Well hello!

Welcome to Luke and Naeema's wedding blog. Sorry about this new-fangled technology. But due to our widespread audience and a fear of repeating ourselves excessively, we thought we'd go the wired way. And it's fun too.

Assuming all goes swimmingly, this will be the spot to come see our new posts on the upcoming nuptials. To start with then, a gentle reminder:

What: Naeema and Luke's Wedding

Where: The Boat Shed, Wellington, New Zealand. Middle Earth.

When: Wednesday afternoon, January 3, 2007.

How: We're working on that!

Stay tuned here... bookmark us and keep clicking!

Cheers, Luke.

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Invitations: Please don't worry if you've not received your printed invitation yet - nobody has. They're in production now, and should be in the post by the month's end.

Confirmations: If you are so far unconfirmed but have made up your mind one way or another, do send us an email. We understand not everyone can make it, but we're trying to start gathering a better idea of numbers. This'll be done most seriously post-invite of course.

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If we took a holiday...

We purposefully chose the wedding to allow people the chance to take a holiday. Clearly, the price of the ticket, just to see us, is a bit steep. However, the "excuse" to see the natural beauty of New Zealand, with a wedding in the middle somehow, is priceless!

Bookings: The most important thing to do right now is Book Your Flights. There's a bunch of information below about that.

A couple of notes to those who are New Zealand novices, then:

1. Summer time: In the Southern hemisphere, Christmas is in the summer, so the weather won't be arctic. However, it won't be as hot as Australia either. In a place that grows lawns so well, there's always a chance of wind and rain. But nothing that should mess up your holiday. Average temperatures at that time of year are around 18-23 degrees celsius.

2. Public holidays: In Singapore, January 1st and 2nd are both public holidays (New Year and Hari Raya Haji). So three days leave will do you for the week.

3. A good one-week plan is to book to fly on Friday, December 29th to New Zealand. Make it to Wellington for Sunday night, aka New Year's Eve, and stay on in the city till January 3rd - a Wednesday. Either side of the event, see some more of the country.

4. A good two-week's (plus) plan: is to come down on Friday the 22nd, spend Christmas in New Zealand, and make your way to Wellington the long (and scenic) way.

5. Wellington airport connects directly with the East coast Australian cities. From further afield, you will need to fly in via Auckland (top of the North Island). Singapore Airlines also flies to Christchurch (midway down the South Island). Note that Wellington, the capital city, is at the bottom of the North Island, roughly in the middle of the country.

6. For the real tourists the classic New Zealand 10-day splash is something like Auckland - Rotorua (Maori culture and volcanic wonders) - fly to Queenstown (bungy jumping, alpine scenery, jet boating) - day trip to Fjordland - then maybe Christchurch (lovely English river city).

7. Wine country is nice to explore in the summer and is spread through both the North and South Islands - Hawke's Bay, Martinborough and Malborough in particular.

8. A driving holiday in New Zealand is a great way to have some independence, while enjoying the scenery as you travel. From both Auckland and Christchurch, it's possible to drive to Wellington. From Auckland, it's more than a 10-hour drive, so break it up with a stop somewhere nice like Taupo (where they'll tell you the lake is as big as Singapore). Driving from Christchurch, you can stop in Kaikoura to go whale watching. After about a 7-hour drive, you then take a car ferry to Wellington (Cook Strait ferry).

9. New Zealand is two hours ahead of Sydney time, five hours ahead of Singapore time in summer time (four in winter), and 13hrs ahead of England in (NZ) summer (11hrs in NZ winter). In NZ, they drive on the left-hand side. The currency when I wrote this, the New Zealand dollar, was the almost equal to the Singapore dollar (NZ$1 = S$0.98 and NZ$1 = US$0.62)). Prices for things are roughly similar to Australia.

10. Planning: As you can imagine, we can't help you as much this time around with holiday plans as we'd normally wish to - we are finding weddings to be a time-consuming affair! But there's lots of great information out there. The following sites are good for a start:

NewZealand.com Website for New Zealand. Pick the things you're into and explore the site, you can print out itineraries, make bookings and even plan out routes for your driving holiday.

AirNewZealand.co.nz: and Qantas.co.nz for booking your domestic air tickets.

Regular car hire companies like Hertz and Avis have operations in NZ, plus there are cheaper options if you hunt around.

More on Wellington, and hotel bookings in particular, to come! In the meantime, for those who are considering staying for a week or more, you might like to start checking out these apartments for short-stay rent at http://www.orientalbaystays.co.nz/