Officially Off the Market

Gasp!

You guys, I’ve been such a bad blogger…I’m so very sorry. BUT, I have huge news!

I’m engaged!… Here’s our story:

We planned a trip to Europe with his family, and the family decided to rent a chateau in France for Christmas. As the time grew closer, I kept thinking that a proposal in Paris would be epic! When I finally jokingly mentioned it to him, he very emphatically (and repeatedly) stated that the trip to Europe was all I could hope for, since he was taking me for almost 4 weeks, and travelling in Europe is super expensive. A couple of weeks before our departure he told me that he had the choice of a ring, or our trip, and he obviously chose the trip. I was clearly disappointed, and he apologised and told me that we might be able to afford a ring in 2014. Then, a couple of days before we left, he told me that we would have to use some of the money I had kept aside for my planned IKEA shopping spree (it should be noted that this was money I had saved for almost a year, and had kept separate from our joint Europe savings) to pay for the accommodation in France, and our visas. I was fuming. Livid, really. We had a huge fight, and I couldn’t understand where all his money went, and I was upset that I had to sacrifice MY savings! (Yes, I was being a brat – I know that…I am quite ashamed of that… ) He told me that the flights were more expensive than what he budgeted for, and that we really didn’t have a choice but to use my IKEA fund. We left it there, and moved on. I didn’t give it another thought.

Throughout the first week and a half our trip, we were in Amsterdam, visiting with Faul’s eldest brother and his wife and kids. I secretly kept hoping that there might be a proposal, but knew in the back of my head it wouldn’t happen.

We departed for France in our rental car on 22 December, and spent one night in Brussels, before driving the rest of the way to France. On the 24th, we went into Paris for the first time. (Our house was about 40mins’ train ride outside of the city) We were shown around by his eldest brother, with almost the entire family with us. We went to go see the Notre Dame and then walked to the Pont Neuf – the oldest bridge in Paris, where his brother told us a bit about the city. We all decided to go to a café for drinks, but Faul held me back. He said he wanted to go down the stairs at the bridge, because the bridge runs over a little island and he wanted to go look. I wasn’t really feeling it, because it started drizzling a bit, and it was cold! I told him we had a whole week in France, and that we could come back another day…But he insisted, so down we went. As we walked to the tip of the island, he grew quiet, holding my hand very tightly. We got to the end of the island, and there were three very dodgy looking Eastern European guys just standing around, smoking and talking in hushed tones. It was very freaky, and we felt the need to leave! He then said we should just take a picture and get out of there, and he looked quite sad.

We started walking back to the bridge, and halfway to the stairs, he stopped and snaked one arm around my waist and kissed me. We were kissing in the cold wind, with tiny droplets of rain falling on our skins – when I felt a smile on his lips against my lips. I felt his body moving a bit, and could tell his free arm was reaching into his pocket, when without moving his lips from mine, he said that he had something to ask me…

I started squealing, and jumping up and down, when he took the box out of his pocket. When he opened it, my heart stopped. It was the most gorgeous ring I have ever seen – and exactly what I wanted. He said he wasn’t going down on one knee, because it was wet (and he had new pants on!) but he wanted to know if I would marry him. It took me a couple of minutes to answer, after all, talking is difficult if you’re squealing and kissing the love of your life all over his face.

We walked to a café, where his family were waiting with a bottle of French Champagne to congratulate us, and I was showing my ring off to anyone who even glanced our way!

We added a padlock in the lovers tradition to the fence on the Pont des Arts, the bridge right next to the Pont Neuf. We placed it directly in line with the tip of the island – forever commemorating the place where we got engaged.

It was such a magical day. It is such a magical time.

I’ve entered a competition to win an AMAZEBALLS prize for our wedding, and would love it (and adore you) if you would click on this link and leave a comment: http://saweddingvenues.com/proposals-2014/marle-faul/

 

 

More about our trip later!

Later, dolls. (Go comment – do it. Do it now.)

 

Living deliberately and extraordinarily

“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die Discover that I had not lived.”

– Henry David Thoreau

I woke up this morning and suddenly felt as if my own life was passing me by. I have stopped writing, I have stopped painting, I barely touch my camera any more (although that is a different story entirely, I am quite angry with the thing) and I am merely existing. I feel bad because it feels like I have lost the fire in me, the life within me.

I want to rediscover myself, and my life. I forget what I stood for, and what my passions were. I have lost my voice, but the more I shout, the less any one can hear me… If I were to die today, what legacy would I leave? What would people remember? That I am a lousy friend? True. That I am self-obsessed? Also true. That I am no longer the person I used to be? That I am lazy at living? All true.

As I watched a video clip that a dear friend made, I realised that I even lost the activist in me, and I hate that. I hate that the world is still so unfair to any one who is not “normal”. Ugh, NORMAL? What is that? Why do we want to be NORMAL? Normal is boring. It is average. It is ordinary. I don’t want to be normal. I will no longer be. I want to LIVE. I want to BE.

As of today, I will be different. I will not be lazy. I will work at living. I want to live deliberately. I am extraordinary. And so are you.

My first act in living my new life: Reviving the Activist. Homophobia is unacceptable. It  can not be tolerated. It should not. It is cruel. With that in mind, please watch this video. My dear friend made this video. And to my dear friend: Thank you for the wake up call. I needed your honest and pure heart put into art to wake me up and to start living again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7RLsQFfaD0&sns=fb

Much Love

I hear the bells a’ringing

I worked a wedding again this weekend. And it was beautiful. But oi vey I have to start the mountain of editing that lies in front of me.

Sometimes I wonder if all this technological advances are really a good thing. Yes, DSLR‘s has made the work of a photographer much easier and more convenient. But when I started out, I had two SD cards. One 2 gig, and one meagre 256 mb card. And that’s all I had for shooting a wedding. Which meant that I shot much more carefully. I thought about shots before I even got there and I limited myself very much.

Now though, I have a variety of memory cards, none smaller than 2 gig. Now this is very convenient, true. But, like I said, is it really a good thing? The wedding that I just did was so much fun, and I got a lot of great shots. But that’s kinda the point I’m trying to make. It’s just that fact, that makes the post-operation part of my job much harder, more time consuming and very monotonous. Editing. The problem with limitless space is just that. It’s limitless. Therefore you just shoot left and right, doing way too many doubles of one shot (just for in case someone’s eyes are closed) and at the end of the night, you’re stuck with thousands upon thousands (I kid you not) of raw material that needs to be sifted through, and then edited. And believe me, of those thousands of photos, I never give more than 500 photographs. It’s just not plausible to give a bride 1000 photos to go through. It’s just too much. And if you let that many slip through, there’s bound to be a couple of so-so shots. So-so shots have no place in a portfolio. And the work you do as a photographer at a wedding, is all for your portfolio. The bride is going to show your work to all of her friends and family, and if she’s happy, she’ll hopefully recommend you. But with so-so shots in between, you’re compromising the integrity of your work. I’d rather have a bride be disappointed about having not that many photos, but them being great, that have a bride be disappointed with having to go through hundreds of photos and find only a handful of gems.

But enough yapping from me, I need to get to work. I’ll post some when I’m done.

Side note: I long for a kitchen with an oven. I miss making proper food.