Ok ladies and gentlemen, you've waited patiently long enough (?). I warn you this will be long. It may take me a couple of days to finish and you may not get all the pictures in the right order and I'm not sure I have them all yet!
But put the kettle on. Get a warm drink. Find your hats, gloves and coats because YOURE GOING TO LAPLAND!!
ARRIVAL.
After the problems of finding our wedding music kept corrupting late night the day before we left it was a relief to finally arrive in Lapland and have alternative wedding music. The first thing that struck us wasn't how cold it was but how beautiful it was. A real life winter wonderland. It's a stunning place. The temperature was -7 which wasn't so bad! Little did we know it was lulling us into a false sense of security. The next day the temperature dropped to -20 and the day after -26 however we had bought all the right clothes and when out and about all you could see were our eyes. Even my mum couldn't tell which person was me on photos. If there was a bank in Levi we could have robbed it!
We explored, we walked, we sledged, we rode the gondola to the top of the ski lift and had drinks in the ice bar at the Snow Dome. Our hotel had it's own reindeer and we bought food and hand fed them. My made snow angels. We found the frozen lake. It's supposed to be a good spot to see the Northern Lights being so dark. We even downloaded the Levi Northern Lights app for warnings they might be around.
At 2am our alarm for the northern lights went off. We got up and got dressed. H2b attached his torch to his head and we set off for the lake. We were wearing so many clothes we could lay on the ice watching the sky for an hour without feeling the cold much. A wonderful shooting star but no lights. The following night the same thing. Would I come all this way for the lights and not see them? So many people had done that. I kept telling myself it was a beautiful place and it didn't matter (but it did really).
A car collected us to take us to Luvattumaa Ice Gallery to view the chapel. We were completely awe struck. We had all seen pictures but nothing can prepare you for the sight of it in real life, and the cold and silence. It's a constant -5 inside. However we were told that if it's much colder outside and people leave the door open the temperature drops as the colder air becomes trapped inside. And they had a slide made of ice and yes of course I had to have a go. We couldnt wait to get married there. We weren't nervous at all. We were eagerly looking forward to it at this point.
