Norman & Jessica's Destination Wedding + Photography Adventure (Part 1)

Part 1 - The Proposal:

This particular adventure started (for me, anyways) one sunny day at the beginning of April. Norman came to meet me after I got my hair cut on College street, seeming almost suspiciously cheerful and smiley. He asked me if I would like to go for a drink nearby (also suspicious - we are big fans of drinks in our own backyard or on our front steps..not so much for the "going out for a drink" type of thing). We decided on Kalendar because it looked nice and neither of us had been there before. It was lovely. The drinks were lovely (Norman's was a super-yummy vanilla and vodka cocktail called "cassis me you fool", mine was an awesome orange and lime juice with vodka and grenadine called "the garnet"..mmmm..).

After we were settled into our cozy corner window seat, sipping away at our lovely cocktails, Norman finally got around to what was on his mind. He said many lovely things, but the one that stood out and made my cheeks hurt from smiling was that he wanted me to be his wife :) and had made arrangements with Belfast City Hall for us to get married on May 5th. We had been planning our trip back to Northern Ireland to visit Norman's family and travel around for the past 5 months, and as it turns out Norman had also been secretly making wedding plans for almost as long. Even though I know that I would have been completely happy with Norman even if we never got married, it really made my heart sing to hear him ask that particular question :)

So - twinkly-eyed details aside - it didn't take me long to notice that we had one month less a day to plan everything for our destination wedding and the family party that would follow. Early on, we decided it would be a great idea if we (being photographers of other people's weddings) were to do our own wedding pictures. This solved the problem of trying to find someone to trust in such a short amount of time and from such a distance, plus it seemed like a really fun project to do together. We had already planned to spend 8 days driving around Ireland, plus a week in Spain, and Norman suggested (yes - for the record - it was HIS idea!) that we could just bring the wedding dress and camera gear with us everywhere we went and do our wedding photos in all kinds of fantastic locations. This was maybe the craziest idea I'd ever heard of, and I loved it immediately :)

First thing's first though, I needed to find a dress. We headed to Cabaret Vintage on Queen because it's one of my favourite places in the city and I finally had a really great reason to get a really great dress. I had originally intended to get something vintage, but then I found out that Cabaret's Tao and Elizabeth have started designing their own line of vintage-inspired and totally glamourous wedding gowns..

Which dress would you choose..? Check out Part 2 (coming on Monday) to see the lucky dress that got to tour Ireland and Spain!

xox Jessica + Norman