There is a two fold reason for the seahorses on our invitation.
The first goes back a long way, back to when Jarle came out to New Zealand to meet me that first time. I am so grateful to him that he took that leap, and travelled halfway round the world to met a person he had only known online. Sure with Skype we could communicate more like real world dating, and he could talk to my kids, mostly Erica. But still it was a long way to come and a lot of things were still unknowns. So I am thankful to him for taking that chance.
Anyway, nearing the end of that visit after we had driven round New Zealand and met lots of my family, we took a break in travelling back down to Wellington and stopped in Napier. There we went to the Aquarium, and in the aquarium there was a seahorse tank. It was a tall cylinder and Jarle and the seahorses seemed equally mesmerized with each other.
Jarle would walk round the tank and the seahorses would follow, Jarle would place a finger on the glass and the seahorses nearby would swim to his finger and follow it as he trailed it in patterns over the glass.
I called him the seahorse whisperer, and he suggested they might just think it was feeding time and equate people with food, so I tried the finger trick and was totally ignored on each attempt. We spent ages by that tank watching them. In fact once we have a house of our own and are settled we would like to try have a seahorse tank of our own.
Did you know that most seahorse species mate for life?
The other reason for the seahorses on our invitation is that as I looked round the internet for inspiration I noticed that aqua and teal invitations seemed to be the ones I was most drawn to. So when I went hunting online for graphics to use in making our own invitation and I found the seahorses I knew they were the graphic I wanted to use. I showed Jarle and the smile on his face confirmed the choice.
So on the 23 April he bought the graphic and I began designing the invitation around it, with some help from Jarle of course. I tried it with our names round the border, sweeping along the lines of the heart and in banner across the front. Added 2012 and the infinity sign to the red heart, then tweaked the colours and opacity of the banner. All in all we are pleased with the result.
