Details get organized as well.....

Today I managed to book the hairdresser for the wedding. A test / consultancy appointment and the final appointment on the big day.
The day is coming closer and closer. Time is really flying.

Not all answers arrived yet

Yesterday was the RSVP date and we have a lot of POSITIVE answers!
Most of responses told us that you will be able to make it!

Not all answers arrived yet. We are hoping that you all can join and will celebrate with us.

So far only two invites have been declined and we hope the number of declines stays as low as of today!

Wedding Ring Workshop

It was a great experience and fun! Today we made our own wedding rings.

It was a much harder process than expected (at least from me [xis]). We started with a block of metal and had to go through many manual processes before there was a small sign that it could become a ring at the end.


In between we got Champagne to distract us from the heavy work but not too much that our 'teachers' were sure that we will manage a good end result. Two rings which fit on the fingers, are round, regularly shaped!

After the last polishing steps we had amazing rings in our hands.
It was a great experience and so much fun!


You can see the end result at the wedding. And YES, we made the rings, they were not exchanged after the workshop to rings from a jeweller.

PS: At the end of the day I had no finger nails anymore, I filed them away (accidentally) while I was filing the shape of Stu's ring.

All formalities are finalized - ceremony is formally booked

Today was the big day. Equipped with all documents I went to the registry office to finally turn the reservation into a final booking. The famous certificate of no impediment, certified copies of passports, birth certificate (the long one!) with all affidavits and the official translations have been handed over and have been accepted!!

The ceremony is booked, paid, ........

We are ready!

Wedding insurance

Today we decided to cover the worst case scenario and paid for a Wedding insurance.

Do we get cold feet? Nooooooo!!!!!
I think the reason was my shoulder and arm that I thought you never know what happens.

But be re-assured, we will do everything to go ahead as planned and celebrate our big day on August 23rd, 2008.

See you at our wedding on August 23rd!

Certificate of no impediment - we have it!! Finally

Today we finally got THE document to ensure that we can get married.
The famous 'Certificate of no impediment'.

The envelop looks very nice - we think to frame it - the document itself is sooo legal. The text is nearly amusing. Things like on the 6th day of May (instead on May 6th or 6th May) and even more legal text which I can not even understand easily.

That is obviously to ensure that translators have a job. Monday is translation day in London for Stu.

Today in 3 months is the big day!

Hihihi, it is only 3 months from now.
Then I am Mrs. Alexandra Fawkes.

How exciting is this?

Most of the invites are gone!

Long, long story with the invites. The good news is that most of them have been sent now.

First response cards - all positive!!!! - have arrived and we are happy.

Change of rules to get our legal documents

Hahaha! The rules have changed! After we invested quiet some money in our advertisment in the newspaper, the rules have changed. This announcement did not necessarily fall into the category 'romantic' - the text was clearly given by a public authority. Therefore you can imagine that it was not the one thing we wanted to do. We would have found better ways - more fun, more exiting - to spend our money.

Now in the middle of the process, they changed the rules. This means unnecessary spending on a strange advertisement but even worse we start from the beginning and adding another x weeks to get our papers.

I could highly recommend change management and project management courses to improve the process of changing the rules.

We can not even find out easily what has to happen after step 1 - because website says on top of the page step 2 has changed and is NOT xyz anymore, if you look for details further down the page, step 2 describes what it is NOT anymore according to the top of the page.

As my new manager always says 'Hi Ho' we will find a solution.
Hi Ho ..... we will see.

Our announcement in the newspaper

We had to announce our wedding in the newspaper to get the legal papers for our wedding.
Here you can see our advertisment:


And with more detail that you can read the text which was given to us - romance did not have room for a legal requirement:

Click on the picture to enlarge it and be able to read it.

Finallly we ordered the stationary!

Today is the big day of stationaries!
After a lengthy decision process, we have decided which invitations we want to order and send.

For sure we don't share any details here, but the good news is that by next week you all should have your formal invitation to the wedding.

It all started on February 11th with a big question

The story about our wedding started in February while we were in South Africa on vacation.

After we have been a week in Cape Town at our friends, Gary and Briony, place, we travelled a bit further East. We did fly to Ports Elisabeth and our first destination was 'Addo Elephantpark'. There we had booked a nice hotel with some massages and luxury dinner. The hotel had a very romantic terasse and after our luxury 5-course dinner, Stu asked the big question (in English) and I said 'YES'.
It was February 11th, 2008.

The next day we went to Knysna and stayed in another lovely hotel 'Alexander' which had a terasse and we could see the most amazing night sky - with stars you have never seen before - and here Stu asked me in German. This time the answer was 'Ja'.

And this is the beginning of our story of our wedding.