It’s actu­ally all my fault. They say that it’s a woman’s per­rog­a­tive to change her mind so that’s what I’ve done re:wedding venue and loca­tion. The eas­i­est part of get­ting mar­ried is know­ing with­out a doubt that Greg is the one for me. We met almost a year ago and, while I didn’t get a word in edge­wise (:>)on the first date at The Mata­dor, by the 4th date we’d had time to get to know each other and I knew he was the one for me.

Sev­eral weeks later I said “so long” to life in Bal­lard and moved up to Phin­ney Ridge and into Cain­manor. A step up in many ways! Sorry Bal­lard, but the Ridge is where it’s at.

There was never any doubt in my mind that we’d even­tu­ally get mar­ried and spend the rest of our lives together, but I was sur­prised when, at the end of a lovely marina-side din­ner in Puerto Val­larta, Greg pro­posed! Look­ing back, I did think it a bit odd that he was act­ing a bit ner­vous at din­ner and gulped down his mar­garita and then turned to my pina colada… I chalked it up to the fact that we’d just spent the entire day in a very cold and foggy min­ing town up in the hills. The ride up and back made us all car sick so I fig­ured Greg was “recov­er­ing”. Lit­tle did I know. The answer of course was yes! Then I heard about the plans for the 23rd of June at the Rose Gar­den and Smith Tower. Fine by me I said.……

Fast for­ward a few months later and Jus­tine starts to think that maybe she doesn’t really want to get mar­ried in Seat­tle after all. It is very roman­tic that the venues and date had been cho­sen, but.… hmm… it all seems so nor­mal. The wed­ding expo I attended brought the whole thing home about how expen­sive these events can be. Fac­tor in your venue site, the cater­ing, the booze, music, flow­ers, dress, tux, rings, plan­ning for out-of-town guests, and wow! You’ve just spent almost as much on a 4 hour event as you could trav­el­ing to Iceland.

I am pretty sure it was Greg’s idea to go to Ice­land for the hon­ey­moon. After all, it meant he could use the joke about how he’ll be ready for how frigid things are once mar­ried. HA HA! So one dis­cus­sion led to another and we decided, to blow off the Seat­tle wed­ding, dis­ap­point­ing friends and fam­ily and head instead to the Land of the Mid­night Sun to get mar­ried and start our new life as Mr. and Mrs. there.

We leave on June 22nd and as of today still aren’t sure where and what date we’ll get mar­ried. It’s rel­a­tively easy for U.S. cit­i­zens to get mar­ried there. Just need to prove you aren’t related (we aren’t), are over 18 (I barely am) and aren’t cur­rently mar­ried to any­one else (check).

I do know that the pho­tos I’ve seen are spec­tac­u­lar, that we will expe­ri­ence over 20 hours of con­tin­u­ous day­light and that it’s very expen­sive! Oh and they serve this one dish of fer­mented shark that they bury in the ground for sev­eral years to “cure” it before dig­ging it up to serve as a del­i­cacy. Appar­ently it tastes like blue cheese. No thanks! Maybe Greg will try it.

Stay tuned.…