Well just to drop the news directly, I will tell you what the unthinkable is. Jan Cees and I decided that it would be a good idea to get married. Why? Now let me explain. After all those years of not wanting to be married, just because we didn’t see the extra value of getting married. But after having three loved ones die in the past year, we were confronted time after time with notarial documents in which we seemed not to be connected to each other. After the third time, we were so done with it, and so it came that we decided to get married. With that decision the first hurdle was taken. We first decided to marry abroad during a holiday on Curacao and then afterwards we would tell the family the news. First of all, holidays to Curacao are still quite expensive, and as soon as you mention the word marry, all prices will be doubled. So that plan went into the trash bin. Well, what to do? I will leave out all the in between steps and just end with the final plan. Because I thought it would also be nice to have a happy family gathering after all the sad ones we had this year, I came up with the last day of the year, December 31. After discussing the pros and cons of this date, we decided to go for it. How difficult this date was we found out when we went to the city hall to set the date. In Capelle aan den IJssel, the city hall is closed from December 23, 2016, to January 2, 2017, so hurdle number 2 had to be taken; looking for another location to marry in Capelle aan den IJssel. After calling almost all available wedding locations who all told us that they were closed on that date we found one that was willing to go open for us. So lucky us. We could move further to hurdle three: finding ourselves an registar who was willing to work that day. Not easy but we found one, so no choice, but who cares. At least we found the two most important parts of a wedding ceremony. What’s left then to organise? Food and drinks, the easy part. Who do we want to invite, remember we came from doing it without any audience, so this part was not that easy. In the end, we decided to invite the small group of the family we have left and a few friends. So there will be 32 people, starting with lunch followed by the ceremony and drinks afterward. The whole happening will end at 17.00 hours so everybody can be on time for their New Year's eve celebration at home if they want. Only our family will stay for New Year's eve at our home. For the rest we can talk about it this coming Thursday if you still have questions leftJ
