August 11th – 15th 2013

The Romanian wedding had  been such a blast and the party, well, the parts we can remember were just incredible. We’d had such an amazing time surrounded by such great, friendly people and as we left the hangover hit us hard.

It wasn’t a normal headache that you just brush off with some greasy food and a milky coffee, it clung hard to our bones, we had given all we had left and just couldn’t bounce back.

We had been struggling with exhaustion for a few months and just pushing and pushing ourselves, always thinking of all of the work everyone was putting in for us. We had been on the road for 2 years and recently had worked SO hard to get Europe planned in plenty of time. So many wonderful people had contacted us inviting us to have a wedding with them over the past year and we desperately wanted to meet, and please everyone.

Our original plan was to leave Romania and drive into Serbia. We hoped to explore there for a few days and maybe even pull together a last minute wedding. We set off on the road and after just an hour of driving we were snappy and hungry and seriously questioning our decisions.

When we stopped for lunch in a layby on route I broke down in tears. I just couldn’t keep going. I was wrung completely dry. We were covering vast spaces in short times, we weren’t resting and whenever we had stopped over the last year we had worked online constantly. I had no energy and just couldn’t give another ounce of myself to anyone or anything and the last thing I wanted was to PRETEND to be happy at a wedding! It just wouldn’t be fair to expect people to commit their time, energy and sometimes money to a project I just couldn’t find the energy to give 100% to.

Alex agreed with me, he was wiped out too and we knew then that we weren’t going to make it to Serbia, Kosovo or Macedonia and that we needed some time to pull ourselves together.

Our next wedding was planned in Austria in 6 days time, so we decided to drive straight there and to go into hiding until the day before the ceremony as most of the vendors were driving in from Italy and would arrive then.

I know we are living the dream and we are in no way complaining but the dream is HARD going.

We are under a constant reminder to live on a shoestring stretched taught, we LIVE in a 1987 camper and we spend every waking moment together, just us, not another single person.

We are incredibly lucky to be insanely happily married and incredibly happy to be doing this crazy wild adventure but we also manage a business together, deal with vehicle breakdowns, maintenance and getting lost daily, we are in a strange place constantly and under immense pressure EVERY day!

We live without our own shower, any creature comforts or even our own toilet and we never know where we are going to be sleeping! That on its own would break most couples and yet we have people telling us that our relationship will collapse the moment ‘marriage’ starts…once the ‘fun stuff’ is over and that “putting on a pretty dress and saying I do isn’t anything like a marriage”.

If working this hard, chasing a dream isn’t a marriage, then what is? Do we have to be maintaining a hellish uphill struggle to be classed as being actually married?

Anyway, I digress, the point is, we were exhausted mentally, physically and emotionally so we hit the road hard into the mountains of Austria and surrounded ourselves with fresh air, fresh produce and absolutely NO computers. The campsite we found had a pool and great showers and was just near the village of Bad Gastein which is out-of-this-world beautiful.

We sunbathed, we talked and talked and talked, we went and did an archery day where we shot polystyrene animals (or tried to anyway), drank wine and ate great food and we just switched off completely for 4 days…it was amazing.

We felt so much better after that short break and were ready to throw ourselves back on the wedding wagon. We’d had serious words with ourselves and really want to take this opportunity to apologise to anyone we ‘worked’ with who felt that we were maybe not 100% involved or if anyone thinks we were a little tired looking, but truly we were! We were on the edge!

We genuinely appreciate every single day how much everyone does for us and the lengths that we all go to, us included, to make everything so perfect.

Without you all we would just be two bums living in a van, instead we are making dreams come true!