I’m sure you all dying to find out where we went on honeymoon, not so? Well the page is up! Click here to read all about where we are.

I don’t have a lot of time to write a whole review (busy packing for honeymoon tomorrow!) but I just wanted to say that my wedding was the most exciting and amazing day of my entire life. Karina was absolutely stunning.

We will receive the photos after we are back from honeymoon and I’ll upload them here for everyone to see. I’ll then write a full on story for everyone to read. See you when we back!

Last Saturday was my batchelors party and it was a real blast! I knew I was in for a ride, especially with my brother and his entorouge coming. So I bought a couple of Essentiales at the chemist to protect my liver and head – which worked like a charm.

We started off at Francois’s place in Gordon’s Bay and watched the rugby with my other bestmen and a couple of friends. After the rugby ended, they gave me a black & white jumpsuit that I had to wear the entire evening  along with a ball & chain that was attached to my leg! I carried that ball and chain more than I dragged it as it got in the way everywhere I went!

We started off on the Gordons Bay beach front at a pub there and then headed off to Cape Town and jumped from a couple of clubs to pubs. The night ended at about 4am with me being pretty tired and very drunk. Luckily I had enough sense in me to drink water and energy drinks throughout the night which definitely helped.

I don’t have any photos to put up as only Francois took photos when I took a swim in his pool – with the ball & chain! The water was so lekker that they struggled to get me out as I wanted to swim for longer!

I think everyone had a really great time – I certainly enjoyed it!

So with 9 days to go, everything is starting to feel very surreal. Tomorrow I’m taking the 3 hour journey to pick up my parents in Barrydale for the wedding. Along with that, I’m moving out of Karina’s parents place – the place I have called home for the past 5 years.

Our home

My parents will be staying with me in our new home for the build up to the wedding. There are a number of things my dad will be helping out with in our house – building cupboards in our room, replacing the stove and sink, chopping some of the kitchen cupboards to fit the oven and a few other odds and ends. Once some of these changes are done, it will definitely start to feel like OUR home.

Along with me going to fetch my parents, its the church rehersal on Friday too. All the bestmen and bridesmaids will be there finding out where to stand, when to walk etc. I can see myself getting very nervous going over everything we will be doing on our wedding day.

I think with my parents around next week, the wedding is going to come very very quickly!

Well, I thought that with only 39 days to go to our big day it was about time that I contributed to this website.  Overall, I never imagined that a wedding would require so much time, effort, planning or money!  And, I have been around for both my sister’s weddings so I certainly wasn’t naive.  I know Jay has filled you all in with most of the recent activities so I’m just going to give you a quick update.

Gift Registery

We went to @home and Mr Price Home for our registery.  What I was surprised to find out is that the Mr Price Home at Somerset Mall is bigger than Canal Walk which saved us the hassle of driving through to Cape Town.  When we got there, however, the service wasn’t great.  Their scanner wasn’t working so we had to write down ALL of the barcodes of the items we wanted and that was a real kill joy!  They then didn’t load our registery properly and they missed a couple of items… dissapointing.  On the other hand, @home, I am very proud to say, was just great.  Their scanner was working and their system was easy to use and very efficient.  Mr Price 0 – 1000 The Foschini Group.   Oh, and I promised I would mention this… we bumped into Gill and Ken in @home.

Menu

We have now finalised our menu and I’m very excited about the food!  I don’t want to give too much away, but there will be a buffet with Rolled Rib and Feta and Pumpkin Fritters and starter’s is a selection of seafood… yum!

Dresses

I’m super excited about how fabulous we are all going to look.  My dress is just about done and I have been blown away with the service from Paul van Zyl couture.  Paul and Karel have been fantastic and they even had tissues on hand when I took my Mom with for the first time earlier this month.  They have even managed to get my shoes covered and are making a garter for me.  The Bridesmaids dresses are not progressing as fast though and the flowergirls and pageboys material still needs to be bought – arghhhhhh! (Grey hair no. 16!)  Im meeting with Leonie this Saturday to buy my miniture bride’s material for her dress.

Hair and Make-up

My trials are only the Thursday before the wedding, but the Bridesmaids are having their hair trial this Saturday with Vanessa Maggs, my friend and the best hairdresser in the world!  I’m excited about the “look” we going with for the Ladies and they are going to look gorgeous.  We have also got the jewellery for the Bridesmaids and Terry did a terrific job with this.  They are stunning.

Decorations

Most of the deco has been finalised and we doing the mock up on 11 November with Antoinette.  I hope all of the different things I want all “work” together.   Please hold thumbs!

Okay, this is taking longer than I thought so here is a quicker summary of the stuff that still needs sorting, amongst alot others:

• Deco and singer for the Church.
• Pre-snacks (we want to bring our own)
• Champagne tasting (we want to taste a few before buying)
• Finalise the pre-nup and will… Lawyers here we come.
• Decide on a cake.
• Provide Paper Garden (people doing the stationery for our wedding) with the seating arrangements, menu, serviette holders, etc.
• Buy shirts and shoes for the boys.
• Buy shoes and jewellery for the flowergirls.

Sjoe, well I don’t want to over do it so I will end there.  Please give me a shout if you want any info for my service providers as to date I have been very happy with the level of service from all of them.  Watch this space.

It feels like ages since we started designing the invites, but they are finally finished and in our hands! Paper Garden have done a magnificent job on them and we really are chuffed to be able to start handing them out.

So, if you have an invite, and know want to RSVP – please give Vania a call on 082 326 6592 or RSVP right here on our website!

We really hope you will be able to join us on our special day.

Yes, can you believe that it is only 2 months until Karina and I will be married! When I stop and actually think about that, its pretty overwhelming (in a good way, of course!).

With so little time left, the todo list is looking pretty huge. Suits for the bestmen didn’t go to well this past weekend – the suit hire place we went to in Somerset West didn’t have the greatest quality suits and the service wasn’t really all the good either. Off to Cape Town it is.

The house

We finally have the keys to our home! It’s one big empty space, has no electricity, the garden needs some TLC, but all that counts is its ours! My parents came to visit on Monday, so I took my Dad to show him all the things I would like him to work on in December when they come and stay with me – new stove top installed, builtin cupboards need building, kitchen cupboards need cutting and a few other minor things. I can’t actually wait to move in…

Dancing

Last, but not least, Karina and I have started dance classes at the Arthur Murray dance studio in Durbanville. I was pretty nervous and excited this evening as I’m not the greatest dancer, but overall, both Karina and I had tons of fun.

So thats a quick update from the soon to be Mr and Mrs Bagley!

Karina kicked my butt this weekend into updating this site with photos as well as finishing up my post on how I proposed to her!

The photos are of some of the people that are going to play a part in the wedding – bridesmaids, bestmen, God parents etc. So go have a look!

And if you want to, you can now read the full story on how I proposed to Karina.

As I mentioned in the last post, Karina and I headed off to an engagement encounter weekend in Constantia. The weekend is aimed to get you ready or for you to find out if you are ready to get married. There were 24 other couples just like us on this weekend – and as we found out, there were over 700 other engagement encounters exactly the same as our one happening all over the world!

These engagement encounters are run by the Catholic church, but you don’t have to be a Catholic to attend – as a few of the couples were. It’s also not a weekend about teaching you or getting you to join the Catholic faith, its a weekend aimed at finding out if you are ready for marriage, with a biblical angle thrown in for very good measure.

The weekend was jammed packed with talks and small activities. Every session is taught by one of the married couples or the Priest – and after the session, you are given a set of questions and asked to write love letters to each other in an A5 booklet. After you’ve written your love letter, you get together with your partner and read their love letter and then discuss them. It really is the most amazing way to learn about each other. Karina and I both almost finished the A5 booklet! I called these booklet the blueprint to my heart, because literally all your emotions about each other are written in them.

After the weekend, you feel emotionally drained. I literally poured my heart out to Karina for 2 and a half days straight! Its also very rewarding to spend such quality time with your partner learning, discussing and loving one another.

I’ll post the details here in this post of who to contact if you know of anyone that would like to attend an engagement encounter. They are held all over South Africa every few months, and I highly recommend every engaged couple to attend one. I think it should be compulsory for couples to attend – the divorce rate in South Africa would be far less than what it currently is!

One thing is for sure, after a weekend like this, you will know 100% if you are going to be marrying the right person or not!

Part of getting married in the Catholic church is, you have to attend a marriage encounter weekend. It’s a great way for the church to teach you about marriage, what to expect and also the role God should play in your lives.

I’m really looking forward to it as it feels like the first step we are taking into marriage. Most people I have chatted to are pretty negative about getting married (well in a joking way) – but I had a great chat to Dominic (Karina’s cousin) the other evening and he said he is really happy for the 2 of us and will be praying for us this weekend. Really cool coming from a guy.

On a separate note, we just had 11 family members arrive from Madeira. 9 of them have never been off the island and there were over 50 of us at the airport to greet them! One moerse Porchie family I’m in! I was in Madeira in 2005, so I know them very well, so it has made their arrival that more special.

So in a couple of days time, my house is going to be filled with 11 extra people for a week. Can you spell party 24×7?

Once we back from the weekend away, I’ll write some more about the weekend and partys and hopefully get some photos up on this site!