The Wedding!

The day started off pretty wet and miserable and we just thought we were going to have to make the most of it. Towards lunchtime though, it started to clear up and by the time of the ceremony, the weather was beautiful! We had the most amazing day - the scenery was unbelieveable. Castaways were so helpful and our photographer - Chris Dillon - did an amazing job of capturing the day...

Special thanks to our MC and DJ too - David Seel, he really pulled the day together and it would have been very different without him.

Castaways

So, we finally arrived at the wedding venue - Castaways in Waiuku. One can only descrive the setting as breathtaking - individual studios and villas built into the hill side with a very dramatic black sand beach and amazing shoreline - the scene is set for a wonderful day tomorrow!

DeBretts - Auckland

So we arrived in Auckland lunchtime on Sunday - I must say we weren't too jet-lagged. The Singapore layover basically makes it feel like two night flights so your body is pretty well adjusted bythe time you arrive in Auckland...its still a bl**dy long way though!!

DeBretts is wonderful - a really modern, clean and chic hotel. The majority of our friends and family were congregating at DeBretts and so it was great to catch up with them...

We had a few things to sort out - marriage licence, photographer, etc but not too much (aside from a minibus the day before we had to leave to go to our venue)...

The journey begins...!

And we're off! All the planning behind us, what we haven't got now, we'll never have!

Got to Heathrow about teatime and then the first leg (on the new A380) to Singapore followed by the second leg on to Auckland...

Albany - NY

Just before we headed off to New Zealand, I had to take a trip to the US. We were visiting a company in Albany, so I flew to Boston, then hired a car and drove to Marlborough where I met with a colleague. I then carried on driving up to Albany - very pretty but huge amounts of snow! I then spent a couple of days in Albany before flying back to Chicago and then on to Heathrow.

The Stag Do!!

So - reason I've not been updating this so regularly is because we've been planning our wedding! The venue is in Waiuku, New Zealand...we spent a lot of time finding the venue, but seriously underestimated the whole planning process - trying to find a cake maker, photographer, venue, etc, etc when you're halfway around the worls is not easy!

Today was my Stag Do - we went rage buggying at a place near Rugeley. It was absolutely brilliant...they feel really fast and incredible fun. I came third (I think)...!

New car!!

Today I took delivery of my new BMW - a 320D in Black...very fast!!

Dog Crush

Quite how Chief gets into this I don't know!!

Xmas snow over the Chase

We had quite a bit of snow over the Xmas period...dogs loved it!

Gaga

Lady Gaga at the O2. A little disappointing if I'm honest...the show was OK but nothing special. The best part was eating at Gauco's beforehand!


HMS BElfast looked pretty funky though...