Reigniting The Flame
It’s been a year.
It’s been a year since we met Luke and Romy from Tag Along Travellers. Back then we were looking to get hired as their wedding planners in a few months but little did we know what we were getting ourselves into. A year ago Alan and I were helping Romy and Luke to plan their wedding. It only made sense for them to get a wedding planner since they were about to go off travelling for nine months before their wedding day. They happened to be in Malta for a few days and that’s when we all decided to meet up to discuss wedding plans.
We got on board and as the weeks and months passed and we got to know them better they were changing our lives without even knowing. I have always loved travelling, and slow travel was always more my thing – I’d rather spend 2 months getting to know a little town in the middle of nowhere than spend just a weekend away, however since Alan and I had met, the longest we’ve been away together was three weeks.
Reading Luke and Romy’s blog posts was igniting that fire in me again, just reading and hearing about their adventures made me want to go out there again. But this was different – how can I take off for a few months when I was in my 30s, when I now have a husband, a household to maintain and look after, careers to safeguard and about a thousand other reasons why this was a bad idea. Back then we talked about it and put it off on the backburner since we both agreed with Alan running for Parliament an the election coming in 2018, we could barely afford to spend a week away from campaigning, yet alone a few months. But then something happened – just as we were approaching Luke and Romy’s wedding day in June 2017, an election in Malta was called for two weeks before their big day and everything changed instantly.
We got through June, and we took it easy in the Summer that followed as we’ve had quite the rough start from January till June of that year, but after we were recharged towards the end of Summer, the same questions on how could we leave Malta were creeping back into our lives. But then one day, Romy’s voice came back to my head and I remembered something she had told me on that first meeting we had with them a few months prior and I remember her clearly telling me that when Luke first brought up the idea of them leaving for a few months, she had the same questions in her head, that she was also thinking
‘why would I want to do this again if I’ve already done the
gap year trip when I was younger.'
That was exactly how I was feeling – that was exactly my concern. But then I remembered that I might have done a gap year almost a decade ago yes, but I loved it, with all it’s ups and downs and till this day I cherish friendships I’ve made throughout my travels (one of those friendships was in fact one of my very own bridesmaids when Alan and I got married).
This is when Married with Passports was first created.
I knew I wanted this to be different though. I wasn’t 20 anymore. I couldn’t hop around from one hostel to another anymore – I was used to a big bed in a private
room with my own bathroom too much to give that little luxury up. I also didn’t want to spend a few months eating out every evening, and although I gave up my phone without batting an eye – I needed to have a Wi-Fi connection wherever we went.
So by October 2017 the big question lied on: Where are we going and when? We remembered the pictures we saw from Luke and Romy and both Alan and myself haven’t really explored Asia apart from Japan and China that we decided to book our flights to the Philippines for March (Inspired by Tag Along Travellers of course). We started digging around various travel blogs, online forums and everything else we could get our hands on and we ended up going on a trip we never thought possible. Instead of waiting till March, we hopped on a plane last November and headed towards the UK where we spent 3 weeks in various areas of the country. We then hopped on another plane that took us to the US where we currently are and has been for the past month and a half before we head back to Malta and then off to the Philippines a few days later. Of course we didn’t leave Malta before meeting up with both Luke and Romy to get some advise on places to visit, what to do and where to stay in the Philippines.
Tag Along Travellers really were our inspiration and today we’re more than happy to call them our friends. With their lives, without even knowing it, they persuaded us to go for it and #MakeItHappen
If you are keen about following further adventures by Alan & Tiffany from Married With Passports, click here.
