Sile and I are beyond excited about today’s announcement!!! Over two years ago we received an email from the most passionate, detailed, creative, awe inspiring “bride” ever. Enter Michelle Escobar!! Over the course of the following year of planning her wedding vow renewal we were challenged, inspired and push out of our comfort zone. The result was one of the most breath taking ceremonies we have had the pleasure of helping to plan and coordinate.  The photos from that day say it all: https://www.waterlilyweddings.com/portfolio/michelle-andrew-sheen-falls/

Since that amazing day over 15 months ago we have been avid followers of Michelle’s writings. She is without a doubt the most zealous person we have ever met! She knows more about Ireland, our history, our culture than most Irish people! She also happens to be a style guru and expert on all things weddings!

So today we are so delighted to welcome her to the team as our BLOGGING goddess!

Tell us a little about Michelle Escobar…

A:   I grew up in Los Angeles and now live in Seattle. I married the love of my life eleven years ago, and we have three amazing kids (two girls, boy in the middle), and four Jack Russell terriers to keep me on my toes. My family immigrated from Europe and I was the first in my family to be born in America, and the first to graduate college. The diploma says I’m a lawyer, but my heart and soul say I’m a writer. I play piano and sing, love to cook and do the occasional craft when highly motivated. I’m an amateur genealogist, historian, and dabble in photography. I tend to wear black and listen to rock n roll, I love anything vintage, collect antique tea cups, and teach and perform traditional Greek folk dancing. I love history, celebrating traditions and good quality coffee.

Q:  Your favorite color:

A:  Black — it’s classically elegant and mischievous at the same time, like me.

Q:  Some words you live by?

A:  My 7 virtues — Honor, Courage, Loyalty, Justice, Mercy, Truth, Hospitality.  They keep me grounded and help to focus me in everything I do.

Q:  What sound or noise do you love?

A:  That moment when the snow is falling down, and there’s enough accumulated on the ground so you can barely hear it hitting and it creates this amazing unearthly bubble around you where you feel like time is standing still.

Q:  What is your favorite indoor/outdoor activity?

A:  Outdoors, it’s climbing something, be it rocks or a mountainside or a thousand-year-old monastery ruin in Kerry. Indoors it’s cooking.

Q:  What’s playing on your ipod these days?

A:  A strange mixture of rock, folk, Motown, and Greek folk dance music. Of Monsters And Men, Lincoln Park, and anything by Bear McCreary tend to accompany me on my writing.

Q:  Any guilty pleasures?

A:  Tons.  But chocolate is probably #1.

Q:  One thing you can’t live without?

A:  My eyebrow tweezer. Seriously. And my high heels. Sorry, I can’t live without either.

Q:  If you could dine with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be?

A:  Leonardo DaVinci, Marcus Aurelius, and my husband. And it would all take place in Rome, at sunset.

Q:   Something people may not know about you?

A:  I have tattoos.

Q:  Best advice you’d ever received?

A:  “Be yourself. If they don’t like you, that probably means you’re doing something right.”

Q:  What is one thing you want to do, but have never done?

A:   Although I have a death-fear of the ocean, I want to swim with sharks.

Q:  Describe your creative process…

A:  Well caffeinated, I can sit and write for hours. I draw much inspiration from what I see and hear, but sometimes pure glorious quiet is in of itself inspiring. I’ll sit and think about the topic and start free-writing. Like a musician with the song they’re playing, as a writer I find that sacred space between writer and the words,  where everything in the world seems to cease to exist. And it’s in that space where the piece tends to just write itself; I’m merely focusing it into a direction.

Q:  One place everyone must visit once in their lifetime?

A:  IRELAND!!! No matter how many times I go back, I never seem to see enough and spend enough time, and always wish I had just one more day.

Q:  Your most memorable moment in Ireland?

A: Renewing my vows last year at the Uragh stone circle in Kenmare.