The Mr X factor 26: Wedding planning, and a few other things - but mainly wedding planning!! Dec 2010 – Feb 2011 December snow – Moving out of 66 Pine Road – Xmas in West Sussex – with Wendy’s folks – visit to Rye – New Year’s Eve – Retreat to Advance – more wedding planning! – TLC for Wendy – Jazz Rugby – Nics & Serge marry – sister Wendy hits London– Flying home to get hitched! Hi all. On Friday 4 March we fly home to NZ to get married (19 March – Tauranga), so here is an update on the last few months, which has pretty much been dominated by wedding planning – lots of evenings at Wendy’s flat with 2 laptops on the kitchen table and lots of discussion and emails to/from NZ – we might even have put one of Wendy’s flatmates off ever getting married!! It has been felt something like a marathon at times, but also special too. We are now both very excited that the time is drawing near to our wedding day. I look forward to no more wedding planning!!! In the mean time winter hit hard in December with plenty of snow and some freezing temperatures. Didn’t stop us getting out though! We celebrated and said goodbye to Chris and Emily - some good friends of mine - as they headed back to their native South Africa after arriving in the UK about the same day as I did back in 2005. Our flatmate Debs also left for NZ in December, so we celebrated with our annual flat Christmas dinner & by heading out one cold night to a club in Soho. 
After a fantastic 13 months in the flat at 66 Pine Road, I moved out at the start of December, packing up much of my gear and putting it in storage for a few months. It had been great living in the same flat with Wendy, but we realised we wanted to make living-together-married-life extra-special - getting engaged provided a chance to help that. I actually managed to find a remporary flat not far down the road in my old stomping ground of Dollis Hill. It is about 7 minutes bike ride from Wendy’s flat to be precise! I am looking forward to an end to bike rides home at night in the cold! Christmas soon came around and 10 days off was most welcome. Wendy’s parents were back in the UK from touring the continent in their motor-home, so we hired a cottage for 5 nights in West Sussex, south of London. Amazingly, it was the first Christmas I have actually had in the UK – have been out of the UK for my last five Christmases! 
With all the snow around and the cold temperatures it was a white Christmas too! We skyped families at back home on Christmas-eve, then exchanged presents and had a Vowles-style cooked breakfast on Christmas morning, and our main meal in the evening, after a lovely walk around the very quaint town of Midhurst.
We also did a couple of day-trips out over the break - to Chichester and then to the historical 'cinque-port' town of Rye, highly recommended and very charming. The rest of the time we holed up and chatted, read books, ate heartily, watched DVDs and enjoyed spending some special time together!!
We were back in London for New Year’s Eve, and had a fantastic last day of 2010. For Christmas Wendy had given me a voucher for an old-style blade shave at a West-End Barber shop – something I had not done before.
So we headed into town for that and Wendy, who likes getting into her photography, took some great shots of the whole event!
After this we enjoyed seeing a show - Mamma Mia – full of Abba songs merged with an intriguing storyline. After the show we went out for a lovely meal on Piccadilly, before heading home and watching the Thames-side fireworks extravaganza on TV! 2011 had begun – and what a different and exciting year it shall be!
Wendy & I then had rest of the break to ourselves, and enjoyed hanging out in our flats and chilling out, before heading back to work. We headed up to Sherwood Forest in Nottingham over the weekend of January 7-9, for a ‘Retreat to Advance’ church conference, which was really inspiring and a great way to start the year – fantastic worship band/singing and challenging speakers, as well as some good time hanging out with four other people who went with us from our church in London, St Gabriel’s: http://www.new-wine.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=232&Itemid=515
Our older sister Wendy made it over from New Zealand for the wedding, so it was great seeing her and she was able to hang out with Nics and Farid, as well as with (my) Wendy and me.
My two Wendys (!!) and I headed to Greenwich on the Sunday. It was a bitingly cold day, but we still had a good look around – particularly Greenwich market.
Having more than one Wendy around, gave us our first glimpse of mistaken ‘Wendy identities’, when the three of us were hanging out. If I wanted to say something to Wendy-fiancee or Wendy-sister there was often some confusion – we need to work that one out!! The five of us went out for dinner altogether on the final night before Wendy flew back home – an enjoyable night out. 
And now it is our turn to get married on 19 March! We fly home on Friday 4 March, and have spent the last week packing up our flats and doing a whole lot of sorting. It has been a bit mad to say the least, and we can’t wait to be on the plane home to New Zealand on Friday night!
After a fantastic 13 months in the flat at 66 Pine Road, I moved out at the start of December, packing up much of my gear and putting it in storage for a few months. It had been great living in the same flat with Wendy, but we realised we wanted to make living-together-married-life extra-special - getting engaged provided a chance to help that. I actually managed to find a remporary flat not far down the road in my old stomping ground of Dollis Hill. It is about 7 minutes bike ride from Wendy’s flat to be precise! I am looking forward to an end to bike rides home at night in the cold! Christmas soon came around and 10 days off was most welcome. Wendy’s parents were back in the UK from touring the continent in their motor-home, so we hired a cottage for 5 nights in West Sussex, south of London. Amazingly, it was the first Christmas I have actually had in the UK – have been out of the UK for my last five Christmases! 
With all the snow around and the cold temperatures it was a white Christmas too! We skyped families at back home on Christmas-eve, then exchanged presents and had a Vowles-style cooked breakfast on Christmas morning, and our main meal in the evening, after a lovely walk around the very quaint town of Midhurst. 
We also did a couple of day-trips out over the break - to Chichester and then to the historical 'cinque-port' town of Rye, highly recommended and very charming. The rest of the time we holed up and chatted, read books, ate heartily, watched DVDs and enjoyed spending some special time together!!
We were back in London for New Year’s Eve, and had a fantastic last day of 2010. For Christmas Wendy had given me a voucher for an old-style blade shave at a West-End Barber shop – something I had not done before. 
So we headed into town for that and Wendy, who likes getting into her photography, took some great shots of the whole event!
After this we enjoyed seeing a show - Mamma Mia – full of Abba songs merged with an intriguing storyline. After the show we went out for a lovely meal on Piccadilly, before heading home and watching the Thames-side fireworks extravaganza on TV! 2011 had begun – and what a different and exciting year it shall be! 
Wendy & I then had rest of the break to ourselves, and enjoyed hanging out in our flats and chilling out, before heading back to work. We headed up to Sherwood Forest in Nottingham over the weekend of January 7-9, for a ‘Retreat to Advance’ church conference, which was really inspiring and a great way to start the year – fantastic worship band/singing and challenging speakers, as well as some good time hanging out with four other people who went with us from our church in London, St Gabriel’s: http://www.new-wine.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=232&Itemid=515 The rest of January consisted of plenty of wedding planning evenings. Unfortunately Wendy became unwell with bronchitis. This gave me an opportunity to provide expert-TLC! Fortunately we were still able to get wedding invites posted and head up to Birmingham to buy our wedding rings – very exciting! We were able to get out to support my Kiwi mate Rob, as he performed his second Jazz-Rugby music gig over here, in early February: http://www.facebook.com/?ref=hp#!/pages/Jazz-Rugby/126604210723750 
Saturday 19 February was a very special day for our family as my younger sister Nicola got married to her partner of four years, Farid. This had been on the cards for a while and was a lovely intimate occasion and a great chance to celebrate – at the ceremony, then champagne and canapés back at their place, followed by a lvoely dinner and dance. Well done & congrats to Nics and Farid!
Our older sister Wendy made it over from New Zealand for the wedding, so it was great seeing her and she was able to hang out with Nics and Farid, as well as with (my) Wendy and me. 
My two Wendys (!!) and I headed to Greenwich on the Sunday. It was a bitingly cold day, but we still had a good look around – particularly Greenwich market. 
Having more than one Wendy around, gave us our first glimpse of mistaken ‘Wendy identities’, when the three of us were hanging out. If I wanted to say something to Wendy-fiancee or Wendy-sister there was often some confusion – we need to work that one out!! The five of us went out for dinner altogether on the final night before Wendy flew back home – an enjoyable night out. And now it is our turn to get married on 19 March! We fly home on Friday 4 March, and have spent the last week packing up our flats and doing a whole lot of sorting. It has been a bit mad to say the least, and we can’t wait to be on the plane home to New Zealand on Friday night! Fortunately we both have work to come back to – Wendy is in a permanent job at a large law firm and I have managed to get a contract extension at The London Clinic, so I am very happy about that. We return here early April and will have found a temporary flat for a few weeks whilst we look for a more permanent place to live in north-west London.
We go home to a hurting New Zealand, with the big earthquake in Christchurch on February 22nd. Much of the rest of the world is in a fair bit of turmoil too, so we are reminded to focus on and be grateful for the important things in life- one of those being marriage!
All for now - God bless.
Dave (& Wendy)
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