We had been in close contact with Vinicius’ marketing director Carol via email and were so excited to finally meet her! She seemed calm, in total control of everything and absolutely in love with our adventure.

We arranged to meet her at Vini’s school of photography and to go from there to Tete Rezende to meet with Patricia, the owner of the boutique. When we arrived, a little late as usual but without too much getting lost we hugged and said hi and went along in convoy to the dress fitting.

I was nervous as always and had no idea what to expect, this was all news to me, Alex as I am sure you know by now loves a secret and with him behind the wheel of most of the wedding plans it leaves plenty of opportunity for him to surprise me! We pulled up at the same time as Patricia, manoeuvred Peggy into a teeny (normal sized) parking space and met everyone who had gathered there just for us.

Carol introduced us to Henrique who works with Vinicius who would be taking a few dress fitting shots and Patricia, the woman responsible for all of the fabulousness inside and then ushered us into the building.
Luckily for us, not so much for them, Carol and Henrique can speak brilliant English and it was left to them to translate between myself and Patricia who seemed to be as excited as me about finding me a dress!

She excitedly asked what I WANTED to wear. Me being British and extremely polite and secretly not really knowing what I WANTED to wear I said as much which caused major amusement for all concerned. Patricia clapped with glee and said she had the perfect thing in mind, handed me a dress, took me in a mirrored room and zipped and buttoned me into the best fitting dress ever in the world ever. I have NEVER put something on and it fit like that dress did! PLUS, I loved it! It screamed Brazil! High fashion, curve inducing crisp white lace layered over a short fitted mini dress!
There was absolutely no reason to try anything else on, it was the dress!

Everyone oohed and aahed as I emerged from the fitting room and they all ran around gathering accessories for my hair, looking for things for me to carry and bringing me shoes.

I sat down to try on some shoes (which again, fit perfectly) and Patricia went to work on attaching something wonderful to my head! We tried sparkles, feathers, beads and then had more decisions to make! It was great fun and Patricia was just infectious.
I could imagine absolutely relying on her to dress me completely for my wedding, to the point of just saying to her ‘you choose everything’. She knew exactly what size I was looking at me, what would suit me and created a complete look without any bother at all!

It had all taken less than an hour and we said our happy farewells and agreed to see Patricia and Carol at the wedding. We said our thanks and goodbyes to Henrique and jumped back in Peggy and set off to INHOTIM.

INOTIM is a rather unique art gallery. Once a privately owned estate and after 4 years of building, growing and preparing the amazing gardens and all of the art was finally opened to the public. The art is contemporary and the gardens breath taking. It was quite a drive out of town and we planned to arrive the night before, find somewhere to camp and be there for opening time the next day.

We found the place around 9pm in the dark and dared to ask the security guard (in terrible Portuguese) if we could stay in the car park for the night…it was a long shot but it absolutely paid off. He was the friendliest person ever, waved us in, invited us into his security hut for coffee, introduced us to his dog and said we could use the bathroom any time if we needed to! He even said we could only stay if we accepted a bag of local biscuits from him!

We finally said goodnight and watched the stars as we fell asleep.

We woke up in plenty of time for opening, made our security guard friend a coffee, ate breakfast and went to wait for the gates to open. We were expecting it to cost $30 each for the entry but just as luck would have it we had gone on a Tuesday and entry is FREE!! I thought that had made my day but then we got inside.

Spotless lawns spread before us, swans swam serenely on a huge lake and huge silver spheres floated on water on the roof of a building in front of us. Like a kid in a sweet shop I didn’t know where to go first. We consulted the map and made a plan. The place was huge and there was so much to see. Art scattered the perfectly manicured lawns and doors beckoned you to enter and peruse indoor exhibitions. We were there the whole day, walked miles upon miles and even enjoyed lunch there (which we would never have done if we had had to pay to get in). The art wasn’t really for either of us, a little too contemporary for me and absolutely beyond comprehension for Alex. We both loved two of the exhibits, one being the silver reflective spheres on the roof and the other a room filled with mounted speakers with a bench in the middle….I ought to explain more!!

6 groups of 5 speakers stood in a circle and each group represented a part of a choir, one tenor, one bass, one alto etc and as we entered the room the speakers were quietly chattering away and we learned each speaker was a person. Soon the speakers cleared their throats and began to sing. The acoustics in the room were incredible and goosebumps sprung up on my arms and neck. I sat in the middle for a while surrounded by harmonious voices and enjoyed the music. Then I walked around and listened to each speaker in turn, it was incredible to hear each individual voice.

We sat in there for ages. A few groups of people came in and out but not many stopped to listen for long so we had the place pretty much to ourselves, I could have sat there all day and enjoyed the harmonies but there was still more to see.

We covered the whole thing and made it back to the cafe and sat for 15 minutes to relax and rest our feet. That is when we looked around and noticed everyone had vanished, it had closed and we were still sat there sipping our coffees! We packed up quickly and worked our way back to the entrance and across the car park to Peggy who was sat next to all of the buses looking really tiny!

It had been the best day and the best gallery I had ever been to even though we didn’t particularly enjoy the art. Just wandering around such a beautiful place in the glorious sunshine all day, just the two of us without a care in the world…It was perfect!