Hi everyone! I’m a Dreams Villamagna bride getting married December 1, 2014.
I have got so many fabulous ideas from this site, I can’t even begin to explain. I have loved reading through people’s personal journeys and experiences, and really want to give back some of my own thoughts and ideas in the hopes it will help someone out as others have helped me!
Part 1 - Our Story
Me and my wonderful FL have been together for over 9 years - we knew very early on that we had something special. 
We met in New Zealand (we were both there on working holiday visas - I’m from Canada, he’s from Argentina). We met through mutual friends and the rest really is history - it was kind of an instant thing with us. We had been “dating” for about 7 months, travelling around New Zealand together, when it was time for both us to leave NZ and go back to our respective countries as our visas were up. The thought of leaving each other (and New Zealand!) was unbearable, we had been through more as a couple in that 7 months than a lot of couples go through in a lifetime! We made the decision to try and get our current employers to sponsor us for a year-long work visa so we could stay another year in New Zealand and be together. And it worked - our applications were successful!
Three wonderful years later, our relationship had blossomed into soul mates, best friends, partners - he was the one and I couldn’t imagine life without him ever. We had now been living together in New Zealand for almost 4 years, renewing our work visas every year, and it was a time where we both wanted to start planning a more stable future together. We were faced with the decision to either try for permanent residency in New Zealand, move to Argentina together and start a new life, or move to Canada together to start a new life. We initially started applying for residency in New Zealand and quickly realized it was going to be a long and expensive process. Although we loved New Zealand and it was our first home together, we decided to abandon our residency application. Argentina was ruled out as my FI just didn’t see a life for us there - it’s a beautiful country with a wonderful culture, but the political and economic problems were something my FI didn’t want us to have to struggle with.
So Canada it was! We collected our exhaustive list of documents and filled out countless sponsorship forms and then we received the exciting news that my FI had been awarded permanent residency to Canada. We moved to Canada together and started our new lives. Two years later in 2010, we welcomed our beautiful baby boy into the world! Our little guy is now just over four years old and continually amazing us with his brilliance and hilarity! 
Marriage was something we had discussed very early on in our relationship, and something we continued to discuss often during the 9 years before our official engagement. Marriage was a topic that we always talked about - as a wonderful way to celebrate a relationship but maybe just not something for us! It sounds unromantic but the cost of a wedding always just seemed so wasteful! We loved each other, knew we were going to be together forever anyway, so why bother was our thought! I think after we had our son, we started little-by-little to think how great it would be if we could really have that celebration of our relationship, not as a way to cement our relationship as we were already committed to each other for life - but to celebrate our journey. We started to throw around the idea of “one day” getting married on the beach - a small, intimate celebration, we could do it somewhere in the middle between making my family travel from Canada and his family travel from Argentina. We started talking about it more and more, I think probably because we also were sooo ready for a beach vacation somewhere!
And then one day I was making supper in the kitchen. I opened the fridge and bent down to get something, and when I stood back up there he was - holding out this box with a stunning floral halo ring and asked me to marry him! I couldn’t close my mouth or say anything for at least 5 minutes! I love that we got engaged in our home, just making supper, having a normal family moment - it was so simple and beautiful.
The Ring!
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