Bling on Love!

  Happy Valentine's Day to all and in the spirit of Maxabella and Felicity's "Bling on Love" here is my story:

I met my husband when I was 25 years old.  He was dressed in head to toe lycra the day that I met him, which is definitely worthy of a blog entry at some point!  Tonight though I will share the story of our engagement.  So, several years after our first fortuitous meeting we were now living together and enjoying our hedonistic youth! I had been away on a trip and walked in the door at about 10 o'clock at night, exhausted and filthy, this was after all in my glamourous flying days.  Husband-to-be was lovely and welcoming, offering me a glass of wine as I walked through the door, but all I wanted to do was have a shower and crawl into bed.  Ignoring his requests to come and sit down with him I went and had a shower.  Afterwards feeling a bit more refreshed and a touch guilty I sat down with him on the couch where he kept trying to engage me in conversation.  Getting increasingly irritated with him, I growled at him what do you want?

To marry you was his response. As you can guess I had not been expecting that answer! Looking at him in confusion he suddenly whipped a little black velvet ring box out of his pocket and flicked it open.  Inside I saw the most spectacular diamond!


Sliding off the couch into an awkward kneeling position, squashed between the couch and the coffee table, he then asked me to marry him. Yes, I jubilantly replied and promptly burst into tears! He hadn't actually been planning to ask me that night but the diamond had apparently been burning a hole in his pocket the whole day and he simply couldn't wait for excitement. Although my crankiness had not been part of his grand plan naturally!

I am not really a jewellery person and rarely wear it so he wasn't confident to select a ring for me, but as he wanted to present me with something when he proposed he decided to go ahead and just buy a diamond. Opening the ring box and seeing the diamond sparkling inside was an unforgettable moment and although not exactly a well planned or executed proposal it was actually suprisingly romantic and special!

Happy Valentine's Day R!

It's been 6 years... and best wishes to the lovely Jane.

Recently I celebrated my sixth wedding annniversary.    In this relatively short time, together we have experienced the truly magnificent and also the one rather random and unexpected shock, it has almost all been magnificent though and I am truly grateful to my wonderful husband for the last six years.

It hardly seems possible that it was six years ago that we gathered all our friends and family together to celebrate our marriage:

and drank copious amounts of champagne and watched fireworks and celebrated till early the next morning:

at my favourite place in the world:

A special day, but it all seems rather insignificant though in the scheme of things when I think that today the lovely, dignified and courageous Jane undergoes surgery.   Best wishes for a speedy recovery Jane.

Easter... oh to be at Depot Beach!

Easter always makes think of Depot Beach (well, after all the more obvious associations like religion and chocolate). My parents have a holiday house at Depot Beach and I have spent many wonderful easter holidays there. Sadly this Easter we are unable to visit as the house is undergoing some much needed renovations. Instead, I have been reminiscing about times spent there. Including our wedding:


R and I collected all the stone "nameplaces" from Pebbly Beach (Depot's neighbour) and then returned them after the wedding. The shells we used to tie the napkins were collected over the years, many of them from as far back as my childhood.

The two hanging flower arrangements were made by my beautiful mother and an extremely talented friend (Thanks Mark!). They used two old vintage lobster pots that we had found washed up on the beach and carefully arranged Singapore orchids inside them. Another gorgeous friend had flown in from Singaore that morning with the orchids (stored in flight in the champagne cart in first class!)

The rest of the flowers were simply purchased from the Flemington flower markets in Sydney that morning and then "arranged" (stuck at the last minute) in old jam jars, the same ones my Dad uses every year to make his famous homemade jams.

As you can tell from this photo, Depot Beach is very undeveloped, in fact it is in the middle of a national park. I wrote a very heartfelt letter to National Parks and Wildlife requesting permission to get married on the beach and I was so grateful when they approved our request for the marquee on the beach.

It was a magical wedding, Depot Beach is magic!