Our Engagement Party!

At the beginning of the year, when we first got engaged, Wade's parents asked us if we were going to have an engagement party. At the time, some pretty sad / crazy things were happening with my family. A big one was that my grandma (the only family I have in Australia outside of my immediate family) had just gone in to hospital, and we didn't know if or when she would be getting out. So I told them I didn't think it would be possible. I knew that just organizing a wedding would be a huge ask for my parents and sisters. But Wade's parents were pretty insistent that we would be missing out on something if we didn't have an engagement party, and so they offered to host it. Which was, might I just say, amazing of them. We decided to have a very intimate party with just family who lived locally and close friends - especially those who we knew would be out of the country for the wedding. After a drizzly and cold week, I started questioning our decision to have the party at our local park. But the day before the party,  the sun came out, and it turned out to be the most beautiful weekend of the whole Winter! At the last minute, I decided to set up a volleyball net at the park because I knew that most of the people we had invited were volleyball enthusiasts (including myself and Wade). This turned out to be a massive hit (pardon the pun), and I don't know if I'll ever throw a party without a volleyball net again! What made the party extra special for me were the speeches, and the fact that my uncle and little cousin flew out all the way from England to come to the party. So there were two extra Lloyds at our engagement party - which is a huge deal.

I hope your weekend was as beautiful as mine!

- H

Engagement Session Wears

Wade and I have an engagement session booked in September with our very talented photographer, Scott. We had a little mini session right after we got engaged with Vivid Photography that was incredibly fun, but unfortunately because of the package we didn't get a disc of the images - only prints of our favorites. I'm happy we did it, though because it's really nice to have some pictures from when we first got engaged, whereas the shoot with Scott will be only a couple of months before the wedding.

The mini session was great, too, because I learned what I liked and didn't like about what I wore. I wore a really cute vintage-inspired tea dress that I bought from Dotti for only $10! Here's me wearing it at Elora's high tea. Super cute, right?

Unfortunately the lining of the underskirt showed in a couple of the really gorgeous photos, plus I think it was a little bit shorter than I thought it was. Not as timelessly classy as I wanted!

My hairdresser Kylie - who, by the way I would highly recommend! - styled my hair right before the shoot, and I, for some reason, requested it to be styled down. Even though my hair was / is at that awkward "growing-out" length where it's too long to be a cute bob, and too short to look like an elegant long bob. Plus, I almost always wear my hair up, because I hate using straighters and curling irons on my hair in the morning. So it wasn't very me.

Anyway, I was browsing Pinterest looking for engagement session inspiration when I found this image from the most gorgeous engagement session I've ever seen:

So now I'm on the lookout for a cream dress! Let me know if you see any.

- H

Just a quick post to say...

I'm an aunt! Welcome baby Hunter James to the world!

- H

PS. Isn't he perfect??

Little Pops of Neon

When it comes to fashion, for me, being super comfortable and wearing figure-flattering clothes always takes precedence over the latest trend. This has actually come about pretty recently, when three months ago I did a huge clothing cull and sold over half of my wardrobe on eBay - including lots of items that still had tags on them and things I had only worn just once. After reading about the 40 hanger closet I invested in some cute and functional hangers and every time I buy a new item, I make myself donate or sell another item. I've found that I rarely moan, "I have nothing to wear" anymore because I know what I have to wear and I also know that most of the different pieces co-ordinate with each other.

I've also found myself investing in accessories to make the outfit - things like a great bag, or a new pair of shoes, or a great statement necklace. At the moment I'm enjoying incorporating pops of neon into my winter wardrobe. This bag was an absolute steal from one of those cheap handbag stores. I like it because it's neutral, but at the same time it has that great orange detailing! And when neon isn't popular anymore I won't feel too bad about donating it because I got it for cheap. I snapped this quickly on my way to church, so sorry about the quality of the image!

I think I'll move to Sydney

As you might know, I love French food. I have three French cookbooks (untouched), and love going to the different French restaurants and French patisseries around Brisbane. So when I heard about this gorgeous little French cafe in Sydney - and their ingenious marketing scheme - I just about cried.

Because, you see, they are letting their customers pay for their coffee with... wait for it... a kiss! How perfectly Parisian. Their Facebook page states, "We're not accepting your money, just your kisses." Basically, for the month of June from 9 - 11am, customers are given the option of kissing for their coffee - but, the promo video says, it has to be a real kiss ... a true kiss.

"I can see if it's a fake kiss," the waiter teases. "I'm kind of an expert." What do you think? Is the concept bring romance back? Would you kiss for your coffee? I've already informed Wade that a trip to Sydney within the next couple of weeks is in order!

- H

The Engagement

Wade's proposal was a big surprise. And while I suppose that's what I wanted, looking back it shouldn't have been as surprising as it was. While Wade and I had discussed getting married now and again, it was always labelled as an arbitrary someday.

I think I first decided that I wanted to marry Wade about six months after we had started dating. Obviously this would have been completely illegal as I was very underage, so we just continued on as we were - two teenagers in love, with no serious commitment or plans for our future together. As each year passed, people started asking us when we were going to get married. We also saw friends and family start dating and get married quite quickly - I think that's generally what happens when you grow up in a church community. One couple who started dating around the same time as us (they were a few years older) got married, had a baby and are now having their second child in a few months - crazy! Another couple advised us not to bother with "getting all of our ducks in a row" before getting engaged and married, to which I replied, well I'd like to get some ducks up there at least!

This was never us. Marriage was a huge commitment. For us, the ultimate commitment - definitely not something that we would enter into with just anyone, at any time. As Wade completed his first degree, and the end of my degree started creeping closer we started thinking maybe. But then Wade decided to go back to studying to become a paramedic, and I took a new job with reduced hours and our conversations about getting married started to drop off again. We started talking about moving overseas, we planned traveling holidays and dreamed about our future careers.

Then, one day, Wade asked me to come with him for a drive down to the Gold Coast to meet up with one of his friends. It was an elaborate ruse - Wade's friends posted decoy Facebook updates about meeting us, and Wade pretended to be working at the ambulance station all day so that he could get everything ready. I was dressed up to the nines because I thought we were having dinner at the Marriot. When we got down, Wade took me for a walk on the beach to where we had our first kiss. As the sun was setting, he got down on one knee and gave me the most beautiful ring I've ever seen in my life. I was completely shocked! Spoiler: I said yes.

But the surprises didn't end there. When we drove home, there was a huge welcoming party of family and friends waiting to celebrate with us, and our phones were beeping and ringing all night. Apparently everyone knew that Wade was going to propose except for me. But the biggest surprise of the night was how happy I was. I wasn't scared. I wasn't nervous. I was just incredibly happy and content. It just felt perfect.

- H

Transformers Tattoo

Last year, I had an English Lit class with a really pretty girl. She always wore these gorgeous sundresses and brightly colored cardigans - really cute stuff. I loved her style. Then I looked at her feet. Peeping out of her cute floral flats were two Transformers tattoos. One autobot symbol and one decepticon symbol. I think. I'm not really an expert. At all.

Anyway, it got me to thinking why she would tattoo Transformers on the tops of her feet. Was there a special meaning behind them? Could there be a special meaning behind them? I was thinking about this when it hit me - if anyone would have a reason to get a Transformers tattoo on their body, it would probably be me. And I don't like the movies at all.

Let me backtrack to high school, when the movie was a really big hit, and everyone was talking about it and seeing it and reminiscing about their childhoods watching the TV show. I never watched Transformers growing up. I was more of an Arthur kind of girl - you know, Arthur the aardvark? So I wasn't too interested in seeing the movie, until one of my oldest friends asked me to go see it with him. I agreed, and we made plans to see it the next day. Then my Dad asked me if I wanted to go to the beach, so I texted my friend and cancelled. We rescheduled for the next week, until I remembered that I had a friend's birthday party and cancelled again. We didn't reschedule.

The next time I saw this guy, I was about to go in for surgery, and he was about to go volunteer at the Red Bull air show. He told me, in no uncertain terms that if I still hadn't seen Transformers by the time he got back, he would take me and I wasn't allowed to cancel. And he did, the day I got out of hospital.

I was on about a whole bunch of painkillers, so I was really dopey when he picked me up. We sat on a guard rail by the river while we waited for the movie to start, and I remember trying to stay coherent enough so that I wouldn't topple off. When the movie started I fell asleep within about ten minutes on my friend's shoulder.

But that doesn't matter, because guess what?

That movie ended up being my first unofficial date with Wade.

- H