Dec4Tori

Hi everyone, 

As you can see Friday July 2 was a very special day for Tori and I. It was an amazing day with near on perfect weather in New York (25 degrees, almost no humidity). We were quite lucky as it had been incredibly hot all week, in fact on our second day in NYC it was over 30 degrees and 70% humidity by 9:00am! Ouch, try sweltering through that in a suit and tie and not look horribly sweaty in photos. Well during the week it got better and by Friday it was the best day this summer. Phew! 

We were married at 4:00pm in Central Park by our celebrant Beth (a humanist and all round wonderfully beautiful lady, we’re so lucky to have found her). We chose a location on the west side of the park near West 74th street and is accessed by walking through Strawberry Fields. We had plenty of looks and congratulations from so many people on our way in which helped to build the anticipation. The location was cute, and not overly touristy compared to some areas of Central Park, with a little pergola on the water and a bowl shaped area of grass that faced it and acted like an amphitheater. A small crowd of 40-50 people gathered, many of whom were tourists (who doesn’t love a wedding ceremony!) and at the conclusion we were clapped by them all. It was a lovely touch and something we couldn’t have planned. 

We then set up a beautiful picnic on the hill and toasted our nuptials with champagne and glasses of Pims. I put together some fancy food earlier that day - and I’ll talk about that in another post sometime. Fancy is an understatement really. 

After the obligatory photos we jumped in a car (we arranged a driver for the afternoon) and went across to the Meatpacking District for drinks on the 18th floor at The Standard Hotel. Very swishy and after more bubbles (and a gin martini for me, something I felt was obligatory seeing as I was in Manhattan and wearing a tuxedo) we made our way to our wedding dinner at Blue Hill. Blue Hill is a stunning restaurant near Washington Square Park, which is funnily enough the area that we stayed in when we first came to NY a few years ago and cemented our love of New York city. Dinner was superb of course, with incredible food (we had the 5 course Farmers Feast, a degustation of sorts) and impeccable service. 

So all in all, it was an incredible day. We couldn’t fault a thing. 

Much love to my beautiful bride who I can now call my wife. 

And of course, we both send our thanks and love to our beautiful parents John & Sandy Gallagher, and Walter & Susy Benzie. We wouldn’t be the people we are today if it wasn’t for your love and support. We love you and look forward to celebrating with you soon! 

And to our friends Adrienne, Daryl, Heather and Scott, thank you for sharing the day with us. 

Our wonderful photographer Rohan, your photos are everything we have hoped for. many thanks buddy. You can see a great collage of shots on Ro’s website, or on Facebook (message us if we aren’t friends yet). We have also posted some of our favourite shots below. 

All our love,

Declan & Tori Gallagher

Photos of us in New York in the week building up to our wedding day. 

This champagne is making us thirsty!

Love the legroom, this outta be a good and relaxing flight..

We were thrilled to find out that we got our upgrade, thanks Qantas. Prem Econ here we come, and the trip to New York should be all that more enjoyable now.

So today marks the day of a new and exciting time in our lives together. We’re feeling exceptionally excited about what our future holds, including the next 30 days in New York, London, Mallorca and Bali.

Wish us luck!

Dec & Tori

Last weekend my very good friend, and our photographer, Rohan came to visit for the weekend. He lives in Ballarat and has a wonderful time living there with his wife Kim and gorgeous children. Poor guy broke a bone in his foot recently so he’s been hobbling around on crutches which I know he is hating. Isn’t it only supposed to be footballers that break metatarsals?

I thought I’d show you a few photos he took of us. We spent some time discussing our photos in New York and we couldn’t be more happy with Ro’s suggestions, existing work, and shared vision of the kind of shots he’s planning to take. 

Go Ro, we can’t wait to meet you in New York in just under 3 weeks time mate. www.rohananderson.com.au

I was on an early flight to Melbourne this morning for work and I started to get a bit excited. I’m not one who particularly loves flying, mainly due to boredom and my impatient nature when it comes to travelling..

But when it means flying internationally it’s another story altogether. International airports have such a cooler feeling, and haven’t we all spent a stupid amount of money on things like books or headphones on day one of a holiday due to feeling cashed up and in a weird limbo shopping moment where it feels like you’re in international waters. What happens at the airport stays at the airport. What’s that, $269 for a pair of wireless and noise cancelling headphones with a built in umbrella and milk frother. Oh yes I need one of those, as well as a couple of self help books and a $45 ham and cheese croissant. Kaythanksbye.

So my point is, 6 weeks to go and both Tori and I are very excited..

Dec

We’re going wedding band shopping this weekend, how fun! I won’t ruin the surprise by telling you what Tori is planning to buy. I can however talk about my idea of a great band. 

We’ve spent a little bit of time browsing for bands and I have to say, a lot of the mens bands I see seem to be designed by a surf brand like Quicksilver. Why would I want a multi-coloured band (gold and platinum) with heavy edges? Maybe if I was going to use it as a spare washer or an o-ring* on my Vespa, but really? C’mon, what happened to classic timeless design?

For my liking, the picture below is along the lines of what I will be looking for. Maybe I’ll get it engraved on the inside too. 

I hope when I put it on I don’t hear ‘my precioussssnessss’ all the time…

If you have any suggestions of where we should look in Sydney then let us know!

Dec x

* I don’t actually know what an o-ring is, but in the interests of the story let’s all agree it’s some kind of round shaped ring that you use on a vehicle. 

FAQ number 1: ‘Oh dear, you’ve already seen Tori’s wedding dress?’

Yes I have. Mainly because I assisted Tori when she was looking for ideas and inspiration, secondly because I picked it up for her one evening on the Vespa. 

I should explain properly.. We are approaching our wedding by throwing caution to the wind and paying little attention to a lot of the traditions associated with a wedding. It’s not because we’re against tradition, we’ve simply decided that our wedding day is a special day for us and we should choose to do what makes us happy. We both love and respect someone’s choice to have a big white wedding in a church, and Hannah & Rob’s wedding in the UK last year (Hannah is Tori’s sister) was one of the most beautiful and well planned events we’ve ever seen. Personally, we’re not interested in a big white wedding in a church or chapel, and really, shouldn’t weddings be a selfish experience for the bride and groom? We want our wedding to be what we want it to be, and we’re grown up enough to make that choice for ourselves. 

Some of the traditions seem irrelevant to our situation, others just seem a little dated. Let’s take the cake in the freezer tradition. Errr, why is that? I understand that you save it until your first wedding anniversary and enjoy it together. In our view, we’ll just order a new cake instead! I mean, it’s not the first world war and we’re experiencing difficulties sourcing eggs, milk and flower. Keep calm and carry on people, it’s just a cake. 

We’ll also be having cupcakes as our wedding cake, made by the fabulous Sugar Sweet Sunshine recommended to us by our good friends Karl and Kim. Given we are traveling to the UK, Spain and Bali on the way home we can’t see them surviving the trip. The design is yet to be determined, but we’re sure they’ll be fantastic. 

Some examples of what I’m talking about are:

1. I’ve seen Tori’s dress. It’s amazing. Whether I’ve seen it or not, there are so many other finishing touches and I just know I’ll be holding back tears when I see Tori in her full regalia on July 2. 
2. We are highly likely to see each other on the day of our wedding. We’re in the same hotel room. Enough said. 
3. We don’t have a wedding party per se. Well, we have a wedding and there will be a party, but we won’t have groomsmen and bridesmaids. 
4. We don’t have bomboniere. You want sugared almonds, wait for Christmas people! 
5. There will be nothing old, new, borrowed or blue. Unless you count us (old), new (our union), a musician in Central Park that can play some music for us (borrowed) and the sky (blue). 

Our wedding will be a simple non-religious ceremony held in Central Park. It will hopefully be a gorgeous summers day in New York with some late afternoon breezes. The location is yet to be chosen, and we will both go hunting for a cute spot during the week before when we arrive and have some time to decide on a few options. We’re told there are hundreds and hundreds of locations to choose from and it should be fun to ride around the park on bikes looking for that perfect location to tie the knot.

We also don’t need a huge space as there will be ourselves and our 4 close friends who live in New York, plus our photographer and celebrant. So 8 people really only need an area of say 4m x 4m, enough room for some picnic blankets and an area for us to stand to say our own vows to each other. Given that Central Park spans 843 acres and makes up 6% of the land area of Manhattan, I’m feeling quietly confident that we’ll be fine. 

If anyone has tips or suggestions for the location, please get in touch or leave comments below! 

Love, Dec & Tori

The Lower East Side, New York City. We’ll be there soon!

My friend Karl sent me these pictures just the other day. It’s close to the Hotel On Rivington, which is where we are booked to stay for a few nights in July.

The hotel looks absolutely amazing, and for your music train spotters out there it’s the hotel pictured on the front cover of Moby’s ‘Hotel’ album. It’s a 21 story glass box on the Lower East Side, and the rooms look to be a decent size compared to what we’ve seen in NYC previously.

Many people we know have raved about it which is nice to know. I’m ‘specially excited about the full glass walled bathrooms looking out to the buildings and street below. Presumably the windows are tinted?

http://www.hotelonrivington.com/

A potential location for our wedding dinner in New York. It looks very special.