Winner!

In the midst of unemployment and job hunting, it's hard to feel like a winner. So this email from The Perfect Pamper could not have come at a better time:

Hi Emilienne

Congratulations on winning our competition with BN1 magazine!

You have won: A pamper party for six people - six x 15 minute treatments

• OPI mini manicure
• Mini Living Nature facial
• Face and head massage
• Neck, back and shoulders massage
• Hand or foot massage

When this competition appeared in the BN1 magazine a few weeks ago, I sent in my name and contact info but didn't really think twice. I can't imagine that many people even entered the competition. But hey, who cares? I won!

All the ladies in our family will be perfectly pampered for our wedding day!

Unemployed or not, today I got to be the winner who'll be treating the ladies in her family to a pre-wedding spa package. Not bad for a rainy late-January day.

Dressing to hit the dance floor

If I intend to dance at our wedding— and I do— then as much as I adore The Dress, I'll probably need a back-up, something in which I can actually move. A quick swing past a thrift shop last weekend landed me something white that can hit the dance floor.

£40 for a spare wedding dress? Thank you, Martlett's!

This was my blank canvas. Finally, I got to live my dream of sewing my own wedding dress, or as close as I could come with only three months to plan an entire wedding.

Dissecting my wedding dress: bodice and skirt are separated as I integrate the purple waistband ribbon

I hunkered down with my sewing machine this weekend to open up, widen, lengthen, and shorten various bits and pieces of Dress #2. With the help of a friend who gave me half of her Saturday night, I now have my dancing dress. And boy, is it ever made to twirl.

Dress #2, ready to dance the night away

Let them eat cake!

A wedding cake wasn't originally part of the plans. After all, it is somewhat frivolous spending and we are on a budget. However, two things clicked. First: it turns out that cakes aren't massively expensive here. A cake from Brighton's top-ranked bakery (according to TripAdvisor) that serves up to 65 guests costs £130, literally £2 per person. We're considering paying more than that to give each person a coffee or tea with dessert, and those won't make for nearly as pretty a picture as a three-tiered wedding cake. And second: although the French may have mastered the realm of desserts, they don't actually do wedding cakes. They only see them in the movies.

We're trying to make this wedding as rich of a cultural experience as possible for all of our guests, a large proportion of whom will be coming from a wedding-cake-less world on the other side of the Channel. So, unlike their queen who they enthusiastically beheaded, we will be letting the large contingent from the continent (and all our other guests) eat cake.

Yes, there will be cake.

The bakery has appropriately named itself Cloud 9. And by the time we've sliced our way through a mountain of vanilla, chocolate, and freshly chopped strawberries in buttercream, cloud 9 is just where we'll all be.

Going digital: Our wedding website

Wedding websites are a fantastic way to inform guests of wedding plans, collect RSVPs, share our registry, and count down together to the Big Day. When it came to creating our digital space, one word was key: free. Several Google searches and trial runs later, I'd settled on the lesser known withjoy.com, in part because they weren't trying to sell me anything (ahem- theknot) but mostly because of the photos. Rather than slipping our images into pre-designed blog-like templates, at withjoy, we got to put our photos front and center, and build up all the text around them. In short, it was pretty.

There were, of course, questions of how to tell our story. And how to translate it all. Not to mention that awkward moment when a friendly withjoy employee offered to feature our proposal story, only to learn that we did not, in fact, have one. But at the end of the day, I'm rather proud with what we've put together. Here is our wedding website: withjoy.com/nker

The welcome page of our wedding website, counting down the seconds until we are husband and wife!

Argentina 2018!

With our wedding website nearly up and running, we were just about ready to start digitally inviting our guests! But inviting guests means being prepared with a gift registry. And when you need to be prepared to potentially move anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, what kind of gift makes sense? There was only one answer: a honeymoon registry.

Other than insisting our site be ad-free, we simply set out to pick the cheapest user-friendly site. Most of the totally "free" sites shave more off each gift than those sites that request a small upfront payment from us, so there's no wiggling out of some costs. However, the sites with the upfront payment were more user-friendly. We settled on buy-our-honeymoon.com, which offers users some more tasteful domain names including our pick, ourdreamhoneymoon.com. This site allowed us to customize our domain name, use multiple dates (for our UK and US receptions), go completely bilingual English/French, *and* list our gift prices in three different currencies (£, $, & €)! I have never seen something so friendly to international couples.

After getting over my reservations (namely, how the hell do you start planning a vacation when you're unemployed, financing a wedding, and worrying how many more months' rent your savings will cover??), there was one thing left to decide: where. We wanted some place exotic but not too dangerous, affordable but not dirt cheap, and good to visit over the winter, by which time we hope to have landed wherever my next job will take us. I've been dying to return to Argentina since 2009, when I missed out on Patagonia. And with this sort of notice — we're planning for New Year's 2018 — it's enough time for Nicolas to pick up some basic Spanish. So we made our decision.

A screenshot of our honeymoon registry

Soon, I was waxing rhapsodic about buy-our-honeymoon.com. I discovered that for a mere £5 to £10, I could point anywhere on the planet and get a fully customized honeymoon itinerary, complete with activities, descriptions, and prices. Within a few hours of saying the word, I was adding to, modifying, and pruning our itinerary to polish it into our dream vacation. Suddenly, I'd won days of my life back for job hunting.

It's kind of exciting to know that when the dust has settled, though goodness knows where we'll be living, we know where we'll be ringing in the new year 2018!

Putting a ring on it, his & hers

Just checking items off the wedding to-do list at this point. Well, that, and wondering when I'll get a few more responses from all my job applications. This afternoon, when the jeweller rang, I was thrilled to learn I'd have the pleasure of crossing off a particularly big to-do: picking up Nicolas's wedding band.

Like anything shopping related, this task left Nicolas utterly uninterested, so I let myself get lost in the twisted maze that is the Lanes of Brighton. After testing band upon clunky band, each more awkward than the next when paired with my engagement ring, I goldilocks'ed my way into the perfect fit: a white, yellow, and rose gold triple band otherwise known as a Russian wedding ring. It was delicate, feminine, and unique, and it hugged my engagement ring just right. If only all decisions were this easy.

When my band was re-sized and ready for pick-up, I dragged Nicolas along with the assurance that his trip could be limited to just one shop. After sampling the gamut of colors and designs, Nicolas asked me what shade of gold I'd picked. In a minute, I'd gone from guiltily admitting I'd taken all three to helping him decide what thickness of Russian wedding ring looked best on him.

Our matching wedding bands are finally nestled side by side, awaiting the Big Day.

Finding a set of matching wedding bands that would make us both happy was certainly not something for which I was holding my breath. With just three months to pull this wedding off, I had bigger fish to fry. But I'm thrilled it's worked out this way. And now we're one step closer to saying, "I do."

Someone cleans up nicely

After a fair bit of arm twisting, I forced Nicolas to go suit shopping before the January sales came to a close. But, in case that hadn't been enough of a nuisance, I also forced him into a photo shoot today. And the man cleans up nicely, if I do say so myself.

Nicolas, dressed and ready for our Big Day (minus the coiffeur)

The soundtrack to our ceremony

With bigger decisions out of the way, it was time to think about the (more important) details: our ceremony. Lucky for us, civil ceremonies in the UK come with pre-written vows, which we simply plan to extend by including a French translation. A civil ceremony doesn't involve too much more beyond the vows and a signing of the register. The standard government-issue ceremony checklist only includes a few decisions for us to make, including choice of reading (which we're keeping a surprise) and musical selection.

For once, those wedding blogs served a purpose. (Normally I just go there to drool, and I leave them wondering how anyone finds so much free time and spare cash.) I pored over them for song ideas. We quickly agreed on our first processional song: Israel "IZ" Kamakawiwo'ole's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."

Things got trickier when looking for a second processional song for the bride's entrance. We thought it would add symmetry to use a French song but, true to form, the French just don't enjoy singing about happiness. Heartache, melancholy, or existential questioning? Seek no further. But a modern Frenchman singing about a positive romance? I scoured French wedding blogs only to discover that they mostly use English-language love songs in their processionals, whether or not they understand the lyrics.

Eventually, the tag team of Google and youtube led us to a song by Debout Sur le Zinc called "La Déclaration" whose lyrics are really charming, all about committing to, and finding home in, each other. Luckily enough, a recent cover by Les Frangines was calm and sweet enough to actually be able to use when walking down the aisle.

Which brings us to the recessional song. My favorite wedding blog, apracticalwedding.com, suggested just the thing, hailing from England and fitting for a proper Brightonian wedding: "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" by The Darkness.

And with that, we'll be ready for the party to begin!

Celebrating Stateside

Biggest surprise of the wedding process so far: comparing prices on both sides of the Atlantic. For the amount of money we're spending to rent out Brighton's most iconic building and a gorgeous seafront restaurant with a highly-rated chef and ceiling to floor windows looking over the beach, we could hardly get a hole in the wall in Philadelphia.

Let's take two steps back:

1. As you know, we're throwing this wedding together with rather short notice. Sadly, this means that only a few family members will be able to cross the Atlantic for the Big Day. Not a single childhood friend, no cousins, no grandparents, zilch. (Every cloud has a silver lining: we're able to invite many new, fun, vibrant UK- and EU-based friends to Brighton who might not have made the final cut if we'd been forced to put a full guest list to a chopping block.)
2. There's no way we're getting away without celebrating with my American family.

Conclusion: there will be a US wedding reception.

French family voted for July, so we had our general time frame. Step 2: the venue. This is when I discovered just how the American wedding industry has jacked up prices. No matter how we searched, how flexible we were— no ceremony, no dancing, take the brunch option, go for Sunday— we could not find a place in Philadelphia for under $100 a head on a weekend. We got stuck abandoning the one thing that we really wanted: a convenient location for out-of-town guests. But I guess something had to go wrong in all this wedding planning.

Finally, we settled on a Sunday brunch at Bella Tori at the Mansion in Langhorne, Pennsylvania.

Bella Tori at the Mansion, where we'll be hosting our US reception

It's a lovely venue located a half hour's drive from Philly and an hour from Newark Airport. The date: July 9. Let the countdown #2 begin.

Finding our reception venue

Unlike the ceremony venue, whose selection was a total no-brainer, the reception venue was more of a challenge. At first we thought we might even just host it at our place, unsure how many friends would even bother with a trip on such short notice. But clearly we're more popular than we'd realized, and soon our guest list numbers had exceeded the capacity of our home.. And so, the hunt began.

Our options were wide open. Our budget, less so. There were hotels, the pier, the cabaret, seafront restaurants, the bandstand. And nobody advertised their pricing online. So wave after wave of email got sent out, and slowly the responses started trickling in.

I nearly squealed with delight in the middle of our meeting with our photographer when the email appeared on my phone telling me Alfresco would be available, even moreso when I saw their prices. At Alfresco, no matter the weather, our guests will be able to enjoy an evening on the seafront, a perfect complement to the Royal Pavilion when trying to show off the best of Brighton in just one day.

Alfresco, a family-run Italian restaurant on the Brighton seafront, where we'll be hosting our wedding reception.

Three days after that email pinged my phone, the event coordinator and myself were face to face, chatting logistics for a seafront wedding reception catered by one of Brighton's best chefs. I can still hardly believe we can actually afford this. And on that note, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to both Nicolas's and my parents for their generosity throughout this wedding. For people who've just fallen on hard times, we seem to be unusually lucky.

Saying yes to the dress

The bride is supposed to save the big reveal for the moment she steps into the aisle. I know. But frankly, with all the plans and conventions we've already tossed aside, what's one more? And I am too excited not to share.

I didn't have much thoughts around The Dress. I wasn't even sure I wanted something fancy. But my mom suggested I have a look online to see what used dresses might be on the market in Brighton. And boy, was she right.

*Drumroll, please*

Ta da!

From the moment I slipped it on, I knew this Ian Stuart beauty would be going home with me. (Can you believe I got it for £149?!) I love that it's not white, as that color's never really suited me. And I love that the ruffly skirt makes me feel just like Disney's Belle from Beauty and the Beast. If ever there's a day to be a Disney princess, it's your wedding day, and of all the Disney princesses, Belle, with her books and independent thinking, is all right by me.

These photos were only captured due to the generosity of one of my closest friends here in Brighton who, herself was also in just my situation a few years back: a non-EU citizen frantically planning a wedding to a Frenchman with only three months' notice. This lovely woman has been kindly taking time out her day to help me out. I'd be remiss if I didn't end this post with a big Thank You, Esin!

Photographer: check

The Royal Pavilion cannot be helpful enough, between last minute visits, rapid email turnover, and reserving multiple ceremony dates while we sorted things out. They also provided us, upon request, a list of their most trusted photographers. Picking the right photographer is especially important when marrying in the Royal Pavilion since, as a Grade 1 historic listed building, it has rather dim lighting to minimize the fading of its hand-painted walls.

When clicking through the websites of the Royal Pavilion's suggested photographers, I immediately fell for Jacqui McSweeney, a Brightonian originally from Ireland whose photos' lighting and candor just had me head over heels.

A small sample of the portfolio that made me fall for our photographer, Jacqui McSweeney.

And you know what? Jacqui was available! We met with her last Friday to discuss our plans over tea, and she could not have been sweeter. Knowing that I can trust the person documenting our big day feels like wrapping my fingers around a steaming mug of hot cocoa right after stepping inside from a snowstorm. Thank you, Jacqui!

A venue and a date

When we said we were engaged to be wed, we meant business.

We spent the first couple days of 2017 discussing scenarios based on when and where I might land my next job. It was soon clear that we needed our marriage license pronto. On this side of the pond, a marriage gives me the right to work in the EU, making me a more attractive candidate to potential employers. And on the other side, our marriage would enable Nicolas to follow me should I land something in the States.

Technically, we could wait it out. Maybe another EU-based company will snag me up before my UK visa even expires. But the clock is ticking, and should the time arrive when I really need a marriage license to prevent us from being physically separated, the process will be much more complicated than it is today, while we are still legal residents of the same country. At the end of the day, our number one goal is to stay together, so it's time to grab a one-way ticket on the wedding planning express.

After reading up on nuptial administration in the UK, the US, France, and Denmark, we found it simplest to be wed right here in England. The paperwork is straightforward, and the location is convenient for us. We talked about a courthouse wedding, just us and witnesses in an office room, but it was all too depressing. I scoured the Brighton & Hove City Council's list of approved venues for hours in search of any alternative to the fancy, £3K+ Royal Pavilion option of which we'd been dreaming.

The Royal Pavilion- a wedding venue fit for a fairy tale

In fact, the winning venue was right under our noses. We'd been so wrapped up in the idea of a Royal Pavilion ceremony in the grandiose Music Room that we'd all but forgotten that weddings can also be held in the Royal Pavilion's Red Drawing Room for a mere fourth of the price. Within a few hours of our ferry docking in England on January 3, we were on the phone with the Royal Pavilion staff to schedule our visit to the Red Drawing Room.

The Royal Pavilion's Red Drawing Room, where Nicolas and I will soon say, "I do!"

We could hardly believe it. Not only was the room cozy, intimate, and (importantly) available on all our potential dates, but it gave us access to the Royal Pavilion on tightened purse strings. We even learned that we will still be allowed into the Music Room for a photo shoot as soon as the ceremony is over. And, cherry on top, museum staff will be happy to take all our guests on a private, after-hours guided tour of the Royal Pavilion while we busy ourselves with the couple's photo shoot. Could things have fallen into place more perfectly?

We beelined from the Royal Pavilion to the City Hall, where we scheduled our appointment to "enter notice of marriage," basically to begin the UK's mandated minimum wait period of 28 days (or possibly 70 for non-EU citizens) before we can legally marry. A few phone calls later, our families had all settled on the preferred date for the ceremony, over Easter weekend.

Ladies and gentlemen, mark your calendars. Let the countdown begin. Nicolas and I are getting married on April 15, 2017!!

We're engaged!

To be fair, the news is a little bit old, but life has been a total whirlwind lately. So let me try to catch you up to speed. Where to begin?

Nicolas and I have known that a marriage was in the works. One doesn't just hop in a car and move from country to country as a couple without having a few good conversations along the way. Last fall, we quickly fell in love with Brighton, so when I saw a poster advertising for weddings in the Royal Pavilion, Brighton's most iconic building, it felt like fate.

We would be wed in our adopted hometown. It would be an opportunity to finally rope all our friends and family into paying us the visit to Brighton that they'd all been promising, and a chance for us to really highlight the best of our town to everyone all at once. We had visions of a multi-day affair: A day enjoying the rides on the pier, an afternoon high tea in one of Brighton's classic old hotels, a picnic in our private gardens with the tunnel to the beach that served as the inspiration for Lewis Carrol's rabbit hole. There was so much potential! I could hardly wait. July 2018 sounded like about the right time. Everything was falling neatly into place. We just had to build up a few more months' savings before we could pick the date.

Then, as my job disappeared from beneath me, we watched our dreams evaporate along with it. The only thing I knew as we prepared to go into yet another period of uncertainty was that it was time to pick up the physical symbol of the commitment we were continually making to one another: no matter what came next, we'd ride it out together. So we went to the Lanes, that narrow, winding, pedestrian maze in the heart of Brighton, to buy me a ring right before the Christmas holidays.

My antique engagement ring. Because diamonds are just so typical.

I didn't yet know what it meant in terms of a marriage timeline. I wasn't yet ready to shout it from the mountains, not in the midst of all the stress from yet another job hunt so suddenly thrust upon me. But, in quiet moments, knowing that we'd made it official made me smile.

So that's it! We're engaged! And just wait until you hear our wedding plans.

Home for the holidays

The holidays went by so fast this year! I was fortunate to get to split my time between my two homes, back with family in the States *and* in Paris, with Nicolas and friends. Everything was smooth sailing on Day 1- literally- as clear skies across the south of England bid us adieu until 2017.

Au revoir, England! See you in 2017!

But it quickly got trickier when I had the pleasure (note- irony) of checking in with Air France the following day. They kindly waited until my checked luggage- 12 kg underweight- was taken away to insist that my carry-on also be weighed. And when it came in at 3 kg overweight, they informed me that I'd have to pay 80€ or find a way to rid myself of 3 kg. As the empty carry-on suitcase weighed 3 kg, they simply took it off my hands. This is how I got to experience how Santa would feel if he had to drag his bag of toys through security at Charles de Gaulle Airport.

This is how it would look if Air France got their hands on Santa before he passed through airport security. 

Luckily, more festive activities awaited. The crackers I brought home from England for the family went off with a bang. (Pardon the pun.)

Christmas crackers, straight from England to the Repak Family Christmas Eve dinner

And our annual cousins campout was a bloody success, with minimal bloodshed at that!

Cousins Campout 2016- check

The week home wasn't without a few tears shed, beyond those having to do with my current state of employment (or lack thereof!). This was to be our faithful Jay's last time donning Christmas paraphernalia for the cameras, an art he'd passively mastered over the years.

Goodbye, Baby Jay

Before I knew it, it was time to say goodbye, including to my pet tree, adopted as a sapling back in 1993- my, how my baby has grown!

My, what big branches you have! Wasn't it just yesterday you were my little sapling?

Soon enough I was Paris-bound, thrilled to have a chance to spend a few days in the city I hadn't properly seen since moving out in Spring 2015.

New York, from way up high

Nicolas and I were lucky enough to have the chance to see plenty of friends, both the old and the new: Oddly enough, we wound up ringing in the New Year with friends from Brighton who'd also crossed the Channel for the holidays.

Catching up with old friends in Paris ♡

I'd forgotten just how much I'd missed this city. No matter how many years I spent there, no matter the headaches and the heartbreaks and the rainy days, there will always be something magical to me about walking through the streets of Paris. The windows at BHV especially made me smile.

They may not be Saks 5th Ave, but I think the windows at BHV Marais hold their own.

And it was good to have something to smile about, with all the heavier issues bearing down on me now that I find myself ringing in the new year freshly unemployed in a foreign country where I'm about to become an illegal. But that's a topic for another post.