October 17^th 2014. 17^th tenth two thousand and fourteen. 17/10/14.

No matter how it’s written or pronounced, October 17^th 2014 was the most magical day of my life – the day I became we and my ‘partner’ became my husband.

I sit here some months later writing this simply because it has taken me this amount of time for it to all sink in, up until now, the day still seemed like a dream – something we were separate from, out of body almost. Like we were there in a big fairytale, a part of a love story unfolding, and yet it was our love story. That love story and day feels real now. We are remembering laughs, looks, smiles, feelings and remembering they were ours – we were the ones there experiencing that.

I still have moments every few days where a song from the wedding will come on in the car and I can’t stop the tears rolling down my face, sometimes gentle sobs from total and utter feelings of love, there have been many moments people in cars beside me at the lights look at me with a look of “oh you poor thing I hope you’re ok” and I try to give them the look back, the one where I’m saying “it’s ok I’m just remembering the happiest, most beautiful, most surreal day of my life.”

I like to think if I could have bottled the feelings of love up on that day, right from the moment of waking up, to when our heads hit the pillow (& really continuing on in to the next day) and we gave those bottles of love away, no one in this big beautiful world would ever go without love ever again.

I truly mean it when I say it was that beautiful.

And here is where I think is a divine time to bring in the first part of a 7 part wedding series … WHY it was truly that beautiful and HOW we had the most beautiful day of our lives. Completely stress free. Magical. Intentional. Divine.

Before I share with you every intimate detail from the day I want to share with you something much much bigger….something much more deeply and divinely important.

Our INTENTIONS behind the ‘biggest day of our lives’

You see, before we even made the tiniest of plans relating to ANY aspect of the wedding – we set an intention not just for the wedding, but for our marriage. Something I believe many people ‘skip’ or ‘miss’ these days.

When I was a little girl, my extraordinary supermum brought me up with the belief that “although your wedding day IS the most important day of your life sweeties, please don’t ever forget the ‘forever’ after it…your marriage. Focus on your MARRIAGE, not the wedding, and the wedding will fall in to place”

As a little girl I remember vividly biting back (with love), laughing, telling mum “please!!!!! My wedding is going to be so big and beautiful Australia will declare it a public holiday forever more” – I’m not even actually kidding! Clearly I was always a big dreamer!

Funny thing is, I never forgot her advice, and as I grew up and in to love, I realized she might have just been right. So when Morgan asked the most honourable question of all time “will you make me the luckiest man on earth and be my wife” … I knew from that day forward my intention and focus was to be on the marriage to come, and not the wedding.

We talked of how we would raise our children. What values would we instill in them? What rules would we have as non negotiable in our lives? How did we commit to grow independently still continuing to grow as a couple? How would we always love and honour one another even through the shitty tough times? They were hard questions, all of which were tackled head on and with love – always.

As all of that was happening, some beautiful wedding plans started to unveil themselves. It was, as my mum said it would, happening divinely. The marriage was the focus and the wedding started to be planned around that.

Then the moment came. We flew to Bali with some of our best friends for a quick holiday knowing secretly in our hearts we had followed our hearts to a place that made us both feel happy and that was the place, on that holiday , we made the decision to marry in Bali.

The day we made the decision, we went to a beach front bar at sunset with our friends, 3 of our favourite things– the beach, friends & sunsets – and did something I believe to be most critical when about to embark on planning a wedding.

We made vows to one another of how to conduct ourselves leading in to the wedding.

Yep. Vows.

We went to the beach, as the sun was setting, and made promises to one another about our intentions for not just the wedding, but promises on how we would feel and act throughout the process – and WHY.

We vowed the process would be a stress free, happy, argument free process. We discussed this was promised because any argument in the planning process was an opposing feeling to the WHOLE point of the wedding which was…Love and togetherness.

We vowed that in the moment of stress or an argument arising, we would stop, and remember WHY in the first place we were getting married. Because we loved each other. Because we were saying we wanted each other for this lifetime (& hopefully the next). And that no matter what we would honour this promise.

We vowed that we each would play a part no matter how big or small in each decision. So it wasn’t ‘my’ day or ideas with him showing up.

*side note: at this very moment of writing this listening to music, our first dance song has just come on – latch, (acoustic version), Sam Smith – talk about tears!!

We vowed that the wedding planning process would be as beautiful and fun as the wedding itself. That every decision, dollar spent and moment surrounding the wedding would have an intention of love. Every single aspect of everything was from love, with love or involved love.

Vows before vows I hear you ask? It might sound a little odd, silly, even lame perhaps (only if you’re a guy!) .. but I know, not even think, I KNOW it was THOSE vows that made our whole wedding so divine and loved filled. The Vows we made we took very seriously, we looked at it like if we couldn’t honour these vows to one another what would that say about the vows we were going to promise to each other on the big day?

The moment was captured by said best friends – and we all had a toast to the big day that was from that day forward going to be planned.

And so the planning began. Vows were upheld. Love was poured in to every thought, every purchase, every idea, every moment…and what eventuated is what I know to be our love soaked wedding.

The first test came with what I believe is every engaged couples test. The wedding guest list. Morgan & I’s emotion behind the whole wedding was there wasn’t to be an ounce of tokenism, so that absolutely extended to the guest list. I know some might debate us until they’re blue in the face calling us liars, but our guest list was the first easy task we tackled without so much as a hiccup of disagreement. Here is why. We discussed HOW and WHY people would be invited to the most important day of our lives. We came up with a ‘caveat’ of areas people had to ‘fit in to’ to receive an invite – they never knew this but it was our huge way of declaring how much they truly meant to us and why we truly wanted them there. The ‘caveats’ were the following;

1. Who, in our most desperate times of need, when we were questioning our marriage or selves would we go to first to remind us of our vows we took to one another on our day. I.e. who were the ones we knew we honoured and loved the most and honoured & loved us back who would hold us accountable to our vows.
2. Who would we want to spend our New Years with? Morgan & I are only semi superstitious (ehem; I’m super superstitious) but one of the things we both hold true is that how we bring in our new years is a reflection of the year ahead – so it’s never WHAT we do, but WHO we spend it with. So this was huge in our decision making.
3. Who would we want to call immediately when we knew we were pregnant? Who would share in that precious gift of knowing before the rest of the world knew? (aka before facebook)

And thus the guest list was formed. The beautiful thing about it, was that there was so much love & intamicy poured in to the guest list that we had no stresses or arguments over who should come because no matter who’s side or friends ALL had to fit the caveat so it was all love.

Now. Were there moments of arguments? No. Frustration? Almost. Of course there were conversations more intense, like me trying to explain to Morgan what a bonbonairre was and how it wasn’t a waste of money and no darling we ARE meant to give gifts to our guests. But here is what happened because of our vows. I respectfully listened and loved him where he was at on that opinion and we actually came up instead with the best idea for bonbarinners ever (if I do say so myself) … I went and bought quote cards from Kiki K (which just by the way happened to be in our wedding colours! White & Gold) and on the back of every.single.one wrote to every single one of our guests individually a love soaked letter from us. What they meant to us, thanked them for being them & playing a pivotal role in our lives and why they’re amazing. THAT was their bonbairnaire, that truly only stemmed from trying to think outside the box and make it more thoughtful and honouring Morgans opinion of even having a gift. When I rang him with that idea he was blown away. He said it was beautiful, he loved it and was proud of me.

I give that example as a way to show of course there were “disagreements” – but honouring the vows of not getting in to arguments or stress – we ended up coming up with even more beautiful thoughtful ideas.

Everything was love. Everything had intention.

And please don’t think I’m ignoring one of the biggest stressors that can come from planning a wedding – money. Planning your dream wedding of course can have it’s financial stresses, and I was conscious throughout the planning process that Morgan & I were incredibly blessed to not have any of those kind of stresses. We paid for the wedding ourselves with ease…. But let me just honour US for a moment and say we could do that because we made a smart decision 18 months before the wedding to take control of our future. It wasn’t luck, or parents or debt. It was through choices we made to work hard on a business where we can create financial freedom – which we did. A choice you can make to so I won’t ever ever hear “it was easy for them” .. ever. It can be easy for you to.

So here we are. About to delve in to the next 6 parts of our wedding that I want to intimately share with you, beautiful reader. But before I ever did that I truly wanted you to first understand WHY I know in my heart and soul it was the most magical divine day of our lives – because of this key piece of love & intention.

It was our intention to love through the whole process.

It was our intention to focus on the marriage after the one day that was our wedding.

It was our intention to create the most beautiful space for not just us, but our beautiful guests to experience our love for one very very special day.

But above all, it was our intention to create a beautiful life and love AFTER the wedding. Something we knew that if wasn’t the main focus going IN TO to the wedding, certainly wouldn’t be AFTER the wedding.

It is that same intention I hope for you too to focus on whenever it is your turn to experience the most magical divine day of your lives.

I hope the next 6 posts bringing every detail of our magical day bring you as much love and joy as we had experiencing them.

And here is to leading and living a life full of LOVING intention, always.

With all my love,

Anna