The thing about love is… it’s unpredictable really, isn’t it?

One minute you’ve got it all together, your life in order, your career in focus and your friends in their allotted phone-call slots, and the next, well, the next you’re looking at someone across the room like they’re the most rare, and shiny piece of person you’ve ever seen. Their voice, the curve of their lip, the bend in their elbow; it’s… well, it’s intoxicating.

How could you ever have lived in this world without ever having seen or spoken with this person? Where have they been? Was there a moment you walked past them one day in the supermarket aisle and just didn’t see them? Picked up the same book in the library that they, the very same day had laid down? No. If you had been near them and actually seen them, there is no way you would have let them go by… is there?

I’m not sure I have any of the answers to this, by the way; I just know that when I met my fiance, I sort of felt like he was a rare bird. You know, the type that flies away if you come closer, but the one you want to see close up so bad, you almost risk it. Someone like that. Yes. I wanted to be with someone like that.

Some people are truly lucky in love. They meet, have an immediate connection. It is easy to begin, easy to continue, and seemingly easy to maintain. There are no ‘speed bumps’ as it were. These people (perfect people without stomach fat, it’s always people without stomach fat) meet a man so beautiful and so desperate to see them again, that he practically proposes on the first date. Marriage is this blissful swept-up romantic affair… bound for Hollywood, perfect children, and well, the continuation of the perfect stomach but um. Uhum. Mine was not quite like that. (nor is my stomach, I might add).

Don’t get me wrong. Falling in love for me was pretty much an immediate occurrence. I felt… fascinated. With him I would never be bored (my secret fear, oh please, we all have one) he was… sexy. And strong and smart and… I wanted more. I wanted life with this person. Frustratingly and to my undying annoyance, I just, felt that this was it. In my gut. All sense (and I promise, I really really had some sense) flew suicidally out the window never to return and my life did not feel alive anymore, without him in it. Call it intoxication, love, lust, mind-lust, whatever you like, but nothing – including him – was going to stop me from trying to be with this person.

It was a fight. With flight and giving up. It was uphill and downhill and sidehill until one day I found myself, crossing the road… his hand, comfortably and confidently taking mine and well, it was like I had no weight.

About four years later I’m standing on the top of a mountain in this ancient land in the Middle East. We’re alone up there, taking in the air, the deep blue view of the sea of Galilee and a little miracle happens. The fact that water was here in the middle of the desert was in itself a miracle, but I turn around, and there’s my rare bird, on his knees and I’m thinking ‘stop teasing me, don’t me silly’ and he’s saying “Marry Me?” And I say: “Yes Please.” because, that is what I felt the moment I saw him. Yes Please.

So the lovely Ms Gingham has asked me to blog a little with you guys about my wedding journey. And I want it to be honest. I wasn’t sure at first about accepting as I wasn’t feeling all romantic about wedding planning at the time. In fact, I was feeling overwhelmed and under-excited. I wanted babies not expensive parties! But well, I thought about it a little and I decided that we need to know that right? That not everyone during every moment of wedding planning is having a hollywood moment? We need to see how others have discovered a way, amongst the industry and all the shiny white stuff to celebrate the coming together of two people, and the joining of their lives…

So here I am. And the funny thing about love is… that just when you think you don’t want it well, there it is. Standing open and warm and waiting for you. And the wedding for me, well it sort of feels like that. Like I had to somehow come to terms with why I was doing it and what it all meant before I could step forward… take it’s hand and begin to cross the road…

Images from Anthea’s collection

Ms Gingham says: That’s the whole idea! Sharing you wedding planning journey with others out there is meant to bring a little bit of reality back into the lives of an engaged couple. Thanks to Anthea for her honest and beautiful recounting of her engagement!

Anthea describes herself as very passionate about people following their dreams, pursuing their passions, and the delicious world of art, music & design. Determined, the moment I begun this wedding journey, that the wedding would be a symbolic and meaningful experience, reflective of myself, my partner, & our families 😉

Anthea is a freelance designer, writer and creative who works in Sydney & publishes the soulful little publication – Spoonful, a happiness companion.