We finally got to see our professional wedding photos today. You can see 27 of them on facebook (no account needed). We’re not sure yet about whether to get albums printed. Maybe the DVDs are enough?

Here’s a summary of this year. For previous years, see the posts on my other blog: end of 2006 and end of 2007.

January

Tim and I started the year at Woodford festival, camping in a rented non-waterproof tent in the rain!

February

For Valentines day, we had dinner at Green Palace, a vegetarian Thai restaurant in Newtown.

On the 18th, my grandad died at the age of 88 years.

March

I had planned to be at Wikia’s offices in San Mateo for two weeks in March. Pop’s funeral was scheduled the same time. So, after a week in California, I did a day trip to England and got back to the US on Tuesday for the rest of the week’s meetings.

Back in Sydney, Tim proposed to me on the 22nd, the day before Easter.

April

Tim and I were back in England at the start of April as I’d been invited to give a keynote at the JISC conference in Birmingham. I also gave a short talk at The Webby 5 & People’s Voice Voting party in London and we celebrated our engagement with family and friends in England.

We went back to Australia for Tim’s family reunion in Bellingen.

May

We chose our wedding cake this month. After withdrawing my previous visa application for “de-facto spouse”, I started health checks for a new application for a “prospective marriage” visa.

June

In June, Tim and I flew off in different directions. I spent a few days in Korea for the International Conference on Information Culture, and Tim went to San Francisco for a staff meeting.

Back in Australia, we had our 2nd engagement party - this time a barbecue with Tim’s family.

I also bought my wedding dress this month.

July

In July we went to Egypt for Wikimedia’s annual conference, Wikimania. We spent a few days as tourists in Cairo before getting a bus to Alexandria for the conference. Unfortunately I contracted what was probably E. coli from a dodgy salad at the Novotel at Cairo airport and spend most of the time in Alexandria extremely ill. We headed home via Abu Dhabi where we stopped for one night.

August

For the past few years, my birthday has been during Wikimania, but as that was early this year, I was able to properly celebrate and we has dinner at Rise, a Japanese restaurant in Sydney.

September

In September, we headed to New Zealand for a few days so that my visa could be granted (which had to happen out of the country). We flew into Christchurch because it was by far the cheapest flight from Sydney, and then went to the embassy in Auckland where my visa was approved.

Back in Australia we attended Tim’s 10 year school reunion.

October

Just a month to go before the wedding, but instead of working on that, Tim and I went to San Francisco. It was the first time we’d been there together! I spent the week at Wikia’s new office in San Francisco and Tim was just around the corner for more Wikimedia staff meetings.

November

We got back to Sydney just in time for Wiki Wednesday which I spoke at. A few days later my family arrived in Australia for the first time. We managed to fit in some touristy thing alongside making last minute plans for the wedding on the 23rd.

And finally a chance to relax! We had a wonderful honeymoon on Hamilton Island, part of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Cruising, sailing, snorkelling, great food, and lots of relaxing!

December

Of course I made up for it in December by spending a busy month catching up before celebrating Christmas with Tim’s family in Bilgola.

My plans for next year include speaking at Linux Conference in Tasmania, attending Wikimania in Buenos Aires, making the final transition to Australia (my parents are still looking after all my junk and receiving lots of post for me!), buying a house, and doing all I can to make Wikia profitable for the first time!

Here are three photos from our honeymoon at Qualia on Hamilton Island. The first shows our own pool - an infinity edge pool overlooking the coral sea. The second is a view of Pebble Beach where we had lunch most days. This one was taken from a boat when we went on a sunset cruise. The third is one of the views from our pavilion.

The honeymoon was wondeful.  As well as relaxing, swimming, and eating great food every day, we also went on a cruise, went snorkelling at Chalkies Beach, visited the very white sands of Whitehaven beach on Whitsunday Island, and took a 16ft Catamaran out for a sailing trip. Tim even convinced me to keep my laptop locked in the safe for most of the week!

This is a word cloud made up of the top 100 words used on this blog!

Slightly edited to include our names and remove some common words

Image created using Wordle.net and available under the Creative Commons Attribution License.

We’re married! The wedding and honeymoon were great. I’ll write all about it once I’m caught up on 1000 other things. Here’s my sister’s photo of us cutting the cake. Thanks to everyone who came to wedding, and also to everyone who sent congratulations offline and online.

Tim went to Taste on Sussex Lane for his bucks night on Thursday and I went to Ayurvé spa followed by a great Japanese meal at Akaneya for my hen party on Friday. Today we did some last-minute shopping and almost everything is organised other than my packing for the honeymoon.

Following tradition, Tim isn’t seeing me the morning of the wedding, so our Best Man, Vincent, has just taken him away to a hotel. In only 12 hours time, I’ll be having pink champagne and bagels for breakfast with my family as everyone starts arriving from 7.30am onwards. I would write more but I’m terrified of breaking off my new nails!

Very excited!

This is the fourth in a series of posts about the ceremony. If you’re attending, you might want to skip these posts to avoid spoiling the surprise on the day!

This is our wedding blessing which will be read by the celebrant after the reading and before the declaration of marriage.

“Tim and Angela, marriage is the joining of two people, the union of two hearts. It lives on the love you give each other and never grows old, but thrives on the joy of each new day — Marriage is love. May you always be blessed in your hearts with the wonder of this special day. May you always be able to talk things over, to confide in each other, to laugh with each other, to enjoy life together, and to share moments of quiet and peace, when the day is done. May you be blessed with a lifetime of happiness.”

My family arrived safely in Sydney on Saturday following a two-day stopover in Hong Kong. So far, they’ve fed the kangaroos and fed themselves to the leeches! We’ve had a picnic at Crosslands and a barbie at Tim’s parents’. Tomorrow we’re going to Taronga Zoo. Then the rehearsal is on Thursday, followed by Tim’s buck’s night, and Friday is my hen party.

I’ve had my hair trial and final dress fitting and most things are looking fairly organised. We even had a dance lesson yesterday so we will be able to waltz to Come Away With Me for our first dance. The advice I read about practising dancing in the shoes you’ll be wearing on the day wasn’t a good idea as I now have beautiful ivory satin shoes with part of Tim’s footprint on top!

10 days to go! The 10 day weather forecast is predicting a high of 24°C (75°F) which sounds perfect. One of the many reasons we chose late November was for the weather. The forecast says partly cloudy but no rain. In a few days, we can check the official Bureau of Meterology site which is probably more accurate but only provides 7 day forecasts.

Update: 18 November: The Bureau of Meterology is predicting highs of 20°C (68°F) with a “shower or two” and weather.com says highs of 21°C and “mostly sunny”.

Update: 20 November: Now that the 5-day forecasts are available, the weather is looking unpredictable. Each site has their own idea and none of them are consistent. The Bureau of Meterology, which ought to be the most reliable, says a shower or two, windy, 20°. weatherzone says wind and showers, 20°. The BBC says sunny, 22°. wunderground says scattered cloud, 18°. weather.com says showers, 17°. weather.com.au says light rain early, morning clouds, mild, breezy, 19°. accuweather says considerable cloudiness with a shower, winds from the west at 19 km/h, 21°. Finally, Yahoo is the worst with highs of only 16° and showers.

Update: 22 November: The forecasts are now fairly consistent and they all say rain with strong winds. Specifically, the Bureau says “a few showers, cloudy, strong to gale force southwest winds” with temperatures lower than average at 11-21°C (52-70°F). For once, I’m glad I was pessismitic about the weather when considering outdoor venues. Luckily we ruled those out so we’ll be inside a chapel for the ceremony and it’s a 5 second dash from there to the indoors reception!