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It's 5.35am and I am in my hotel room on the 19th floor of The Sheraton Tirbeca struggling to get on New York time while Michael happily snoozes away beside me.  We cannot believe we're finally here!  We got a fantastic view of Manhattan when we were flying into Newark Airport and I teared up a little at the sight of the Statue of Liberty, waving her wee torch at us in the "awk hiya, Rachel and Michael! Welcome to New York" way that she does.  Everything went so smoothly to get here and settled. We took a yellow cab (squee!) from the airport straight to our hotel and were checked in within minutes.  19 floors up we have a view over all of SoHo and Chinatown, but a short elevator ride up to the 21st floor allows us access to the "Club Lounge" which has that gorgeous roof terrace facing the Empire State Building that we had first planned to have our ceremony.  It would actually still be pretty awesome to have it there - but Brooklyn will be better...

The Club Lounge is great - we can head in there to relax, watch TV, use the computers, and work away at the bar, Starbucks coffee bar and food that's laid out all day everyday for us very special Club Lounge members.  Can't wait to head up there for breakfast when daylight finally breaks!  We arrived at 2pm which was really confusing - time travel is hard on the head - but we settled into our room and made it Home for the next 7 days.  We brought Christmas Deocrations and put them up, though we have one "Merry Christmas" banner that just will not play ball and keeps falling down so it's already been thrown out... but the fairy lights all look great.

Last night we went to the hotel bar for a couple drinks to toast our arrival and then decided to take a walk to check out our surroundings and scope out a place to eat.  We ended up strolling down to Chinatown which was such an amazing sight.  Totally unexpectedly, they have many outdoors street markets selling some of the biggest and freshest fresh fruit, vegetables and fish products I'd ever seen.  We stumbled across a little Chinese Restaurant on the corner of a random backstreet and ended up having a really yummy 3 course meal.  The barman made me a Manhattan cocktail while we waited and for dinner we had Dim Sum, Hot and Sour Soup and some of the most epic Spicy Crispy Beef we'd ever had.  True to New York, the portions were killer and even we couldn't finish it all and to our pride we ate our entire meal with chopsticks.  How cultured are we, huh?

We stopped at a local Walgreen's for supplies we'd forgotten (toothpaste!) and then we dandered back to the hotel for showers and bed as we were knackered after our small adventure and time started to catch up on us.  I think we were in bed for 10pm but it felt like 3am.  Our alarms are set for 7am as we've a big day planned tomorrow that starts with a trip to the City Clerks Office to get our marriage license!  Then we're going to visit the World Trade Centre and hop over the Brooklyn Bridge to see where we're getting married.  Michael, as a first time visiter to a city like New York, is completely overwhelmed.  Hopefully this morning he'll be feeling a bit better and less anxious - most of this City isn't for the faint hearted, but as soon as we visit some more recognisable places he'll feel much better :)

7 Days to go.

This time next week will be Christmas Eve! (And the middle of the night in New York...) And we will soon be getting up to start the most exciting day of our lives (my hair appointment is at 7am...gross.) We plan to have champagne on ice from the minute we wake up!  To be honest, I'm slightly worried about the weather forecast.  Our worst fears were bad snow or horrendous rain.  We expected to be entirely frozen and both had planned to get married in big winter coats.  Take a look at this....

Does that say 18oc on Christmas Eve? Help.  A little rain/drizzle I can deal with - Mum bought a gorgeous ivory umbrella that she intends to keep in the family and pass to all the brides and she's lent it to me as my "something borrowed" so I'm covered for drizzle.  I have the most gorgeous cashmere coat that I intended to wear and a lovely handmade ivory scarf that was made by a lady on Etsy and I'll be annoyed if it's too hot to wear them!  Boo!  But hopefully the temp will dip a bit over the next few days and the forecast changes. 

 

We're going to go to the park to scope it out a couple days before and we'll maybe fall in love with a place and can suggest it to Amber.  But her idea might be way better.  As a photographer, I totally trust her judgement on an amazing backdrop.  Michael's delighted to be getting married in the birthplace of Adam Yauch from the Beastie Boys. Typical man. After the ceremony and photographs we're going back to the hotel to get changed out of our wedding outfits, more so to keep them as clean as possible for the Reception! We'll probably Skype home from our hotel room before we do though so our parents can see us in our suit and dress.  We already can't wait to share photographs of our day.

We're then going to get a cab up to Rockefeller Centre where we'll have some wedding cake at Magnolia Bakery before going to Radio City Music Hall where we have tickets to see The Christmas Spectacular show at 4.30pm.  I believe the show lasts 90 minutes, so we'll have time to wander around before dinner at 7pm at Sofia on Broadway which looks to be a cosy Italian restaurant and it gets great reviews.  After dinner we'll probably head back to Rockefeller Centre to look at the Tree and maybe try ice skating - depending on the queues!  We'll likely go for drinks and maybe get our first dance in as husband and wife :)

It's going to be so amazing waking up on Christmas morning as Mr & Mrs Archer.  Much better than any wedding we could have planned at home :)

Next Week

We're getting married next week. Ahhh! This time next week we'll be in New York, marriage license in hand just waiting for our big day.  We're so excited, I can't even tell you!  This weekend we were gifted some new suitcases and that was the moment when it became real - when we started packing.  We have arrangements all week with family and friends who want to see us off - starting with dinner tonight with Michael's Dad and his partner Agata.  I'm worried with all these dinners I won't fit into my dress - salad please...

Speaking of which, I had alterations made on my dress at the very last minute as it was too big in places (woohoo) and I finally found a gorgeous cashmere coat that I'm happy with, shoes that I love and jewellery that I really cannot wait to wear.  Both of our outfits are completely sorted and it feels so good each time we tick something off our list.  There isn't too much left to do now at all, thankfully.

Michael and I spent yesterday together in Belfast making final preparations for next week.  We went to the Malone Lodge Hotel for a really lovely lunch and coffee (the coffee is amazing there!) before meeting with our Co-Ordinator Jenna who talked us through all the final details and we paid our final bill.  So glad to have that done and out of the way with nothing else to worry about until we get back from America. We went shopping for final bits and pieces and when we got home we also our sent final song requests and information to our DJ's and decided on a reading for our ceremony and sent it to Marley (our Celebrant) which we're really pleased with.  We're going to print our chosen reading out and have it framed at the Reception.  We also smashed open our money pots and counted our savings - not as much as we had expected but still, it will be much more when converted to dollars!

Michael and I went to the Christmas Market last night for a beer in the German Beer Tent just like we did on our very first date.  It was so strange to think back to our first little dates at the market before I went travelling, knowing that we're now getting married in just a few days.  We're so exited to start our new chapter and new family.

We've been checking the weather in New York and Vegas religiously and so far so good, though New York is much warmer than Vegas is at the moment.  We finally chose a party for New Years Eve and changed our hotel to suit - we'll be staying in the New York New York Hotel and attending The 2015 Bridge Bash which was expensive, but looks pretty great and has excellent reviews.  Should be fun!  We've had lots of gifts being purchased from our gift list by our very kind and thoughtful friends and family - unfortunately each gift takes over 10 days to process and to reach our account so we won't be able to get any more gifts until after we come back which entirely defeats the purpose but ah well.  We've been blown away by people's generosity.  We're two very lucky ducks.

Michael bought a new laptop so that we're able to Skype home and upload photographs from the Nikon etc, and I may be able to put a couple blog posts up while we're in airports waiting around.  We're also going to load it up with movies to keep us entertained in the airport (and so that we can watch Home Alone 2 on Christmas morning!)  We bought a few decorations and have some fairy lights we're going to bring with us to decorate our hotel room - it wouldn't be Christmas Day without a tree would it?!

December

Okay.  It's December.  It was March like two seconds ago but whatever.  Palpitations Central.  We're leaving for New York in 20 days. TWENTY DAYS.  We have 2 short weeks of work left and then we're off until the 11th January.  It absolutely crept up.
 
The calendars on our phones are full to the brim which will only help time move faster.  There's still so much to do and arrange before we go.  Michael's Stag is this weekend at Todd's Leap which looks like so much fun.  I'm really jealous - I wish I could do my Hen weekend all over again!  It's all happening so quickly - I wish time would slow down a little.  But we're taking each day as it comes and enjoying the journey. We have lots of meals with families coming up, drinks with friends, Christmas Dinner's before we go...

We aren't getting to put a Christmas Tree up this year but we've put the rest of our decorations up and have started lighting the fire so home is feeling very festive already.  I have all my Christmas presents bought and ready to wrap and I've even made it to the Christmas Market in Belfast.  On top of the festivities as per usual.  Our little cat Shadow is getting better by the day and hopefully he'll have his cone off soon - things are looking up!

RSVP cut off is today so we'll be passing numbers to the hotel this week.  I had alterations completed on my dress yesterday and my Benjamin Adams shoes arrived today and I'm in love with them. My coat is to arrive this week too, and my ivory scarf, and we'll be good to go.  Michael still has to get a shirt, tie and shoes but once that's done that's everything really, outfit-wise. The rest is all plans for when we're in New York and once we land we'll launch into plans almost immediately.
 
We arrive in New York on Monday 21st and on Tuesday 22nd we have to go to City Hall to obtain our marriage license. On Thursday 24th Amber will meet us at our hotel room to take a few snaps of us getting ready etc and get our wedding day rolling!