After days of anxious anticipation and nights of reading horror stories of rejection and denial, Jan and I reached the highest level of excitement when we received our passports with approved visas yesterday that we did not feel the strong earthquake that shook our city.

You see, the biggest fear for a would-be and even a seasoned traveler with a weak passport is not getting lost in a foreign country. It is getting denied of visa or worse, getting offloaded in the immigration.

And for someone who does not have a normal and stable office job, having an approved visa, especially in one of the G7 countries, is such a share worthy success story for me. And I think I have to prepare myself for more "the anticipation is killing me" moments because that is just one of the many visa applications that we'll have to go through.

Well at least, that's one load off our chest. Starting today, I'll just let my hair down and enjoy the incoming days because I have a lot of things to look forward to. The trip next month, the wedding in three months, and the engraver I ordered for my DIY wedding project that should be arriving anytime next week.

And for that matter, I'm happy to say that we have already made a lot of progress for our wedding preps (for reals haha). I have not felt a tinge of pressure just yet. Maybe because I wasn't really looking forward to a perfect wedding. Yes, I know we hired a decorator and we could just leave it all up to them. But I want our big day to represent us and our relationship—simple and nothing fancy. I want to make it special by adding a personal touch to it.

And honestly, I'm really enjoying the process.

DIYed the welcome board. It was supposed to be a chalkboard but I don't want to spend extra on chalk and board. I just did whatever's available in the house.

Invitation prototype. Designed the whole thing myself. We'll be printing, cutting, and binding these ourselves too.

We didn't have a drill but I found a way to punch holes in this wood. I'll be engraving our names here too (good luck with that), while Jan, on the other hand, has to saw a few more chunks of wood.

We decided to skip the pre-nuptial shoot. Selected our favorite travel photos and made a movie out of it instead. My short vlogging stint did pay off. Video editing was surprisingly easier. This has saved us more money plus I enjoyed learning new video editing tricks.

That's it! You might have already guessed that we're going for a rustic, traveled-themed wedding. I will be sharing full details about the DIY projects on this blog. But I can't promise anything soon. For now, I'll be off to shop for some winter clothes.

Have a nice day everyone! ;)