One year after our wedding, I was in England, living with my parents, celebrating my one year anniversary alone in the garden with a microwave curry and a miniature bottle of champagne. Two years on and I’m living in America with my husband, in our own house, with a sweet furry kitten and a brand new son.

August 4th 2007. Happy times xxx

1) My big sister’s wedding is on Saturday and we’re all getting extremely excited about it.

2) DrMrNin is flying in on Friday- the last time he will have to fly all the way to England just to see me. xo

3) I’m making good progress with my packing. When I see all my things again it will be in our new home. xo

4) The evenings are drawing in and there’s a chill in the air. I’m thrilled to be able to have some English autumn before I leave.

5) The fall food range is finally on sale at Williams Sonoma and I will be able to go there and see it all in just a couple of weeks. I’m hoping they will have some samples to try too

Isn’t this cake jut gorgeous?!

Exactly four weeks on from the day itself I present to you the official wedding portraits, brought to you courtesy of the fabulous Jeff Ascough who in my opinon did THE most AMAZING job of photographing the big day….but then I would say that wouldn’t I?!

It’s all too often that brides can be heard describing their wedding day as the best day of their life so far, but up until my own big day, I never really fully understood what they meant. On many occasions throughout the planning process, I would always ask married friends “in what way was it the best?“, but I could never really get a satisfactory answer. All to frequently the reply would be something along the lines of “well, I dunno, it just was“. And now when it comes to trying to explain the feeling of my very own wedding, I find myself up against the same verbal brick wall. It really was a very best day of my life so far, but as to explaining why, well it just was. There is no single thing about the day that stood out above all others as being a hilight, as every single moment from the second I got up in the morning to the time that I went to bed was just so smashingly perfect. So much so that I’m still on a high from it.

I spent the entire day completely swollen with pride. I was proud of our beautiful, BEAUTIFUL bridal party, who all looked more stunning that words can ever describe, I was proud for Mutti looking amazing to be walking down the aisle on the arm of my cousin, I was proud for a dapper looking Young Father to be giving me away, and I was of course completely proud to be joined in marriage with my new husband in front of friends and family who had between them travelled hundreds of thousands of miles to share the moment. And all throughout the same time I was bursting with pleasure at the sight of seeing all our hard work over the past eleven months come together to an absolutely flawless finish. Even the one tiny glitch that did happen (MrNin’s buttonhole and Mutti’s corsage had been confused) was all sorted very efficiently and in good time. The ceremony was wonderful, the ride in the vintage cars to the reception was delightful, and everything about the reception was magnificent- drinks were flowing, the food was amongst the most excellent I have ever had, the band sounded amazing, and I very much got the impression that everyone had a good time. if any of the guests had any complaints, it was probably that we almost killed them by presenting them with enormous quantities of too many good things. But in a way, I consider that a compliment- best to have too much than too little in my book! Even the weather came through for us- according to the staff at the restaurant, we were only the second wedding that year so far who had had sunshine.

I really cannot summon the words to express how pleased, grateful and honoured I still feel about the whole event, it was just the most perfect day ever. The vocabulary just doesn’t exist, nor are there superlatives great enough, but the pictures that were taken speak all the words that I stuggle to find. Here are some of my personal favourites that i wanted to share (but you can view a slideshow of the full set by clicking here). I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

^^^By the way, that man with that there camera is none other than FilmChris! He and his wife Sandra (a.k.a. ‘Vanderkitten’) were in our bridal party.

Thanks everyone, you were all amazing

Today marks the wedding anniversary of my parents. 40 years ago today they were married on a sunny afternoon up in London, and 40 years since the day, their's is still a marriage that is going strong.

Happy wedding anniversary Mutti and Young Father! I hope that our marriage will be as happy and as long-lasting as yours!

I love looking at their old wedding photos, they're classic and timeless. If you're interested, I've got more in my flickr account, and you can see them by clicking here. But my favourite photo of all is the first one I posted- that's my uncle sneaking a cheeky kiss on his new sister-in-law's cheek. He was also best man at the wedding.

Speaking of wedding photos….I'm EXCITED BEYOND WORDS to see that friends of ours and a couple of family members have started to upload pictures they took from our wedding on August 4th! I can't wait to tell you about it and show you the pro pics. in the meantime, here are some of my favourites out of the ones that our friends and family have posted.

We’re home, we’re safe, we’re tired, but we’re back.

The journey from our hotel to Colombo airport did indeed take all that time, but it was a rather luxurious one. We had said goodbye to Palitha when we had arrived here, so the company who we had booked through sent another driver, and this one came in a great big silver Mercedes. According to Palitha, that little Toyota Camry that we had been driving round in for ten days cost the equivalent of US$50,000. It wasn’t even that high spec a car either- it was almost brand new, but the only mod con it had was air conditioning. It didn’t even have electric windows, and automatic central locking wasn’t even in its vocabulary. Apparently car tax in Sri Lanka runs at 300%. Aside from the Lexuses (Lexi?) we saw whilst we were on Safari, this Mercedes must have been one of the most expensive cars on the island. We felt very special.

Once at the airport, everything seemed rather straightforward- join one line to check in, join another line to get our emmigration card and passport stamped, then join another line to get through security, and enter back into the departure lounge, which immediately felt rather ‘Western’ all of a sudden. Why? Well, we started to see familiar brand names of home stocked on the shelves, we were suddenly surrounded by more European holidaymakers than we had seen in the whole of the past two weeks, and above all else, we saw a COFFEE BEAN AND TEA LEAF. Seriously, I kid you not, and if you needed proof, here it is. Just click on the photo and it will take you straight to the flickr page, then click to see the ‘Exif’ data, and you will clearly be able to see the timestamp. I definitely took this picture in Sri Lanka.

I rather whelped with enthusiastic glee at the sight of this shop from the heavens (rather to the embarrassment of MrNin) and skipped happily inside and ordered a large, decaf, single latte which happens to be one of my most bestest drinks in the WHOLE WIDE WORLD. I got a piece of chocolate fudge cake too. MrNin tried to feign his dismay, but he was actually rather pleased with his triple latte and didn’t utter another word.

Due to ‘connection issues’ our flight home was delayed by about an hour and a half, which lent time to people watching in the airport. It just happens to be one of my favourite things to do, so I wasn’t too bothered. MrNin plugged himself into his iPod, whilst I gazed around and tried to make up stories about why everyone is there. It’s turned out not to be such an interesting game at the airport though, as about 80% of the people there were obviously coming back from their holiday. And everyone felt pretty much the same way as we did from the looks of it.

So I donned my eyemask and retrieved my koosi pillow and attempted to forget all about my poorly tummy. Just as I had got comfy propped up on MrNin’s shoulder, they announced boarding and then the cattle crush began.

The flight actually wasn’t that bad, it was just long. Air Lanka kept us well fed, and there were quite a few films to watch, and there were even video games too. I spent about two hours playing Solitaire but only managed to complete it once. But by far the coolest thing about the plane though was that in addition to the flight map that seems to be pretty standard on almost all carriers these days, they also had front- and downward-facing cameras. Or “front-” and “sicky-cam” as we liked to affectionately call them. There wasn’t much to see when we were flying high up in the air, but it made the take-off and landing rather exciting as we got a pilot’s-eye view. Just take a look at what we saw when we were coming in to land at Heathrow (not a very good pic, I know, but the screen was only about 6″ big. At least you can get the idea though).

After making the awkward journey back from Terminal 4 to the local train station (I always hate landing at T4 as it’s SO out of the way, and it adds an extra trainride and 40 mins to the journey), my parents picked us up and took us home and fed us beans on toast as we were hungry. By this stage it was all rather late so everyone (except us) went to bed. Unfortunately the beans didn’t work so well for my poorly tummy and I suddenly felt an awful lot worse. It was probably the tiredness and dehydration from the 13.5 hour flight and the hours of transfers either side, but I began to take a turn for the worse. At one point I was even lying on the floor in awfulness.

I don’t think my parents realised just how awful I felt, as they hadn’t been witness to my discomfort of the past 10 days. At this stage I wanted to call a doctor out, or if he couldn’t come, to go to the emergency room as I was worried that I might need fluids. I really did feel THAT bad and was worried that it was going to be a horrifically uncomfortable night. But because they were over half asleep when i went into their room to ask them for help, they weren’t really that responsive. But MrNin sat with me, in a true show of husbandly support and made me drink glass after glass of water, waiting with me until I was so tired that i couldn’t possibly not fall asleep, regardless of my discomfort.

It just so happens that a very good neighbour of mine whom I’ve known since I was three – we literally grew up together, and are like sisters – is fully qualified GP (which is british for ‘doctor’) and she has just moved home for a little while having lived away for a few years. So this morning, upon actually realising just how dreadful I felt, my mum went over there to her house to seek advice. Next thing I know, my friend in shining armour came to my rescue with a private prescription, and even more kindly than that, actually went to the pharmacy and COLLECTED IT FOR ME too! How nice a person could there ever be??!! It turns out I was displaying the classic signs of a nasty intestinal infection, and I needed a course of Cipro to help fight it off. She also recommended that I take some of that specially mixed sugar/salt solution as it was my chemical imbalance in particular that was likely making me feel so off and lacking of energy. King Young Father went and got me some of that just before lunch and after just having two doses, I feel soooo much better already.

Thank GOODNESS I am now on the mend. Here’s hoping that over the next couple of days I will get fully back to my merry ol’ self again. Hurrah!

People offer many pearls of wisdom when it comes to travelling abroad, like “When in Rome…” or “Don’t do anything you wouldn’t do at home” or “Don’t drink the water” (HA! I guess I should have listened to that one…except mine was an ice cube, and purely by accident). I would like to take the opportunity to offer a new piece of advice which in my opinon should be adhered to as often as possible and that would be “Whenever you can DO IT IN LUXURY!” We have learnt this first hand (and rather pleasantly) over the past couple of days. In fact, the slogan for where we are is ‘Where paradise has no compromise‘…ha, you’re certainly telling me it doesn’t!!

For the first time in all of my 30 years (I’m going to practise saying it so I can get used to it), I’m sitting in a holiday resort that I absolutely have NO intention of leaving. Growing up with my family, from when I was about 12 years old, we would every year take a package holiday to some resort somewhere in the world (usually Europe as it was on our doorstep) and we would always go with one intention in mind: to spend as little time in the hotel as possible, as we had a whole country to visit. Needless to say that this has made me grow into quite a tiring person to travel with, as vacations for me mean SEEING AND DOING. Hence this whole honeymoon really- with all the travelling around and sighseeing that we’ve been doing every day, it’s blatantly obvious who planned it all, *raises hand* That would be me.

But here in Bentota I have learnt the joyfulness of doing NOTHING. It might be partly to do with that we’re both pretty tired from the wedding still (I’m even completely tired out from events BEFORE the wedding too), and we’ve also been dealing with jetlag (5.5 hrs ahead of England, 13.5 hrs ahead of NorCal), and add onto that all the travelling, seeing and doing each day, and the fact that I haven’t really eaten or slept properly for the past week….but I think an awful lot of it has to do with this hotel. This AMAZING hotel. This hotel where they cater for your EVERY possible fancy even before you’ve thought of it, and the staff address you by name when you pass them by, and they know exactly which room number you’re in without even having to ask. Never in my life before, and likely never in my life again will I get to stay in a place that’s quite THIS fancy.

Take for example when we first arrived– at the beginning of our trip, when we landed at Colombo there was a small duty free section to welcome us off the plane, so MrNin and I bought a couple of bottles of champagne to toast to the recent events. We drank one of them on my birthday, but my aversion to anything by mouth the past couple of days had left us with a bottle still to hand. We were just about to open it, when lo and behold, there was a knock at the door and in came an immaculately dressed waiter with an ice bucket and two glasses! Followed by another immaculately dressed waiter with a basket of fruit. And about ten minutes after that, there was yet another man with a well-wishing chocolate cake. Can you imagine? Well it’s TRUE!

They had also put an awful lot of attention into the detail too– there are bowls of water outside to wash our feet in, there are three different types freshly cut flowers in our room each day, somebody comes around in the evening to light mosquito coils to keep the bugs away (thank goodness, I’ve had very bad luck with mosquitoes in the past but I will save that for another time), and don’t just straighten the sheets here at this place, ho no, they decorate the bed too. Can you see that there’s also a handwritten note on there above the purple petals?

I won’t give away too many visual details of the room just yet as I think all the fabulous hotels on this trip probably deserve a post all unto themselves, but there’s just no way i can’t show you the pièce de résistance of this place…..THE BATHROOM!

Can you see it? It has a freaking OUTDOOR SHOWER!!! I don’t think I have ever seen a bathroom this exciting since I was at my uncle’s house and seen that he’d tiled his whole loo in teeny tiles of mother of pearl (he’s an architect, they were apparently surplus from some Sultan’s palace that had just done in Oman or something like that, anyway, it looks fabulous). But back to the bathroom…

Isn’t that lovely? That’s the view from the bath. The shower is literally open to the elements. Had we not been on the ground floor, our roof would have been completely open, but it was a small compromise for the other great things about being on the ground floor. Although the whole concept of an outdoor shower is completely thrilling and very much something I would like to emulate in our own place eventually (well, I can hope), I’m a bath girl, so that view of the trees above have kept me more than happy. MrNin on the other hand is a shower boy…

Tee hee hee! I can’t believe I posted that, he is going to KILL me, but you can’t see anything except for his lovely manly, muscular shoulders. Mmmmm.

I just mentioned that the bars on the window are a small compromise for the other bonuses of being on the ground floor, which in addition to the lawn, the outdoor sleeping area, the sun loungers and umbrella includes our very own 25ft infinity plunge pool that MrNin found so irresistible the first night we were here, that he jumped in as soon as he could…even though by the time we had recieved the champagne, the fruit and the cake it was dark already. I liked the way it all lit up blue. He wasn’t so keen on the other hand as he wanted to swim in darkness.

The other great thing about our resort is that it is set up on a rocky headland, so we got some amazing views of the surrounding beach. Every night so far at around sunset, a little dog family has come out to play on this beach. It’s one of the sweetest things ever! There’s a mummy dog, a daddy dog, and three little puppy dogs who all frolic and play before setting about on their merry way again. I would adopt them all if I could and take them home with me, but something tells me they’re very happy living here. And they look a healthy little family too.

Being up on our little mound, it means we’re also surrounded by the Indian Ocean, which last night had a rather Atlantic feel about it as a storm was blowing in (it rained overnight- I felt really bad as I’d left a pillow outside and it got all wet, oh well, I’m sure I’m not the first). This is how the ocean looked just before sundown last night. Pretty, huh?

Speaking of sundowns, Bentota is on the west coast of Sri Lanka, which means that we have been able to see some awfully nice sunsets over the ocean. Just when we thought our view was pretty enough….

THIS happened….

Then THIS…

And then finally THIS!

We have seen some spectacular sunsets over the past couple of nights.

The restaurant here is also pretty incredible. All of the other places (except the St. Andrew’s in Nuwara Eliya) have been buffet services, but here it’s all be full à la carte. Not only that, but it’s been a WHOLE SIX COURSES. Obviously that’s been a bit of a struggle for me (it would be even if I was eating normally), but MrNin has been in gastronomic heaven. He did push it a bit tonight though– let’s face it, six courses is hard enough for most people, but he ordered some curry plate tonight that was six dishes in its own right! He actually broke out in a little bit of a sweat from being so full. What hasn’t made it such a struggle is that the servers here are more than happy to deliver the dessert and tea/coffee to us in our room, so that’s what we’ve done every night we’ve been here. The desserts are far too good to miss, and the jasmine tea tastes so pretty that we really wanted to try to fit them in if we could.

This is the restaurant where dinner is served, and also breakfast (and wow is that a meal in its own right too- a plate full of fruit to feed a small family for a week, followed by a large cooked breakfast of everything that tastes good. it’s kept us full for the whole day).

Last night, however, because we were a honeymoon couple we were able to reserve the pavilion above the pool for our own private dining experience. We weren’t sure at first if we would like being on such public display, but it was really rather lovely in the end. It all felt very intimate and relaxing.

Inside it was a little bit chilly from the wind, but that was all part of the dining experience. And we had the crashing waves of the Indian Ocean next to us, so we weren’t about to complain.

In true Saman Villas style, there was even attention to detail underneath the pavilion. Inside was all sumptuously wooden, with a beautifully carved wooden boss at each end of the roof.

Aside from a couple of small lights to illuminate the detail of the roof, almost everything else was lit by hurricane lanterns which they placed around the edge, and all along the path that led around the side of the pool to the pavilion. It was lovely!

As for us, we were thoroughly pleased and felt spoilt rotten. MrNin enjoyed every part of his meal, and the wine that went with it.

Me? Well, I still felt a bit mehh, but it wasn’t enough to stop me from enjoying it. Most of my pained expression here is the thought that I’m already killing myself with too much food, and in just eight hours time, I’m going to be doing the whole thing again at breakfast, lol! I actually think that something is really rather wrong with me now, and that it’s not something my body can sort out on its own. But given that we’re flying home tomorrow, I may as well wait until then to see a doctor.

The other thing that we have both been enjoying the past couple of days is the ayurvedic spa that is here on site. Of course we wouldn’t normally indulge in such wild extravagances at all if we were back at home, but when is a better time to spoil yourself than on honeymoon?! And we also considered it a very nice treat for using some of our wedding gift money on.

Several guide books and other publications (that they conspicously left, bookmarked, in the pile of informational material in our room) have described the spa here as being one of the prettiest in Sri Lanka. I’m not going to argue with that at all. To get inside you had to first remove your shoes, and then walk across a little bridge, which at night they would line with little candles and it would glow in the most heavenly way.

Inside the spa, it was all incredibly zen, with little manicured lawns, wooden walkways, and very, very pretty coloured everything. This photo really doesn’t reflect how it actually looked at all.

It turned out that if you book for a treatment here, you don’t just get the use of that particular treatment area, you actually reserve the WHOLE SPA! To say we felt extremely pampered would be the understatment of the year. Yesterday morning we had the ‘Sahana Soother’ package, which was three hours of foot scrubs,body scrubs, body wraps, deep tissue massage, and reflexology followed by a mud bath, all interspersed with outdoor ’sprout’ showers. When I read about these showers I was most curious indeed as what on earth could a ’sprout’ shower possibly be, but it turned out to be a spelling mistake and that a rougue ‘r’ had found its way onto the page of the spa menu. We also had a lovely big plate of fruit to eat in the middle too. This afternoon we had the ‘Sahana Elixer’ which was similar to yesterday, except we started with a sauna, had no reflexology, and instead of the mud bath had a flower bath instead. They also used different oils too- today was all pretty and flowery for me, and sugar and spice and all things nice for him.

Given that yesterday was so lovely, and we had a policy to document as much as we could about this honeymoon, I remembered to take my camera today, but there was only really a chance to take a couple of pictures. Here is us at the beginning of the day, getting changed into our sarongs for the beginning of the treatment. Look who’s all shy about getting his picture taken….hee hee!

This was the section of the garden spa where we had our massages, I was on the far table, MrNin on the near one. To the right it was all open air, and underneath the table ends where our faces went, they had little bowls of floating jasmine flowers to look at.

This was the flower bath that we took at the end of the day. It all smelt absolutely lovely! It was a little bit cool though- the breeze began to pick up and it began to spot with rain, so I spent most of the time in there huddled up to my new hubby, trying to steal his warmth. Had it been like yesterday though, it would have been wonderfully refreshing.

And here are our two ‘therapists’ who have some of the strongest hands in the business! The girl was the same person I had yesterday, but MrNin had another man this afternoon.

The sweetest thing ever about this spa was that because there were so many ponds and streams, it meant that it was home to lots of tiny little frogs, who would come out of hiding when it got dark, and sit by the light of the hurricane lanterns. There was a VERY sweet one who lived behind the mirror in the dressing room and I chatted to him all afternoon, and then we met this little ribbity frog on our way out. He was one of the prettiest little frogs I have ever seen (you can probably tell by now that I’m a bit of an animal lover).

After our afternoon spa treatment ended, there was just about time watch the sun go down on our last night in Sri Lanka. This time we headed out to the edge of the headland to watch it so that we could see the sun set into the horizon.

It was so peaceful out there that we ended up staying out for quite some time. There was something about feeling the warm breeze, watching the sun go down, and hearing nothing but the waves of the ocean that made it such a relaxing place to just sit and be. As we sat there drinking in the calm, watching the waves as they crashed in, I put my camera down and left it be with the shutter open to try to capture this vision of tranquility, I think it did a pretty good job! Believe it or not, it was actually really dark when I took this picture.

Time went on, and we watched as the ocean was actually getting pretty rough by this stage, we think that a storm might be coming tonight– you can see some thunder clouds on the horizon. We don’t think it’s going to be a big one though- all those little lights on the horizon are fishing boats, and they would head home if there was any danger.

So this is it, the end of our honeymoon. We’ve both had a lovely time, and are rather sad to be leaving. But at the same time, it will be nice to be back and have the comforts of home, and to see my family again. A driver is coming to collect us at 7.30 tomorrow morning, which seems awfully early for a flight from Colombo at 1.30 in the afternoon, but they assure us that the drive will take that long, and they likely know best. So now after feeling so full that I will never have to eat another meal again in all my life, we must go and finish off the final bits of packing so we’re ready to leave tomorrow for our journey back to England, to home.