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Tampa, Florida, United States of America (31 May - 3 June 2013)

This trip was less about the destination and more about the planned events of the weekend: a wedding, a birthday, and graduation, and a good ol' family catch up. Kristina's cousin Rachel had her high school graduation this weekend, and after attending the graduations of Kristina and each of her siblings, Kristina's aunt (Rachel's mother) was determined that Kristina was going to be attending her daughter's graduation haha - fair enough. That being the case, we always knew we would be in Tampa this weekend, and it happened to coincide with by 31st birthday. As for the wedding, well it was ours :) I've been in the US for well over a year now since Kristina and I returned from Central America after our seven-month trip around the world. During that time I've been able to stay on a temporary work visa which is due to expire soon. Although I have an application pending for a longer-term work visa, it too is still rather temporary in nature and of uncertain validity. That being the case, and given I proposed to Kristina a couple months ago, we figured the best idea was to tie the knot sooner rather than later thereby enabling me to apply for permanent residency in the US. We decided to rush it through this weekend while surrounded by her family, with a more formal and 'proper' ceremony to follow some time next summer!

We flew out of the big (hazy) apple at the crack of dawn, and a few hours later were coming into stormy Florida (the first US state I ever stepped foot in incidentally). Since we weren't here for the city, nor really saw a lot of it, I won't bother going into great detail about Tampa except to say there's its downtown in the distance on the right, it's home to about 350,000 (2.5 million in the greater urban area), and at this time of year it's muggy and stormy as hell!

Later that day we headed here to the Hillsborough County Courthouse to obtain and marriage license and be wed hahaha! Again I stress we'll be doing having a proper ceremony next year ;)

With camera recording and marriage license in hand we headed into a small room off to the side to get it on. Video of the ceremony (which took all of three minutes) is here.				Rings were exchanged...

I do's were said...		And that was that :)		Here's the gorgeous gal who married us - Chakeya. We spent the rest of the weekend debating the correct pronunciation of her name. We settled on sha-KEY-a.

My new family ;) That's Rachel on the right, for who we were all coming here in the first place, and who did all the photography for us (a fellow Canon shooter).		I think it's safe to say I've married into a family of giants.		Oh well, too late now. Game over!

From the courthouse we headed to the gorgeous University of Tampa for a few snappy-snaps. It was stinking hot and I sweating like hell hahaha!

Good times :) So my wedding anniversary is the day before my birthday. That oughta help me to remember it. Maybe.

There was even a cute wee wedding cake waiting for us back Rachel's house...

...which Kristina proceeded to ruin hehe. And that was our wedding day in a nutshell. As for next year's ceremony, well we don't know exactly where or when it'll be yet as plans are very much up in the air. Stay tuned!

We spent most of the next day down at the beach, where we discovered you can almost set your watch by the weather. At about 4pm almost every afternoon at the moment, the heavens open and it absolutely pisses down in spectacular fashion!		The rest of the weekend was all about this. Like pretty much everything in America, high school graduations are a big deal, and they're made a huge fuss of. I don't remember my high school graduation in New Zealand being quite as eventful.

Rachel's graduating class. What a good-looking bunch ;) They managed to keep it together in the heat though, and meanwhile I'm pouring sweat like a fountain beind the camera.

These things can apparently drag on for hours, but with a measly 39 people in the graduating class (small school) we were in and out within a couple of hours. I'd never sat through a graduation before (in America at least) so for me it was all rather interesting, but I see why Rachel's mother was determined for Kristina's family to return the favour after she'd sat through all of theirs.

She's a Canon photographer and drives a Subaru. The girl has taste ;)		The next day was our last and I left our hotel to find this all over my rental car. At first glance I thought the birds had crapped all over it, but they were actually clusters of these little winged things. And they were in no hurry to leave. The ten-minute drive along the freeway back to Rachel's house wasn't even enough to blow them loose. Weird.

Here's a typical Floridian back yard: a pool (this one complete with hot tub) and a closed-off area covered with insect netting. Tampa is very low-lying with a lot of standing water, and so mosquitos are a big problem.		Their property backs on to a nature reserve which would be pretty awesome, but in the process of merely capturing this one shot I was virtually eaten alive by the bloody mozzies! And there is apparently a few gators and snakes and whatnot in here as well hehe.
So that was that. For my 31st birthday I was living in New York, married to a Texan, and wondering what on earth will come next. Kids probably, but all in good time ;)

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