Stage 2

And here we are.

We lodged our prospective marriage visa on 13 August 2013. On 31 October that visa was granted and only three weeks later Americo arrived here with three giant suitcases in tow.

Two more weeks and we were married. Nine days later we had our first "real" Christmas together. Then our first New Year. And our first Valentines day.

And today, just two days after our two month wedding anniversary, Immigration has granted his temporary residency visa.

For the next two years he gets to stay here. We don't have to do any more applications. We don't have to pay any more money. In two years they get in touch and ask for some more evidence that we're still together, and then, all going according to plan he gets permanent residency.

For all our six years of apart, and the stresses that come with a long distance relationship, we have been astoundingly lucky in our immigration process. Our applications were straight forward, our approvals fast, and our case officers kind and professional. I am painfully aware the process is far from easy for most, and even our process wasn't entirely easy.

We were prepared for this in so many ways because we are both well organised with our emails, calls and evidence. We knew long in advance of our application that we'd need to have evidence, so we kept our skype call logs and chats, we kept so many emails, all the travel documents, letters, cards, both to each other and from others. Add to that our joint love of photography and there is an overwhelming amount of evidence of our relationship and love for each other.

My particularly organised brain and my experience with understanding government forms made it easy to put all the evidence together and complete the forms. Even with that experience we both managed to get questions wrong because of confusing wording. For people that don't have experience with government it must be painfully challenging to fill in those forms. I can't even imagine the greater difficulty for those for which English is not their first language.

Australia is a beautiful country. We are full of kind people with great hearts that have capacity to love and welcome people from all around the world. We are a country of immigrants whose cultures and traditions make this beautiful country what it is.

My wish for this country, and the world in general, is that we can all find within ourselves the kindness to make immigration as easy for everyone, as it was for us.

The book of love

For six years and four months I have loved Americo. Truth be told I have probably loved him longer, but we celebrate our anniversary on August 16th, and so today is six years and four months from the day we "officially" became a thing. An undefinable, complicated, long distance thing. 

For most of that time we have considered ourselves to be married, in the emotional commitment sense at least. It didn't matter to us whether the government or anyone else considered us married, we were as committed to each other as two people could be.

Today we made that official official. It was small (tiny really), but for us it was perfect. It was a warm but not hot. It was breezy, but not windy. In the dappled shade of the large oak trees at the Yarralumla gallery and cafe it was just divine.

It was a quick ceremony, with personal vows, that were very us and utterly perfect. For those of you that have followed our journey we didn't want you to miss out on our special day, so here are some photos and the text of our vows to each other.

 Americo's vows to Ruth

A vow is a promise, an oath. Sadly, there's nothing I can vow to say that I haven't vowed, or promised, or oathed (not a word) to you a thousand times before. In fact, o the day we are finally getting married, I can't promise you anything. I mean, I promised you we would be together, and here we are. I promised you I would love you forever, and six years in, I do, more and more every day. I promised you this day would come, and look, here it is. From here on out, the only thing I can really promise you is that whatever we face, whatever comes, we'll see it through together.  

But vows are something else as well. They're declarations. A shout into the ether that you believe something so earnestly regardless of who hears it. Normally declarations get lost in my ramblings, or scribbled in some notepad, or dismissed on social media. So hopefully here, no, they don't get so lost.  

Ruth, I love you. In all possible meanings and translations that that word has gone through, I do love you. From the moment I met you, I knew you were the one for me. I hope that each day from then, to now, to all the years ahead of us that I earn that love. You challenge me to be better in every way. You are my Yoda, my Wonder Woman. You are my Doctor. And I am looking forward to getting timey-wimey and spacey-wacy with you. 

With a little bit of wibbly-wobbly thrown in. 

Ruth's vows to Americo

Once, a long time ago, you wrote:

"Love isn't a movie, a book, a picture or a poem. Love is you, love me is, together we're in love. 

I didn't just fall in love with you, I've always loved you, I just had to find you first. " 

I'm so very glad you kept looking til you found me. 

From the day we first talked It was like I had known you, and loved you,  forever. 

You understand me in ways that nobody else had. 

You understand my crazy isnt really crazy, its just needed your patience to help me through the bad days. 

You understand that I'm passionate about my job, and sometimes it means working weekends and when I'm on holiday. You always keep me company instead of complaining. 

You understand that you aren't allowed to reorganise my kitchen. Or my linen cupboard. And I understood I needed to buy you a PS4 in order to convince you to move to Australia.  

I love that you love me enough to watch renovation shows and MasterChef. I love that I love you enough to watch Doctor Who and Lost. I love that we agree that Matt Smith just isn't quite the Doctor and the smoke monster was pretty stupid.  

I love that you're a feminist. 

I love that you think space is awesome. 

I love how you love movies, even the really bad ones. 

Especially the really bad ones.  

I love that you like cooking and that you can't drink hot coffee because it puts you to sleep. 

I love that you stuck around for 6 years, and 4 months until we figured out how to make this one country thing work, even when it was really really hard.  

I thank you for the thousands of hours tied to a headset. For the amazing airport reunions, and the heartbreaking departures. For the cards, letters and poems that were a constant reminder you loved me. 

For every holiday, apart and together. For never giving up. And for never letting me give up. 

Everything I am, everything I have learned in the last 6 years, every success I have had, it has been because you supported me. You held my hand (more figuratively, than literally) and told me I could do anything, and I did, because I believed you.  

To me, you have been my husband since the day you told me you were going to marry me so many years ago. Today you become my husband to the government and the rest of the world. And most importantly to the department of immigration.  

I am blessed to be your wife, and I promise I will love you more than coffee, cheesecake, and Eddie Vender, I sincerely promise that I will love you more very day, and I also swear, with every part of my soul, that I won't make you watch the Fast and the Furious movies more than once a year. 

For my husband... I told you today how much I love you, and I promise I will continue to tell you every day how much I value you and our relationship. And I swear that from now on I'll quit blogging our life. 


For those of you that couldn't be with us today... you were missed. Sometime in the future when we have our life sorted out we'll do a "proper" wedding when all of our friends and family can be part of the day. We both hope the photos make up for that a little bit. 

Love, Actually

The very odd passage of time

All things considered the last six years have passed in the blink of an eye. 2343 day it may have been, but it felt like nothing in light of all that we have done.

Given that, it is really quite irritating that the last two weeks have moved in the same sort of eons that are required to form glaciers or giant redwoods.

Twelve and a half more days is impossible. I will lose my mind before it gets here.

I am in manic mode. Give me a task that should take a week and I get it done in hours. I'm begging for work. I'm nervous and jittery and fidget constantly. I can't settle to read a book, my mind is going over the same details again and again.

Sleep is a challenge and waking hours are flitting butterfly like from distraction to distraction.

I've finished a book a day for the last week. I can't even speed read.

I don't know how to focus myself or my mind to make this rather bizarre situation speed up, when it has already been faster than we ever imagined it would be.

I really don't know what to do or how to explain the insanity to anyone.

So, if you're in Canberra and you come across a slightly crazy eyed blonde girl spinning around in a park full of children who are wide eyed in confusion, perhaps you could point me at a cafe and get me a calming chamomile and pat my hand, or something?

Cause of the nutty? Surely not. 

Surreality

It's been just about a week since Americo's visa got approved. I still feel like I've entered some kind of surreal reality that isn't the reality I was in before the visa got approved.

I know it's really real. I've read the approval letter 100 times. I'm constantly checking the flight confirmation just to be sure I really booked it. My bank balances are a scary daily reminder that I am really going to have my fiance in under three weeks, and he's going to be my husband in 38 days.

Yup. Not only is he moving here, but I was mentally deranged (or PMSing) enough to decide to get married with just 6 weeks notice.

That doesn't feel real either.

I have shoes.
I have ordered rings.
I have a dress ordered to be delivered with my husband to be.
The celebrant is set.
The venue is arranged.
I've given everyone a heads up.
I've spent 3 lunchtimes at work making invitations to send out tomorrow.

Now, even taking into account that some of this had been semi organised anyway, it needed to be for the visa, it's so ... odd to think I'm going to be a married woman so soon. So much sooner than we had planned.

I probably pushed this too quickly, all things considered. From a money perspective it would have been sensible to wait until after Christmas so I had my bonus and stuff in to pay for the wedding, but I was so keen to get married in 2013, it has been such a good year for us after all.

Thinking about how blessed we were with timing of the visa, the flights, and all our deliveries arriving, I can only hope that fate keeps blessing us for just a little bit longer and helps us pull this off without destroying my good credit rating.

And until he's here I think my brain will just keep being confused by this strange new reality where I'll no longer have to spend 12 hours a day on a computer.

Lucky 13

Last year as I put my Christmas tree up, and cried over another Christmas without Americo, I sobbingly declared it was our last Christmas apart.

Though I was determined it would be so, I had a lot of doubt we could make it happen. I'd have to save so much money, the application was so expensive, there was so much paperwork to be done, and of months the waiting. 

Immigration were so clear it'd be 5-12 months, and we didn't get the paperwork in until August, so we wouldn't have Christmas, but maybe we'd get lucky for valentines day. 

Today, on a day off from work, after two days plagued with migraines, I was hoping to sleep in. Instead Americo called me at 6:30. I was nauseous and tired, wanted more sleep, until he told me he was coming to Australia. Forever. 

No more 3 months here or 3 months there. I can finally plan the wedding and plan for the future. 

More sleep became impossible, of course, so I decided to check flights. Obviously Air New Zealand decided it was fate we be together, and was having a fare sale allowing us to score flights for $1000 including extra luggage. 

And now, as it turns out, my husband to be will be here in 26 day. Less than two pay periods. 

We get to have Christmas, and new year, and valentines day. My birthday, his birthday, the birth of princess Santa Jesus. We get to have anniversaries and dinner parties and find a new house. 

And on 25 December 2013 I get to wake up with my man, I get to play Lego marvel superheroes all day on the PS4, we get to cook pulled pork and raspberry BBQ sauce, or visit my mum, and we get to do it together. 

Despite all my doubts and stress, 13 yet again turns out to be my lucky number, and it is with slightly confused shock that I retire the "Ruth and Americo 2014" tag and replace it with "Ruth and Americo 2013".

I get to see my gorgeous man in 26 days, and this time I don't have to give him back. 

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