LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
ROCKET / PUSHER LOVE GIRL – TRAVIS GARLAND
Birthdays are always a big deal to me. I’ve said it before, and I will continue saying it forever (I hope!). As humans, I don’t think we take enough time to celebrate ourselves and the amazing fortune we have to still be alive and well. There are so many horrible things to happen to wonderful people every day, and so I seriously think we should be celebrating everyday that we wake up and breathe and walk around and live our lives. This is probably why I especially love birthdays and always make it a point to celebrate and spoil my wife, especially because she spends her every day spoiling me. Bear in mind that after vowing a very strict “no gifts” rule this year, we also decided to quit our jobs and launch the constant traveling KCCreativeProject. This meant that this year, for Monika’s 30th birthday, we would find ourselves in London for Men’s Fashion Week. So, new city, no gifts, and one of my wife’s most important birthdays. I thought deep and hard about how I could coordinate and plan for this, and the result is something I am very pleased with.
Our morning began with a simple wooden banner I had constructed (because every birthdays needs some form of decor), a matching handmade card with a rhyming note inside, and five small Chanel bags. My note explained that since we were here in London and it was her special day, instead of a series of birthday gifts (which was my norm), we would exploring and enticing all of the senses. Each Chanel bag signified each one of the five human senses: taste, sight, hear, smell and touch:
hear / birthday greetings from around the world
Since I would be the only familiar face that Monika would see that day, I wanted to make sure she had a chance to hear birthday messages and well wishes for all the important people in her life, who happen to be scattered all over the world right now. The result was a very excited and emotional wife who was both curious and nervous for the remaining senses. I have linked the actual video she watched above!
smell / 30 white roses
After a relaxed breakfast, we got ready for the day, and then I brought Monika outside of our hotel which was on the most quaint street in London. It was there that the wonderful florist from Lola Flower Boutique hand delivered a stunning hat box (something Monika has been talking about for almost a year now!) filled with thirty of the most scrumptious white roses. Click here to read more about this hatbox!
taste / afternoon tea at the savoy
You all know how much Monika and I admire and appreciate a good High Tea. For my 25th birthday, Monika treated my siblings and I to Afternoon Tea at the Fairmont Palliser; we have been to High Teas in Paris and Toronto; and our wedding in Prague last October featured a High Tea Party prior to the Feast & Ball – in more casual terms, this is our shit. So naturally, when in London, the birthplace of Afternoon Tea, I took Monika to the historic Savoy London where we indulged in five courses of decadence and gluttony! Click here to read more about this tea!
see / 30 reasons i love you, an Instagram Book
My wife takes great pride in her Instagram feed, and for good reason; I’m usually the one taking her photos, but its her who curates, edits and posts her photos in just the right order. To commemorate some of her best posts, and also to try and quantify the reasons I adore her, I designed this cute book which featured 30 reasons with photos of why I love her, plus an addendum at the end stipulating another 25+ reasons and explaining the difficulty in quantifying such a thing. My first “published” book! Click here to find out how to create your own Instagram book!
touch / a purse fund to touch (and buy) whatever your heart desires
After attending some fashion shows and having dinner with some local London friends, it was time for Monika’s last (and most important?) gift, which was linked to the sense of touch. Because we would be in Paris the week following for Men’s Fashion Week there, and inevitably would be back at 31 Rue Cambon (Chanel global flagship) and strolling down the Saint Honore, popping into Saint Laurent, Givenchy, Celine, Chloe and Gucci, I wanted to give Monika an opportunity to touch anything she wanted, and bring some of it home, to touch forever and always remember her 30th birthday. As for the amount, I’ll let you figure that out based on the theme of 3 and 30s here.
Although I technically broke the “no gifts” rule, I didn’t actually, right? Its her 30th birthday and its a blessing and an honour to be able to wake up that day and realize everything that she has accomplished in the last three decades. I would say that Monika has done more and seen more and experienced more then some people will all their lives, and she is as full of energy, creativity and excitement as ever, and so I made sure that on her very special birthday, while we were in London, everything pointed to that same celebratory spirit.
