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 I picked out a random small town near a national park from an out-of-date guide book from the library.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

2014 Reading Challenge

At the end of last year when I started my new library-related job, I joined Goodreads, and this year for the first time I kept track of the books I was reading as I went. I have read 61 books so far (and if you think that is a lot, I will just say that one of those books was Roald Dahl's The Twits which probably took me about 20 minutes to read). Since we are shortly going away to a beach shack where I only plan eat, sleep, swim and read for four days, this may not be the final list, but as of right now, here are the books I read in 2014:

Running update - Rose of Tralee and City to Bay 2014

If nothing else, I feel like I should use this space as a way to record my running endeavours.

I ran a 10k in Ireland. (Ireland! How cool is that!) I had not trained in the lead up, and in the three weeks immediately prior I was travelling around Europe, mostly on a diet of gelato, pasta, and wine. I may not have quite been in my peak physical condition, although I had done quite a bit of walking around (which, spoiler, is not the same as running ten kilometers).

This is me, at the start, being extremely apprehensive about just what I had gotten myself into.

That guy definitely finished before me.

The race started at the wetlands, and went uphill (luckily not terribly steeply) to the top of the town, and then slightly downhill into Tralee (as in Rose of Tralee) to finish.
There were kilometer markers - sometimes. It was a fun game. Surely we must have done one kilometer by now - oh hey I just did two! Surely we must have done two by now, nope you had barely done half of one when you thought that!
I gave myself walk breaks after each song, but kept them short. I played leapfrog with a few people who were jogging steadily. I kind of wish I had stopped to take photos along the way, but I didn't really want to drag it out any longer than I had to. But it was a nice day, and there was nice scenery, and running people are so encouraging.
There was one water break, which was situated in such a way that you turned off the main road, DOWNHILL YAY to the WATER YAY, and then realised that oh shit, now there is a steep hill to get back into the race. Of course I "sprinted" up it, the quicker to get it over with, and I am pretty sure that is why my legs were so sore the next day.
And oh my god, were my legs sore. To get into our hotel for the next few days you had to go up several steps, in the door, and down several steps. It was extremely painful, as was sitting down, standing up, walking, etc.

Anyway, here is me running, courtesy of my excellent running photographer (dad), who managed to be in three different places along the route.

And here is me with my big-ass medal!

And with my scientifically proven recovery aid.

My time was about 1:11 I think, which was about my time from City to Bay last year, which you might recall is a 12k. Then I came home from Europe and ran City to Bay again, fairly slowly but with an impressive lack of letting myself take walk breaks. 1:19 I think. I would like to do sub-60 one year.

Packed

You learn so much about yourself when you travel.

The first thing you should know is that I am apparently a TOTAL PACKING BAD-ASS. The Fiance left over a week ago for his part of our him alone-us together-me alone holiday. He packed in about 20 minutes with no prior preparation and his bag weighed 10 kilograms. There was no way I was going to match that. For a start, I am a girl, with hair-straightening and facial product needs. And he is a fairly basic traveller, and while I would like to be, I just can't.

I started packing (if you can call it that since nothing actually went into my bag until today) about a week ago, when I dumped all the clothes that could be considered summer weather-appropriate onto the spare room bed. A few days later I culled a bunch of them. And then today when I actually started packing I dumped even more of them. And all this time I was randomly tossing other holiday-items into the spare room.

I was worried that my bag would be considered overweight by either the airlines or my body, since it is a travel backpack and - as I was assured on a recent frisbee trip when we saw a fellow teammate carrying his wife's bag as well as his own - even when we are married, The Fiance will not be carrying it for me. So yeah. Packed it, weighed it. THIRTEEN KILOS, BOOYAH, HOW BOUT THEM APPLES, ETC.

To be fair, I realised after I'd weighed it that I hadn't yet included my hair straightener, but I doubt that is going to account for the extra seven kilos I was expecting.

Other things I have discovered recently:
While every single packing advice thing you will read demands you roll your clothes, rolling clothes is actually really tiring.
I own way too many navy blue tops. I actually packed colourful tops over navy tops I like more, just so I had some extra colour variation.
My tablet can really not handle having more than one filed copied to it at a time, but hopefully I have enough sports- and Europe-related movies to get me through.
Life is super boring when you live by yourself, there is no organised frisbee, and it gets dark about thirty seconds after you get time leaving you no motivation to go for a run. Evenings are so long!

I am really not looking forward to one bajillion hours on various planes and trains. I think I am getting old and cranky. I want to BE places, and I don't even mind interesting journeys, but Europe is such a long way from Australia. I don't know if you knew that but it's true.

I have a stopover in Singapore that is just long enough and perfectly timed so as to enable me to jump on a free two-hour tour. And despite all that perfection, I don't know. I really hope I can overcome my don't-want-to-miss-my-plane urge to sit by my departure gate for seven hours.

See you when I get back!

Otherwise engaged

I realised I forgot a few parts of the original engagement announcement, so let's keep talking about it!

We watched some of a country footy game on the Saturday which was really fun.
And that's the end of that part of the update.

We went to The Fiance's parents' house on the way home from our weekend away and told them. I Skyped with my parents when we got home. They all already knew it was happening! I was the only one in the dark.

I had a great time showing the ring off at work on Monday and frisbee on Wednesday. I got an especially great reaction at frisbee (and by great I mean incredibly loud and high-pitched). I've pretty much got the story down. I just alter the amount of shit I give him for being nervous, depending on my audience.

I had to give it back to get resized on Thursday, and I immediately regretted not being more sympathetic to friends who have been in the same situation. I miss it! It will be back in 5-7 days, and yes I am absolutely counting down.

Okay so he bought the ring and I think they put some of his details into their computer at the time. But then they got more details when we took it back in, so it wasn't like they couldn't have put in someone else's details instead. And then HE signed for it, and they are going to call HIM when HIS ring is ready to pick up. Is that weird? I get that it's probably just how the computer system works, but there was no acknowledgement of this at all.

We have dinner with his extended family this week, and I won't have the ring to show them. But I had to give it back at some point and I definitely need it the week after to show people. Some people at work still haven't seen it because they weren't around til I gave it back!

We get back from our trip at the end of August and I figure it will take a couple months to plan the engagement party. Which would put us at the end of October, which is our four year anniversary! It's nice when things work out. (Obviously they haven't worked out yet, because I haven't done a thing past look at pretty dresses and see if I can hire a Gumdrop car in Adelaide, but it appears as if the timing might work out and then I will be very happy.)

We put it up on Facebook today, after spending the week notifying the people we wanted to notify by some other method than stupid social media taking over our lives. I made up a newspaper article so it wouldn't seem so damn internety and put up a photo of the two of us which exemplfies us as a couple - Jony saying/doing something that I disapprove of but can't help laughing about as I tell him off.

Affianced

I have exciting news - the most exciting news that this blog has ever seen... Jonathon and I are engaged!

(That was the TL;DR version - the rest might be too much me recording the minute details for posterity to be of any interest to anyone else.)

We have been together for just over three and a half years and we are both nearly 30. That is more than enough time for people to start asking when we will be getting married. To those people I can now say with utmost confidence: Um yeah definitely sometime.

We had been planning to take a weekend away together for a long time. I think it was January when we said, we are too busy, we need to find a free weekend. And we did. In May! So in that way this was not that suspicious - we had decided on the date together. He had said he would plan it, but one or the other of us has booked trips in the past, so still no big deal.

This picture does not belong here, but I just really like it.

On the morning of, he let me get McDonalds for breakfast (a road trip tradition) and we drove south. Which narrowed down my guessing options by about half. We stopped for morning tea at the Mount Compass bakery. Our food was delicious, as food is that comes from a country town bakery.

We then went on to Wirra Wirra winery for some wine tasting and a lovely picnic. We met an adorable puppy named Dilbert, and I think we shall name our first child after him. (No, we won't.)

 

 
After the picnic, we did another wine tasting in McLaren Vale, before heading off to our accommodation for the night.

As you can see, it was kind of okay. Our room had a fireplace and a four-poster bed!

Then came the most exciting part of the weekend (almost). High Society was on TV so we started it watching before we left for dinner. What a good movie! Go watch it.

We had dinner at a lovely restaurant, and we discovered what Rillettes is. Kind of like pate, just so you know. Ours was duck, and quite delicious! I had ocean trout, he had kangaroo. We decided we didn't need dessert so headed off back to our fireplace.

Here's where we get to the good part! We got the fire going, and as we were about to sit down in front of it with a glass of wine, he tells me he has something for me and sits me down on a couch. He makes me close my eyes while he goes to his bag, then comes back and he pulls me so I am standing and he is holding my hand. He tells me he loves me and wants to spend the rest of his life with me (awww) and he kneels down and asks me to marry him!!!

I say yes (of course) (repeatedly) and am kissing and hugging him while he's still on the floor. He manages to stand up and I realise I barely saw the ring. He takes it out and puts it on my finger - while his hands were shaking so much!

It's very sparkly.

 And then we were engaged! Like grown-up people do!

And oh god, I am so happy. My cheeks are still sore from smiling, and I was fairly useless at work today what with all the daydreaming I was doing, and I sent him a mushy text message the likes of which I have never sent to anyone. We are extremely coupley in the worst/best way, and take every opportunity to drop the word fiance/e into a sentence.

The wedding I imagine will be in a year from when we start planning it - and that won't be til well after we get back from our trip (oh yeah, forgot to tell you that we're going to Europe for five weeks soon). As I currently have multiple travel spreadsheets going and many guidebooks covering our kitchen table, I am not in the mood to plan anything else right now - but that didn't stop me from joining Pintrest and googling wedding dresses.

 

Cheers!