Wedding Planning Step 1: Find A Venue

As we both had time off between Christmas and New Years, we made a plan to make a plan. That is, we committed to finding and booking a wedding venue.

I of course immediately created a comprehensive spreadsheet. Adelaide is surrounded by wineries, and all of the weddings that we've been to have been at wineries. BUT The Fiance had also known someone who'd been married at the State Library. He is a qualified teacher-librarian, I am a qualified librarian and current book-buyer, it's very us.

The Mortlock Wing of the State Library looks like this:*

Pretty awesome.

We met up with the person in charge of events, who showed us a list of available dates, including Halloween weekend - our 5 year anniversary! What could be better?! And then she grabbed her pen, CROSSED OUT our perfect date, and I was a bit sad. (But I got over it.)

The ceremony and reception will both be in the building, and they handle food, drinks, tables, etc, so in one fell swoop, we were seriously on our way to planning a wedding!

*The ground level and balcony will be ours, and there's all kinds of dusty books and maps and displays around the place. No decorations required!

Sangria and mountains

Obviously I am massively out of the habit of blogging, but I have important wedding stuff to tell the internet, but I have to talk about our Europe holiday first.

LAST YEAR OOPS we went on a holiday to Europe. I had one week in Spain, one week in Germany, and a few days in Venice with the Fiance. Then we met up with his parents, my dad, and the international ultimate frisbee community in Lecco, Italy for the World Club Championships. Then dad and I had two weeks in Ireland.

It was all awesome, but the best of all was Spain.

I did most of the planning for the trip, which of course turned out to be over-planning. But the one thing I got right was the idea to have a few days in the mountains in the north of Spain. I picked out a random small town near a national park from an out-of-date guide book from the library. And off we went!

We had to catch two trains and a bus to get there, but when we did Torla looked like this so we were pretty ok with that.

The first night there we had a delicious 3-course meal that came with a bottle of wine. Next time we are sitting at separate tables so we each get our bottle of wine. There was an awesome thunder/lightning storm that only disrupted our meal a little bit.

The next day we went to Ordesa National Park and accidentally climbed a mountain. Without any lunch.

It started out nice and gentle, with lots of pretty waterfalls. 

Then we came out onto a valley, with flowers and cows.

And then we decided that even though we'd made it to the Final Waterfall, we should continue onto the only other thing left on the signs - the Refuge. What is the Refuge? Where is it? We don't know, we just follow the signs.

So we did another two hours of switchbacks across the side of the valley, until we got to here - the valley from another angle.

Then we still had another hour of climbing straight up. And up.

Finally finally we made it to the Refuge. Yay us!

Not pictured: the awesome family with two young kids who were just champions. To be fair, they had the right gear, and food.

Which reminds me, I have never loved him as much as when Fiance went into the Refuge building and came out with a Kit-Kat. I wouldn't have made it down without that chocolate.

It was a very good bonding experience. We each wanted to go back at different points, but we were so proud when we got to that goddamn Refuge.

Mount Perdido - the Refuge is at 2160m