Day 81 of 365 grateful days project:

"I am grateful that I am now a Madame Chanliau and that the wedding madness is over."

The great thing about getting married is the first 6 months after the engagement/proposal. Everything was bright and positive and we were back madly in love like the first time we met.

However, reality stroke 2 months before the wedding and the stress escalated bit by bit until the last minute of the act of "walking down the aisle." And all this was because I planned and organised my own wedding with 120 invitees.

Now I fully grasp the term Bridezilla and why it was invented at all. It was so easy to choke on someone during these crazy times when nothing seemed to go right on track. I would proudly say I was not one, though. I was impatient at times, yes, but I was so far from being a bridezilla.

BUT, all the little details that seemed so important before became nothing when my husband to be fell sick only 3 days before the wedding. The visits to wedding vendors and venue were changed to clinic, lab and hospital. Fortunately he is a strong man. He could stand still at the end of the aisle while I was walking nervously to him to see if he would faint at all. He looked white and thin and sick and he trembled a little bit; but he managed to declare the wedding vow. 

After the ceremony, everyone relaxed, including us, and we started to believe that everything was going well. Very well, even. I have to correct it once again, it was the coolest wedding I've ever attended! And it was ours! VICTORY!!!

To make me stop blahblah-ing, here is a video to the wedding. :)

365 grateful days project love life relationship

8:54 am

Day 80 of 365 grateful days project:

"I am grateful that I am getting married in two weeks."

Okay, in my last blog post, I was writing about Marie's wedding in France. I also wrote in the end of the post, that my boyfriend of 5 years proposed me during the reception. I wasn't prepared for that, nor did I hope that it would actually happen; so I flipped and I didn't quite give a satisfying response. When I was back in Bali in October 2012, I got caught up in so much work that I completely forgot the proposal did happen and perhaps needed some follow up.

In one of our rare girls' day out, Pam and Ingrid asked how the France trip was. And then I started telling them what happened at the wedding.

They literally danced on their seat at the Japanese restaurant when they heard about the proposal but soon froze when I said that I didn't say yes, yet. The next conversation could be easily predicted - Pam and Ingrid's attack on how stupid I was. :P

Anyway, inspired by Sex and the City, Ingrid started pushing me to ask him to repeat the question. But how could I do that? It's all different situation then, different mood, different everything. So I thought to wait for another 2 months and see if he'd do something. If he didn't, then I would make the move.

He didn't.

So in January 2013, I started making plans. Basically I wanted to propose him back. I tried at the New Year's Eve dinner, but do you have any idea how hard it was to get the words out of your mouth??? You had so many What If questions in your head and your head was so heavy and your cheeks felt so hot and your mouth dry. Nope, I couldn't do this.

But whenever I am determined to do something, I will find one way or another to make it happen. So I came up with a creative marriage proposal: making a video of family and friends proposing him for ME. I sent them emails and Facebook messages that I needed them to make a photo having one specific word that I assigned them to do. And since everyone was so excited about the prospect of us getting married, it took reasonably fast to collect all the photos! I was so smart!!! :D

Ingrid holding the word "Marry"

I am not a videographer or video editor, or anybody related to video production. But I wanted to do everything myself since the hardest part is done by people around the world. So for 2 weeks I woke up earlier than normal to put the photos together into a presentable video. To be honest, choosing the songs are the harder part. :P

The video was ready just after Valentine's day. But we were throwing a house warming party on the 23rd of February so I waited to play the video in this occasion. Despite the hard rain and the fact that half of the guests had gone home (better I guess so it wasn't too embarrassing), my trembling finger pressed Play on the TV remote control. Then this video was playing...

Vincent's reaction was..... overwhelming. I'm not even sure if that was even the right word. But hey, from the title of this blog you should have already known that he said yes. :)

I'm such a lucky girl. And he is one damn lucky guy. 

365 grateful days project love life relationship social life

7:41 am

Day 79 of 365 grateful days project:

"I'm grateful to be back blogging after hardly ever touching it for over a year."

I must be one of the worst bloggers ever. I saw that my Google rank dropped to 1... But hey, life happens. And it never happened the way it has been the past year.

By now you must have thought that something terrible had happened.

It hadn't, fortunately.
In fact, a lot of good things had happened. So good that I chose to live it more than write it here - which I now regret. It would have been nice to reread all the wonderful things that I'd experienced so far. But anyway, here I am back. And I'll try to be more consistent this time. *fingers crossed*

365 grateful days project writing

7:40 am