The last two months have been a whirlwind. I wrote my last blog on June 21st about conducting research at Bonnaroo festival in Tennessee. The day after I wrote it the movers came in to pack everything from my San Francisco apartment, load it on a truck, onto a boat, and 8 weeks later onto a truck again to be brought to my new apartment in good old England. From the 22nd of June until the 13th of August I was living in hotel rooms and temporary accommodation. You have no idea how glad I am to have my own belongings again.

In between moving continents I managed to squeeze in one more research project at San Francisco Pride. At the end of June I created and conducted a demographic survey at the Pride weekend. Once again a cracking weekend! I’m proud to have been involved, one way or the other, with this organisation for the last 3 years.

After getting married in April 2014 we decided we had to celebrate it properly with our family and friends back in Europe. Our destination: Amsterdam! In August last year we went to Amsterdam for 3 days to visit 15 venues. Where can you feed 150 guests and where can they party the night away? Amsterdam has some amazing and historic places and we really did see some beautiful venues. Having said that we also viewed a nightclub where our flip-flops got stuck to the carpet… Either way, a fantastic way to see the city and to figure out what kind of venue was suitable for our wedding celebration.

From January onwards the planning of the wedding really started. Venue, hotel rooms, food, drinks, parents, DJ, sound, lights, invites, and lots more. After visiting Nashville in March we decided we needed a live band on stage. That decision was made 4 months prior to the big day. Best decision ever!

The struggle was finding a good live band, both affordable and one that knows how to rock the place, in a country that is on the other side of the planet. Google is helpful but it means you have to base your decision on a YouTube video. Surprisingly most of them were poor video clips with incredibly bad sound quality. To me this seems strange, as this is how these bands promote themselves. Normally you would see a band perform live and base your decision on what you have seen and experienced. We didn't have that opportunity so YouTube it was for us. We didn’t find a band as most of them really did sound like ‘wedding bands’. Eventually our photographer came to the rescue and suggested a band he had seen perform: Performer Collective. What a band that turned out to be! Fantastic!

Long story short: we had an amazing day in Amsterdam on the 25th of July, the day that a major storm caused havoc to the city. It meant that several guest were unable to make their way to Amsterdam. The storm also damaged the venue and caused a leak right onto the dance floor. Some equipment of the AV company didn’t arrive at the venue until late as there were traffic jams (storm related) everywhere, which in return meant that the build up of the sound and light got delayed. But hey… everything got sorted and most guests didn’t even notice the delay and, like I said, we had a fantastic day!

All this planning and organising of the last couple of months got me inspired to create a workshop in wedding planning. So that’s what I’m working on at the moment. Besides the workshop there’ll be an eBook soon as well. Oh and I’m still busy inputting data from Bonnaroo and Lightning in a Bottle festival. Later this week I’ll launch my newsletter. So please subscribe to that. September is going to be a busy month I think.