Alventures in Hive: Introduction

Hello Hive Community!

My name is Glovie and my husband is Stephen. We are so happy to be part of this community. We are also thankful to @patsitivity that she introduced HIVE to us. At first, we hesitated to join because we're not great writers and we are both shy couples who rarely post something on social media. But @patsitivity is very encouraging and supportive to us to give it a try. Absolutely! We love to join because we want to express ourselves more by sharing our couple experiences to inspire others to also write their own story. And here we are, writing our first introduction post. Hope you will enjoy reading our different stories of adventures, laughter and love.

• • Throwback first out of the country trip in Macau.
    At the back is the Senado Square - one of the most visit tourist spot in Macau. *

**ABOUT US
**
My husband and I met way back in 2015. My best friend introduced him to me and pushed me to entertain him because he didn’t have any companions at that time. It was my best friend’s birthday and she was busy with some other guests. I had to talk to him because it was the request of the birthday celebrant. But he took it in a wrong way, he thought that I liked him when I was actually just being friendly. Then it all started from there and it went on until we made it official. Haha!

*This was taken on July 7, 2017. I was happy from this picture because it was my first time to have a boyfriend! We celebrated in the Pyramid restaurant in IT Park, Cebu, Philippines. *

My husband, Stephen, is a seaman while I work as a home based virtual assistant. We are both in a long-distance relationship. His contract is usually good for 9 months on the ship and after his contract ends, he gets home for his three-month vacation. I’ve been working remotely for almost 7 years already. Our relationship is kind of challenging because we have limited time to see each other but he never made me feel that we were apart. Thanks to our technology today, the internet helps us to communicate regularly and effectively even though we're far away. It’s also an advantage that my work is online because I can go anywhere with him without filing for a vacation leave to a boss or in the company.

*I’m so proud to share that he recently passed the mariner master licensure exam in Marina Phils. in September 2022. It’s a board exam for aspiring seamen who want to be a Captain in the ship. While I also got more than 3 new clients this year which we are both thankful for. *

Aside from being achievers, we are both family oriented and God-fearing Catholic members. That’s what made us closer to each other and stayed for four years in a long-distance relationship. One of our favorite hobbies is our family weekend getaway. After attending mass on Sunday, we like to eat outside and explore new food in our local area. We always value family time because we also want to train ourselves on how to build a good foundation for our own family someday.

Spectacular view of the city lights in Cebu, Philippines. We had dinner in a French restaurant called La Vie Parisienne. My family had a great time and enjoyed the food, especially their pizza and red wine.

Fast forward, we tied the knot last year in July 2022. Our wedding memories are still fresh even though it’s been a year already. It feels like I just got married yesterday, it makes me cry and smile every time I see our wedding pictures and videos. I still remembered the challenges we had before our wedding. The government restrictions for wedding events meant that we had to limit our guests and observed healthy precautions against Covid-19. The stress as well from planning, filing legal documents down to the big day.

I thought we couldn't make it to our wedding because we got sick and had a high fever that we can’t explain where we got it. We bought a self covid testing kit and it was a relief that we were both negative. And it was so close, the night before the wedding our temperature went back to normal. And I took covid testing again because I have to make sure that people around me would be safe. Thank God! We are still both negative. It was so scary that we were not sure if we could proceed with our wedding or not at that time. But thank you Lord, he was so good to us and he made it happen!

*We had our wedding in San Pedro Calungsod Church. The reason why I chose this church was because of their beautiful lighting of the altar and the intimacy of the holy mass. Some brides want to walk down a long aisle, but for me I wanted a small church so I can just walk a short aisle going to the altar since I’m not good at wearing heels.
*

*Here’s a few pictures of our wedding day. We contacted a well known wedding coordinator here in Cebu City, Phils. His name is Carlo Abaquita. It was great working with him and his team. We availed a super affordable wedding package from him. It’s totally worth it! *

Now we are happily married and we decided to come up with our brand name “Alventures”. It came from our last name Alunan plus our adventures, altogether. There are still a lot of stories and experiences I want to share but since this is an introduction post, I will write it for the next blog. I would like to thank again @patsitivity for bringing Hive to us. She’s very patient with us in answering all of our questions and we appreciate it so much! I’m looking forward to posting more inspiring content about life, travel and love as we begin our married life. Ciao! ♥️