Rebels' Guide

2015 is going to be a great year. I can say that confidently because my calendar is mostly full before the year has even started, which is a crazy and awesome blessing for a small business owner. Britt’s running pop-up weddings  around Australia and even internationally and she’s also launching a new business in the new year, so I can’t wait for everyone to copy that too! (Cheeky grin!) But what I wanted to write about today, was a book. A book that I’ve had burning inside of me for over a year now, my book about weddings. I’ve made it no secret that I want to leave the world in a different, and hopefully better place than I found it. And although it might not be much I hope a book might be a small way of doing that. I met with a mentor yesterday and we laid out the book structure, chapters, what I’m actually going to be writing about, and the heart of it all and I’m crazy excited! The hard part is that I’m about two months away from having the time to start writing, but I’m on track a...

For my 33rd birthday Britt bought me an e-reader and the first thing I did was start Googling for blog posts about how to get the best out of it. Best places to buy books, apps, hacks, all of that kind of nerdy stuff. Then, as I read this Senegalese proverb, I thought this is how you get the best out of your wedding celebrant or officiant: There are no misunderstandings; there are only failures to communicate. Where you fail to communicate to your celebrant, you fail to get the best out of them. And when all of your expectations and assumptions are communicated, you’ll get the best out of your celebrant. Well, you’ll definitely get the best out of me! What should I communicate? Great question! Here’s a list that’s a good place to start: What time do you expect the celebrant to arrive? What time do you expect them to stay to? What do you expect they would be wearing? Are you ok with them using paper/iPad/Kindle/stone tablet? Is saying ...

I’ve just walked out of a great little coffee catch up with a couple visiting from Sydney, getting married on the Gold Coast at Sanctuary Cove, and I had to write a blog post about what we chatted about because I think it might just help you and anyone else juggling wedding traditions. What on earth do you do with them all? The wedding traditions that is. Traditional vs. non-traditional The couple I just had coffee with are in the same boat as a bride I just chatted with after her wedding and as almost every single couple getting married this year: they don’t want to have a weird and offensive-to-family wedding, but on the other hand, some of these wedding traditions just don’t make sense. So, choose your own adventure So my advice on wedding tradition is simple: choose your own adventure. The only things required by law (at your Australian wedding at least) is that there are a bride, groom, two witnesses and a celebrant that says a few things and the bride and groom verbally admit ...

I want to leave a mark on the world, and, I like to hang out with people that want to do the same kind of thing. That’s probably why you’re reading this blog, right? I don’t need my name up in lights. And I don’t need to see my name in the movie credits. Not that kind of mark on the world. Instead, I want to leave a mark on the world, like you leave someone’s car when you borrow it: I want to leave it better than how I got it . That’s why Britt and I are partnering with Plan Australia to support their work in eradicating child marriage. I stumbled across literature from “ Girls Not Brides ” recently and was left silent and stunned that this thing that I find so much pleasure in, seeing people get married, was the same thing that was seeing young women forced into a life where their liberties are stolen, along with their joy. The more we searched about child marriage, research became overwhelming, and luckily there are many groups working hard to educate and help young women in this are...

When I saw Ellie and Spike’s wedding on the wedding planning subreddit of reddit.com, a little bit of nostalgia and a little bit of nerd in me pushed me to contact them to see if I could talk about their wedding on this blog. As much as it would be cool to talk about dinosaurs and make T-Rex short-arm jokes, I actually loved the personal side of their wedding. The fact that everything they had planned was personal and a real celebration of two kids in love! It’s the epitome of a wedding that just screams “them!” When Ellie had a few post-wedding moments free away from her military service I asked about the wedding day. “It was super low key. I had been stressed planning it for months and once the day hit everyone knew what they were doing and it went off without a hitch. The dinosaurs were a big hit from the children to the adult children. I had a blast. I watched JP every Friday for a year in 1995 and my wedding planner didn’t understand the Hitchhik...