Would You Like A Date?

That’s right! We have finally set a date! How fast can you say EXCITED?! Although things aren’t quite finished with our little apartment as we had hoped before making this announcement, we have decided we cannot wait any longer to become husband and wife! Before you start writing on your calendars though, you might like to read on a little further because as you may have suspected in true Jess and Cam style, we are doing things a little differently.

We have decided to have a small, intimate wedding. We are fairly sure this will be overseas somewhere special in mid-January 2013 but this will depend on Jess’ health closer to the time. We both feel however, there are many people we would like to celebrate our marriage with. People, who have influenced our lives, supported us - both individually and as a couple and have helped us become who we are today. So just to make the most out of becoming Mr and Mrs Bean we will eat, drink and be married with these people at a ‘Celebration of Love’ on the 16^th of February, 2013 in Tasmania.

This occasion will be like a wedding reception, but not. It will be a celebration of what has been in our relationship and where our love will take us next. An event that reflects our love, passion, inspiration and hope for our life together. For this reason we will be requesting no gifts, in lieu of which we will be asking guests to contribute a set amount which will assist with covering the cost of the celebration and also include a small donation to a charity we have chosen – HIAM Health in East Timor. We have chosen this charity because there was a strong connection to East Timor early on in our relationship following Jess’ travels there in 2006. We spent a lot of our first year together organising and travelling to and from fundraising events for East Timor, which formed a strong foundation of our relationship and helped us get to know one another. We also feel that the people of East Timor and their journey symbolise incredible faith, hope and love which are all values we feel are important to any relationship, but especially a marriage.

To add to our fundraising efforts we would like to also do something that will further help create a legacy of our love and symbolise what we can achieve together. In the past few years taking on fundraising projects has had to take a back seat and looking after Jess has become a huge part of our lives. We are really excited to be giving back some of the love and goodwill that has been shown to us over the last few years and particularly in the past twelve months! To do this we have drawn up a budget with items that we will need for both our ‘Celebration of Love’ and the ceremony overseas; weddingly items such as a dress, suits, flowers, decorations, cake, as well as services such as photography  and entertainment (for the Celebrations in Tasmania). Keeping in mind our budget is modest, we would like to invite people and businesses to donate the items on this list and in turn we will donate our budget for that item or a negotiated amount to HIAM Health. Although we probably won’t be able to find suitable donors for all the items we need, we would love to raise as much money for this wonderful charity as we possibly can!

So friends, family and of course readers, we would love your help to get the word out and share our story in the hope of raising funds for HIAM Health and mark an important time in our lives! We would love you to repost, tweet, text, email the link to this post or even send a letter to any contacts who might be interested in helping us with this exciting project! Please don’t forget to sign up to our email list or become an official follower for notifications of new posts and updates on how our plans are progressing. In the coming weeks we intend to blog more about HIAM health, introduce our bridal party and get your thoughts on some of the all-important decisions! We have an exciting year ahead.

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE,

Jess and Cam