6 Months of Marriage + Wedding Photos (FINALLY!)

Last week, the hubby & I celebrated 6 months of being married! Woo! Six months isn't a lot, but it's hard to believe sometimes how fast time passes. For us especially, since we dated for so long as well, getting married was the cherry on top of many things happening in our lives last year. So to get to the 6 month mark already was amazing and unbelievable. 

All wedding photos featured are courtesy of Alexandra Burnett, who gave me exactly what I was looking for in wedding photos!

I also thought that this would be the perfect excuse to finally show wedding photos here on the blog! I posted a good chunk of them to my personal Facebook and I post couple photos of us on Instagram every now and then, but I think it's now the time to finally show a glimpse into our wedding day. 

It was a cold, rainy day in the middle of Australian winter (July 20th). Funny enough, it rained the day we got engaged too. They say that it is good luck for it to rain on your wedding day; I saw it as renewal and refreshing of us as we enter this new season of our lives. Despite the rain and our ceremony being outdoors, we made it work and it did not stop us at all.

Wedding Day makeup -- nothing too extravagant here, we were on a budget and made it work :)

We only got engaged 6 weeks prior to our wedding so it was the culmination of a very busy, somewhat rough few weeks. It was great. I won't talk too much about the process of planning the wedding because I will save it for another post, but I will say that other than it being worth it, everything came beautifully considering our low budget we had for it. I'm pretty proud of myself, hence me writing about the wedding planning process in another post :)

We got married at a Chinese garden at an aboriginal reserve not too far from where we live. It was a beautiful backdrop for our ceremony, and because we were on a budget, we later had our reception at a friend's house.

It was a small, 40 person wedding that was nothing the way we ever thought our wedding day would turn out, but it was such a special and perfect and amazing day. I wouldn't change any part of it.

We do still intend on doing some kind of wedding or formal celebration when we move back home to America in a year or so to have our families formally become one and to meet each other as well! Until then, I just want to appreciate my blood relatives here in Sydney, as well as our friends that we have come to call family as well. (BIG shoutout to our wedding photographer, Alexandra Burnett for the beautiful photos!) I will mention this again when I talk about my wedding planning process, but honestly this couldn't have been done without them.

Friends, family, brides to be, or even just someone who stumbled upon my blog by chance, I hope you enjoyed our wedding photos! If you or someone close to you is planning a wedding, I hope you got some ideas through our photos, but stay connected with me on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) or send me an email if you have any specific questions, as I will soon be writing a post on planning a less than $1500 USD wedding in 6 weeks :) Stay tuned!

PHILIPPINES IN A NUTSHELL

Helloooo everyone! 

Pulilan, Bulacan -- A field in my mom's hometown

I'm finally back from the Philippines and have been settling back into reality. It's always hard to settle back into daily life after a long vacation, but it's been nice slowly getting back into it. 

I'll be writing more in-depth posts about different aspects of the Philippines such as food, provincial life, Coron Island, and many more as time goes on but I just wanted to post a quick update on how things have been! 

The husband created a recap vlog of our time with my mom's family, and hopefully, there will be more vlogs of the rest of our time because our time with my mom's family was only 2 weeks out of the 5 weeks we were there! This vlog documents our time in La Union, Mt. Pinatubo, and Coron, Palawan. Of course, there will be more photos and info on all of these places to come in the future, but until then, enjoy this short vlog :)

HELLO 2017!

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Can you believe it? It is already 2017! 

I love the start of the new year because it always represents new beginnings and fresh starts. & even though you can technically refresh & restart any time throughout the year, the new year itself is great because everyone is doing it as well. It serves as motivation. 

As I've done for the past few years on this blog, I've documented a few goals I want for the year, both blog-wise and personally. This year will be no different. Here are my goals: 

Blog goals: 

[] Post consistently every week, regardless of frequency

[] Make new business cards

[] Attend as media to one event

[] Attend at least one blogger/networking event

[] Venture out beyond this lifestyle blog :) 

Personal goals:

[] Travel to a new part of Australia

[] Travel outside of Australia (not counting California) at least once

[] Go back to school for something I am passionate about (I am actually working on this as we speak, please pray for things to work out the way they need to!)

[] Get into doing devotionals either by myself/with my husband, doesn't have to be daily

[] JOURNAL

[] Read at least 3 novels for pleasure

[] Physically create (paint, draw, sculpt, etc) 

[] Enroll in a creative fitness class (dance/silks) 

[] Learn to cook at least 2 Filipino dishes really well (so far I can cook 3) 

I write my goals down every year to keep myself accountable, to see how I change by the end of the year, and also to encourage anyone who may be on the fence or thinking about any specific goals as well. With my blog goals, because I failed so miserably with what I had for myself last year, I am keeping my list fairly short and simple this year. With my personal goals, I just hope to keep exploring and growing more and more. This will also be my first full year married (CRAZY) so that will be new for me as well. 

Here's to new starts! I hope you have a strong one to your new year :) I'm excited to see where this journey takes us.