Sneak Peek Wedding Photo by Jo Bartholomew (we will show you more asap!)
UPDATE: OUR NEW SITE IS NOW LIVE: http://www.livlifemag.com/livplusdaveequals/
UPDATE: OUR NEW SITE IS NOW LIVE: http://www.livlifemag.com/livplusdaveequals/
We are back! And we are married!
We never intended to leave. Our story continues.
You know what? A wedding is a lot of work. Some of it is great fun, other things just need to be done.
But who's complaining? It was the greatest journey ever, we have learned a lot along the way.
Being married is the best thing, every time I call Dave my husband it gives me butterflies and a deep sense of gratitude.
There are many exciting changes.
We are excited. We are working hard over here to have it ready really really soon.
Thank you all for being part of the journey we love you! And are beyond grateful that you are here.
Please don't forget to check back: The shiny new site will be up in no time!
UPDATE: OUR NEW SITE IS NOW LIVE: http://www.livlifemag.com/livplusdaveequals/
We have looked at a lot of Bali photos lately! Why? Because we decided to go there for honeymoon!
I am so excited and have been walking around with this very big ear to ear grin for days now.
And then I realized we never got around to share all the photos that Dave took of our last trip to this beautiful island.
These photos were all taken on my business trip to Ubud, Bali in November, when Dave joined me and we stayed on for a few days together. I was working on a beautiful Bali wedding as makeup artist over there and did not get to explore enough. On the up side, I love my job and it is always special opportunity to work on destination weddings.
This visit to Bali was too short, but enough to get a taste and to know that we wanted to come back.
It is a very special place. I loved the tropical extremely hot & humid climate, I was impressed by all the beautiful traditional arts. The flowers, the incense and the cheeky monkeys. Everyone we met was very welcoming and we found so much fabulous fresh vegetarian food.
Dave even braved a lot of the street food and he did not get sick. I thought I mention this, since so many people tell stories of "Bali Belly" after having had bad food.
I wish we could have brought home many of the amazing wood works and furniture but it seemed a mission to get it imported to Australia. We will be back for more.
Our honeymoon is booked, only five months to our wedding day. Seriously how did time fly by that fast? Before we know it it will be February. We can't wait!
We spent our free time planning, organising, researching, listing, shopping, emailing....
for our wedding right now.
Remember I said we were planning to spent more qualitiy time with each other?
Well my wishes were heard and we got the opportunity to get help with house cleaning the other week, which was fantastic. It freed up a lot of time for us, just to get someone to clean up our place,
after a busy week and so much to do for the wedding.
We treated ourselves to a clean by online cleaning business Home Hello.
It was super easy to set up and I can highly recommend this.
David really enjoys cleaning the house usually and we don't have a house full of children, so usually we manage quite well although I could easily get used to this. :)
When we got engaged White Magazine asked me to write an article about our planning,
it's been published in the latest print issue, so I thought I share it here with you as well:
Planning a wedding in the age of Pinterest & CO
Have you set a date yet? What is your dress going to look like? What sort of flowers were you thinking of getting? – Immediately after getting engaged well meaning friends and family bombarded us with questions, even before we had a chance to decide if we wanted a wedding or simply elope.
We just wanted to be married and live happily ever after, we hadn’t thought about a wedding.It seemed like everyone around us had pretty high expectations of what our wedding day would look like, maybe because we are both working in creative jobs and are surrounded by wonderful vendors all the time.
We dived right into the abundance of inspiration, hoping to feel the same excitement about this event than everyone around us. Looking at beautiful blogs, magazines and of course Instagram and
Pinterest, there was all this deliciousness from amazing fellow vendors, beautifully photographed.Lost in a picture perfect Pinterest wedding world filled with DIY projects, services and products we felt that most of it was meaningless and irrelevant to us personally. Were we over-inspired? Was all the goodness just too much to take and overwhelming? Ok, back to the drawing board…we took a deep breath, pen and paper and made notes about the
things that really mattered to us. We focused on why we wanted a wedding in the first place and who we really wanted to share this special day with. We made a must-have and nice-to-have list to
keep us on track and stick to our own ideas. The outcome was a clear feeling and a blurry vision of a small, intimate wedding, with our nearest and dearest including our puppy Dalston, a “on-holiday-
feel” with lot’s of fun, eating and dancing. We wanted it to be low key and high fun. We strongly felt less is more. No need for a theme or a colour scheme. What we DID need was a place that made us and our guests feel welcome, plenty of food, good music, drinks and some simple off-the-rack outfits. Easier said than done… Many of the “alternative” venues we contacted seemed to be colder than expected and replied with way too many rules, regulations and restrictions than my free spirited self could digest. Our must have list quickly ruled out pretty much any venue within NSW and it seemed like the only option left was camping- no wait, even the campsite did not allow dogs. (Besides that my lovely future mother in law would possibly be mad at me forever if I make her camp on our wedding.) While we really stuck to our guns with the venue and overall feel, we gave in at other points of planning. The “don’t-care-ready-to-wear” dress idea turned into a custom design couture gown (whoops…). As my former fashion designer self took over and I rediscovered how much fun the process of creating it from scratch would be, there was no turning back from the quality fabrics and great craftsmanship.
Turned out that overall trying to keeping it simple and real is sometimes harder than just going with a more traditional option. Letting the magic of wedding planning take over from time to time actually feels good. Now we can’t wait.
Since I wrote these words we have gotten a lot more done and we will do a little wedding venue site visit next month.
I am so glad Dave is organized and helps making beautiful plans and drawings for the setup.
We are also super excited about some of our overseas friends & family that have booked their flights and will be coming to celebrate with us.
The other week we also got to meet our brand new little nephew Christopher, such a cutie!
Dave was a natural in rocking him back to sleep in the hospital when we visited and we are looking forward to catching up with the whole family soon.
While we have been enjoying home made soups, bakes and cozy nights in, I am excited for Spring!
The last and possibly favourite part of our trip was our time in Stockholm. Maybe because the sun came out at last. We even went swimming and got a tan! Sun changes everything for the better! At least for us. Some called it heatwave, for us it was just the perfect temperature. Stockholm is bit of a stunner. The city is built on islands, which means that you are never too far from the water. Outside of the city is an archipelago of 30.000 little islands which the Swedes use as Summer holiday destination, a little bit like the Hamptons for New York City.
The Swedes also really know how to take a break throughout a the day with a "Fika" the traditional Swedish coffee break. They have several throughout the day, taking time to chat, have a coffee along with a sweet treat, like a baked cinnamon swirl, cake or cookie. And they know a thing or two about baking too. The question is how they stay so slim and relaxed with this high caffeine and calorie intake? We stuck to healthy & organic treats most of the time and with all the walking and exploring we always had enough appetite to squeeze in another fika.
On our first night we went out and discovered the best little cocktail bar & restaurant close to where we were staying. We had too much fun to go home early that night. The next days were packed with museums and sightseeing. The fotografiska, which is the new photography museum blew our minds. We saw two great exhibitions but even the building itself and the design of the museum were incredible. We also went to the Vasa Museum, as every other tourist would, but although it's pricey and packed it's really worth seeing. It's a museum about this old shipwreck the "Vasa" which is displayed in full size within the museum, it's really spectacular and interesting. The weather was so beautiful towards the end of our stay and it even hit 30 degrees, that's why we took a boot out to one of the islands and spent the day on bikes exploring beaches on Üto. It was almost surreal, so cute and pretty. The landscape was almost too good to be true: Rolling hills and rocks meeting the clear water was so beautiful and all nature seemed very untouched. We could have easily stayed here for a whole week. The next day we took a boat out once more to visit the Artipelag museum on another island. We stayed the whole day, sun bathing on the rocks, exploring nature walks and we even went skinny dipping. ( We forgot our swimwear...but thankfully there weren't too many people around and we found a secluded area to swim) we stayed for dinner and a jazz concert at sunset.
The sun sets very very late during the summer months in Scandinavia. It hardly gets dark at all, which makes staying up late and going out so much fun.
We were missing little Dalston like crazy which made it so much easier to leave the holiday and getting excited about being back in Sydney and our beloved apartment.
I think Sydney stole my heart. We don't know what the future holds but one thing is for sure, right now, Sydney is the perfect place for us and we are loving every day in this beautiful city.
The trip really reminded us how much we were missing each other's company lately. Being back to to our blog and documenting our lives together is the best thing that happened to us this year!
We are in full wedding planning mode and we will properly share some of our planning adventures soon as well.
While we were on holidays exploring Scandinavia (part 3 is to follow soon!) our little man Dalston, had a staycation at home. We missed him all the time but it was good to know he was in best company.
Our amazing friend and talented photographer Julianna aka J.K.Blackwell, helped looking after him. Instead of just taking him for a quick walk, she took him for regular adventures (including roadtrips in her vintage VW) , all professionally captured to tell the whole story. You can read it over at the twoguineapigs blog here. And as a big surprise we received all the beautiful images. For us as totally proud puppy parents we are so excited about all these beautiful photos.
Turned out he was a little cheeky while being home alone, but only in his usual charming way.
He has grown up so much, understanding so many words and he is constantly teaching himself new tricks and outsmarts us all but most importantly he makes us all laugh so much.
His latest one is switching off the heater in my office, when he decides that I have worked enough and that it is time to take him for a walk. No kidding.
He totally worked out the touch screen buttons on our heater...
Thank you again, J.K. Blackwell, you are amazing. And thank you Dalston for being such an awesome pup, brightening each and every day.
More beautiful photos that Julianna took for us here on the blog are for example Dalstons First Birthday and also these ones from when Dalston was truly little
