Engagement Party

We celebrated our engagement last weekend with a casual picnic style party with a bunch of our friends and family. We decided to hold the party in Newcastle and were fortunate to be able to use a lovely common park area near my sister's place (also where Ben and I used to live). This meant we had free venue hire which saved us a lot of money. We were blessed with perfect sunny weather which made for a beautiful afternoon/evening of celebrations.

My wonderful friend Linda helped me with the styling/decorations and kindly lent me a lot of her props, including some beautiful picnic baskets, rugs, bunting and the beautiful drink dispensers for our beverage table. I chose the drinks (Pimm's, pink lemonade and water with lemon and mint) and bought all the ingredients, cups, straws etc but it would not have turned out so well without Linda's creativity and attention to detail.

For the food, we decided to put together 10 picnic baskets full of goodies for people to share. They contained cheeses, crackers, dips, chocolates, fruit, nuts, jams/fruit paste and fresh bread. I had heaps of fun buying various things to put in the baskets, such as wooden cutlery, paper plates, mini jars for jams etc. Most of it I bought at two dollar shops! Ben had his own bar too (not pictured) with a few different types of tap kings (beer in a mini keg thing). We also had wine and champagne aplenty.

We had a few games set up for people to play - darts, ring toss/quoits and boules. My mum and Ben's mum made cardboard bunting and asked us to write 10 things about ourselves and 10 things we love about each other, which they then wrote on the bunting and hung around the park. It was a good conversation starter and quite funny to read what each other had written.

Ben's grandma made our engagement cake - a delicious mud cake. It was so good. Ben's mum decorated it with fresh flowers and cute paper bunting. I was so happy with how it turned out!

It was a really lovely afternoon and so nice to see so many of our friends and family who we don't see very often. It was also great to introduce some of our Sydney friends to our families and other friends from various places. We feel so loved and excited about our wedding next year! Thanks to all of the special people for helping us celebrate and pitching in to make it such a nice party.

Special thanks to my brother Sam and our friend Ian for some of these photos.

Back in business

Hooray! I'm back! After over a month without a laptop I can finally blog again thanks to purchasing a shiny new Windows Surface tablet. I know what you're thinking, it's not Apple (shock horror!), but this thing is seriously awesome. It has all the convenient features of a tablet but is basically a very powerful laptop as well. I can even draw on photos as it comes with a digital pen thingy. You can expect lots of that in the future.

Anyway! Life is pretty awesome at the moment. We're busy planning for our engagement party in just over a month and have even locked in a date and venue for our wedding. It's going to be on 4/10/2014 (which we just discovered is the same backwards - how cool!) in Newcastle. Feels so good to have that locked in already.

My new job is keeping me busy but I'm settling in and enjoying the challenge.

Now that I can blog whenever the heck I want, I'll be back soon to share some wedding inspiration and a few sneak peeks. Yay!

#ENGAGEMENT!

What started out as a pretty ordinary weekend turned into one I will never forget! After eight and a half years, Ben decided to pop the question!! Oh, and I said yes :)

The story of how it all went down is kind of funny. Ben had a big night on Friday night and slept in while I went out for an early morning trip to the markets. He was still in bed when I got home so I spent the next few hours doing chores. When Ben got up we cooked breakfast like we do most weekends. It was pretty much how we would spend any Saturday. We watched a few TV shows and were generally just hanging out. Earlier in the day I checked the mail and we had received an invitation to Ben's cousin's wedding. Ben made a comment that everyone was getting married (we've got two weddings to go to before the end of the year) and I replied with something like 'I'll probably have to wait until I'm 30'. Oops, sorry babe! And by the way, that wouldn't have been the end of the world (maybe...hehe). So I guess it's safe to say that marriage was on the mind. Still, I really didn't expect what happened next! 

I took a nap on the couch and after I woke up, Ben came and sat down with me. He seemed to be acting strangely and started saying stuff like he wanted me to have a good story to tell our kids (about how we got engaged). I told him I really didn't care how it happened and I had told him a few times before that if it happened in the kitchen while we were in our pyjamas that would be totally okay with me. Ben suddenly went all quiet then got up and said 'I can't wait any longer'. He went into our bedroom and I started to realise what was happening. He walked out with a ring, got down on his knee and asked me to marry him! It is all a bit of a blur and I actually don't recall whether I said yes when he asked me. I just grabbed the ring and put it on and hugged him! He then said 'Wait, you said yes right?' haha. I'm honestly so glad it happened how it did. I've never wanted it to be a big deal and I think it was more of a surprise this way as if he had taken me out for dinner somewhere fancy I would have definitely known something was up! Ben had been so worried about how he was going to ask me but the fact that he couldn't wait makes it even more special. I still think it's a pretty good story, too.

We immediately called my parents to tell them the news. They had had an agonising week since Ben had asked my Dad his permission when we were in Tamworth last weekend. They knew it was coming but didn't know when. Mum and Dad were having lunch with some of our relatives so it was nice to be able to share it with a lot of loved ones at once! We then told Ben's parents (who also knew it was coming), my pop and Ben's nan, our siblings and a few of our friends. My best friend Jess had the best reaction. She was so excited I couldn't understand what she was saying! We then made it Facebook official, as you do! Luckily we had an unopened bottle of champagne in the kitchen so we popped that to celebrate and spent most of the afternoon messaging friends and trying to calm down (well that was me, anyway). We ordered Thai for dinner and had that delivered. By about 9pm we were both exhausted and went to bed early. Too much excitement for one day!

This morning we went out for coffee and I had my nails done (only natural when I'm gonna be showing a lot of people my hand, right?). We then headed over to the Grounds of Alexandria for a celebratory lunch. Despite having to wait an hour and a half for a table, it was an awesome way to celebrate. Any other day I would have been annoyed but we were in such good moods that it didn't matter! Plus, we killed time by sampling lots of different treats which were on sale at various stalls throughout the gardens. The food was excellent and I'm glad I finally got to take Ben there.

Admittedly, my mind has already gone into overdrive thinking about all the possibilities and things to plan. I need to settle down before I become bridezilla! I've got my last week at work this week before I start my new job and I need to get settled there before I start going too nuts with the planning. Crazy times ahead!

I'm absolutely over the moon at the thought of marrying my high school sweet heart and feeling so blessed with the knowledge that we have an amazing future together (plus I get to wear a beautiful ring..it's so perfect).

I thought I'd also share a few photos from my trip to the flower markets with my friend Kristine yesterday morning. I can sense a few more trips will be on the cards soon!

Veronica and Ming

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending my manager Veronica's wedding. It was my first Asian wedding - she is Vietnamese and her new husband, Ming, is Chinese. The ceremony was held at Bicentennial Park and thankfully the heavy rain of Friday night let up on Saturday morning and the sun came out for the rest of the day (note our squinty eyes). The reception was a huge affair with around 400 guests and a 12 course traditional Chinese dinner. Yes, 12! I had a heap of fun celebrating with my work mates and Ben. In fact I danced a little too hard and am experiencing extreme muscle pain in my legs and arms today. I never thought I'd say it but I feel like I may have done a bit too much fist pumping for one night.

As you can see V (as we affectionately call her) looked absolutely stunning! She had kept the details of her dress and head piece a complete secret at work so we were all super excited to see her. The dessert table pictured was styled by another colleague, Linda. You can check out her work here. Unfortunately I didn't get to sample many of the goodies on the table because people started lining up for dessert before all the main courses had been served! Nonetheless, I had a fantastic time. Congratulations V and Ming :)

My outfit details: Quirky Circus dress, Kimchi Blue heels from Urban Outfitters, bag used to belong to my Grandma.