A Whirlwind Texas Ranch Wedding + European Overland Honeymoon
From Grease and Grime to Engagement Time…
It’s New Years Eve 2021. We’re back in Texas visiting my family and ringing in the New Year at my brother’s house in Galveston. Unbeknownst to me, a few week earlier while Andy was working to revive our LR3 (our build that took us from California to Argentina) he made a trip to O’Reilly auto parts. Another day, another trip to get parts of the vehicle - nothing out of the ordinary there. However, on this particular trip there was a delay on the part he pre-ordered. So, he did what anyone would do with that time…he bought an engagement ring. Covered in grease and grime, in camo shorts and a “MudStuff” t-shirt, he walked into an engagement ring store.
Fast-forward to NYE. We’d just hopped off karaoke singing Gangster’s Paradise as a couple, as you do. It was time for a group photo with our closest friends and family to commemorate the evening…or so I thought. Before I knew it he was down on one knee, pulling a beautiful ring out of his new cowboys boots, in true Texan fashion. My yes rang through the nigh and before long literal fireworks were blasting through the air to celebrate the moment.
A Ranch Wedding with Texas + British Style
Now, in Andy’s mind he thought we’d get married in a year or so, after our planned UK to Turkey trip….but I posed the question of “why wait?” and within the next week we’d picked and visited our venue, marked our calendars for March 21st, and begun planning. Andy flew back to the UK to continue work on our Land Rover Defender camper conversion and over the following 2 weeks I managed to find a dress, book a photographer and videographer, land on a band, and book our food, before flying back to join him.
The next 2 months were filled with 10-12 days planning the final details of the wedding while simultaneously working through the monster of a task of building our dream Defender Camper.
One area we were still looking to land on was our wedding vehicle. Our relationship was founded on our love of road-trips and adventure. It only seemed right to have one of our favorite vehicles of all time as our wedding vehicle: a Land Rover Defender. But this wasn’t just any Land Rover Defender…it was a Twisted North American spec V8 90. It was perfect touch for a wedding that blended the world of British and American culture. We served Yorkshire Pudding starters + Texas Brisket mains, flew our talented friends Sarah and Will over from Yorkshire to perform, and had an iconic British vehicle as our wedding car. We were surrounded by our closest friends and family and had a week-long celebration that was one for the books. It was perfect.
The Honeymoon
We flew to New York City and spent a few days winding down after the whirlwind few months, before heading back to the UK to finish off our first project as Husband and Wife: completing our overland camper aka Tango 2.0.
In June we set off to put it to the test on a 4-month, 17-country honeymoon of sorts, overland style, traversing from the UK to the far reaches of Cappadocia in Turkey.
