
"How's the wedding planning coming?"

Can we get this wedding over with and get to the drinking?*

Well, it's not.
Because I can't do anything, because, as you know, person, it's not until the end of 2012.
And I know I could direct them politely toward something else, but until I'm back at Uni, not too much else interesting is happening. But I have my little family, and we go on our little adventures.
But that's not as interesting as planning a wedding, I guess.

I just find it really interesting that even though is so far out, I am suddenly defined as the bride who is busy planning. Which, I am, but not solidly, I can't.
It's just a very interesting phenomenon, because nobody asks Nic how the wedding planning is coming. At best they might ask him when the wedding is, but not what's being planned. I suppose it could be that I work with young people, who go out and party every weekend. So maybe I'm a novelty. Who knows.

Puzzling!!

(I love him)

(OMG I just found all the photos from Nic's iphone that he took on the North Am. trip. I didn't know/remember about half of them!!)
*Not really. See above linked blog post about people who party too much.