Kelly's World

I was never one to say I wanted to get married. I viewed marriage as the ultimate sacrifice of independence; it meant you were giving up your life as a free spirit and instead tying yourself to one person. That was spoken by the 15 year old me only a few months after getting together with Mat. How grand I must have thought I was, saying such passionate words. Yet instead,  I’m still with Mat ten years later and now we’re engaged. At 15, I thought if Mat and I got married that I would look back on my life and regret it. I should point out, I have a fear of regretting anything in my life – I don’t want to look back on it all and be upset that I missed something. The only problem is, I’ve never been happier.

Getting engaged has changed me, and it’s scary. At the moment it’s just all about organising the engagement party. Where to have it, what food to serve, if we can afford drinks, if we can’t afford drinks, can we just have it at home. All of this is running through my head consistently, which could be passed off as someone just trying to organise any kind of event. Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there.

I have visions of weddings, and receptions, and dresses, and lots of stupid girly things. It just doesn’t stop! I talk about dresses with my friends. I talk about makeup and nails (only because they tease me that I’m going to have to get the whole manicure/pedicure nonsense done). The other day, I repainted my fingernails three times (let me say that again, three, THREE FRIGGING TIMES) because I knew I would be showing off my engagement ring that day, and the colour had to compliment the jewellery. The only reason that I took up painting my fingernails is so I would stop biting my nails…not because I like having colours on my fingers!

So while I can go into this wedding planning fairly confident that I’m not going to regret anything (since getting engaged felt more right than I ever thought possible), we’re not planning on getting married for at least another 12 months. At the rate my mind is thinking, I wish it was over and done with so I didn’t have to be so girly! What happened to the girl who thought a wedding was just a piece of paper? Maybe we should elope, it would be so much easier and I could return to my tomboyish ways. You know, eloping is starting to sound pretty darn fantastic to me. Vegas anyone?

Today I’m not planning on doing anything particularly exciting…nothing that would inspire me to take a photo of anyway. Some beautiful new frangipanis have just bloomed on the tree outside, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to combine a picture of those with the zoom blur effect I’d learnt via flickr (click here for a link to the tutorial). Hope you like it!