We have been planning (or at least thinking about) this trip for well over 2 years. (Actually, more like 20 years in Olivia’s case!). It all began when we started talking more seriously about our future. We both wanted to get married and have a family together in the coming years and while this was exciting it was also a bit scary. Particularly for Ryan who felt that he hadn’t really had a break, having gone from school, to university, straight into the world of work. When would the time for us to just be us come? When we retire in 40 years? No thanks!
Having always loved to travel and explore new places Olivia jumped right on this and said, “So let’s go somewhere. Where do you want to go?”. What began as the idea of taking 4 weeks to explore Canada, quickly escalated into let’s try and visit as many of the places we have always wanted to go to as we can, while we have the freedom to do so. So, the budgeting and planning began as we tried to work out how feasible this dream of ours would be. We decided that we would sell the house, pack up and head off for about a year of travel. We had planned to work and save as much as possible for around 18 months and then hopefully we would be in a position to start travelling.
Since then, a lot has happened. We lost Olivia’s dad, Tony, very suddenly in September 2022 and our whole world changed. It took a long time and a lot of work before we felt like we were actually living, and not just existing, in a world without him. We miss him every day and just hope he would we pleased that we’re grabbing life by the horns and leaning into this experience that we have both wanted for so long. If we have learnt anything it’s that life is far too short not to make your dreams a priority and so that’s what we’ve been doing.
We booked our wedding in February 2023, got engaged in March and married in October. Yes, we booked the venue before we were engaged (we’re unconventional like that!) and then had 7 months to get the wedding sorted. Thanks to a lot of help from our parents we managed to have the best wedding we could have hoped for, celebrating with our closest family and friends.
We didn’t have long in our post-wedding bubble before we had to start packing up the house and preparing for our travels. In the midst of the move, we sadly had another loss as Olivia’s grandfather passed away.
It’s been a hell of a road but we are finally here, on our extended “honeymoon”, which will hopefully last the year if we can stick to our budget and make our funds stretch that far!
Leaning In 