the ring

I completely forgot to tell you about the ring! When boy proposed it wasn't really a surprise. He told me that he wanted to go drive down by the lake after work. It's easily a 30 minute drive and when I asked what we'd be doing, he said, "I dunno, i just thought it'd be nice." Not his usual response about anything. He always has a reason. When I came home from work he seemed normal enough and I kept looking in his pockets for an abnormal bulges, but I couldn't see any. We ended up sitting on a bench looking out on lake Michigan and after a few minutes boy gets up. I have a feeling it's coming so I stay seated (I always thought it looked awkward when the guys get down on their knees when the girls are standing up. It's too much ground to cover when she bursts into tears and they just have to hug). He looks behind us and says something stupid about the weather and then he looks at me and says, "can I ask you a question?" This is when I KNEW it was coming and I just sat back and said, "yeah." He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a ring, "will you marry me?" I smile and say, "yeah." and take the ring. We hug and that was that. Apparently he was nervous enough that he "forgot" to get down on one knee, which I think is adorable. I always thought that I would cry, and I'm not sure why I didn't. After all, I cry a lot. I cry about hard things like money, about mean people, about how cute puppies are, and about how the pizza place cut our pie into square pieces instead of triangles (seriously? who does that?!), but I just couldn't bring myself to cry when he proposed even though I was truly happy and I really really really want to marry the boy.

Apparently he'd had the ring for two months. He'd originally wanted to propose on our 2nd anniversary the first week of June, but it was raining so he put it off. Then, about a month later, he threw out a spontaneous suggestion to go down to Chicago for the day. He told me that he wanted to check out Graham Elliot's resaurant (he was on top chef masters) and if I wanted, we could check out Promontory Point (he'd known that I wanted to get married at PP for a while, but neither one of us had seen it in person). At the time I thought it would be super cute if he e proposed at PP and then we ended up getting married there, but we didn't really get to stay very long because security "kicked" us out of the building (which was wide open by the way). We had a fabulous lunch (Thanks Graham!) and then we started walking back to our car that we had parked downtown. Boy stopped me and asked if I wanted to see the botanical garden. I thought this was odd because he hadn't mentioned it before, and I'm not a huge fan of gardens or flowers really. He'd been complaining about his feet hurting and I had been super cranky because I started my period and had to stop at a pharmacy on Michigan ave to buy some tampons, so I told him that I just wanted to go home. Little did I know that if we had wound up at the garden he would have proposed!

Oh yeah! the ring! So it's a emerald cut green quartz set in sterling silver. I had told him that if/when he proposed that I wanted a non-diamond ring and that I would prefer a green quartz. So I got exactly what I wanted. It's a little bigger than is really practical, but I'm getting used to it.
For the last month we've been looking at wedding bands on etsy. The boy is one of those people who has the image of the perfect thing in his head and will search tirelessly trying to find it. Just yesterday he looked at 1400 rings on etsy. I saw this ring and new instantly that it was going to be my wedding band. The boy ordered it last night and it will be here in a few weeks. I'm super excited about it. So excited that I think I'm going to ask him to keep it from me so that I don't start wearing it around before the wedding, which is still so far away! I'm going to have 8 months to wait!

Meanwhile, the boy is still looking for the perfect band. I'll let you know when he finds one.

the dress

I have always LOVED wedding dresses, so i've been looking at wedding dresses for years and years and years. The second i saw the Daphne dress i fell madly, deeply in love. The thing i love the most is that it's not strapless. It seems like 98% of all wedding dresses are strapless. I don't mind the look of strapless, but i can't stand wearing a strapless bra! they are by far the most uncomfortable thing i've ever worn. And i refuse to be uncomfortable on my wedding day. The dress was made by jcrew in 2007 and sold out almost instantaneously. I've heard rumor that they're going to produce it again for the fall 2009 collection. Being plus size, it doesn't really matter if they're going to make it again because they won't make it in my size. So i did some research and found a seamstress who has actually made a version of this dress before. I contacted her and her rate is in my budget! so i've started looking for fabric. I want to have it made out of swiss dot cotton so that i can dye the dress and wear it again!

the location

I found promontory point in December of 2007, and ever since then I've compared everything to it. It's stunning. Promontory Point is part of the Chicago Park district. The building was built on a man made peninsula in 1909. You walk in through the tower door and then the open room with all the french doors is off to the left. There are flagstone patios on both the east and west sides of the building. It's not too big and it's not too expensive, but the parking situation is pretty bad and because the building isn't on a public road. It actually sits on a bike path so our guests would have to park on the other side of lake shore drive. It's about a ten minute walk so the our grandparents might have an issue getting over there. I've been looking at shuttle services, but I'm not sure how to coordinate that. I'm hoping that the park won't be too crowded for the holiday weekend. Brady keeps assuring me that we're getting married early enough that it shouldn't be a problem. I hope he's right.

the deal

We're going to get married in about 9 months, which seems like the perfect amount of time. I've always thought that i would get impatient if i had to wait more than a year after the engagement to get married, but now I'm afraid that i'm going to be pressed for time.

Thankfully I've been looking at wedding blogs for a year and a half, so i have a pretty good idea of what it is that i want.

The wedding is going to be small (less than 50 people), so it will be really fun to do projects. I have a really short attention span and there's no way that i'd be able to make my invitations if i had to pump out 200 of them.

Because almost everyone (except for his immediate family) is going to be coming from out of town/out of state, we decided that it would be easier for them if we had the wedding in Chicago. I'd found a ceremony/reception cite that I just loved (Promontory Point) that is in Chicago, and the boy's favorite restaurant (Topolobampo) is in Chicago.

The problem was that we were too late for any Saturday booking at Promontory Point in 2010, which I thought was ridiculous. So we did some creative maneuvering and decided that our best bet would to be to get married on a Sunday. We chose Memorial Day weekend so that all of our out of town guests would be able to use the extra day (Memorial Day Monday) as a travel day. But another problem arose... the restaurant isn't open on Sundays and they aren't on the approved caterer list, so we went the very non-traditional route and decided to have our reception the night before our wedding. We're calling it our PRE-ception. Crazy, I know, but listen... if we went the traditional route and invited our immediate family, bridal party, and out of town guests to the rehersal dinner, we'd be inviting anyone anyway, so why not make it the main meal and just cut the cake after the wedding the next day!? And because we're getting married early in the morning on Sunday, our guests would be able to take off whenever they wanted so they wouldn't need to book an extra night at the hotel unless they wanted to.

Problem solved.

the story

My boy and I went to the same college (a very small college) for four years, but didn't meet until the day before we graduated. We hit it off right away and started dating about a month later. I was living at home in Nebraska, and he was living with his family in Wisconsin. About every two or three weeks, we would make the drive (4-6 hours) to meet back on campus to hang out. My brother was living there for the summer so we had a free place to stay, and it was about as close to half way as we could get. We slept on the floor and made each other meals like it was something we did everyday. After four months, I moved to Wisconsin to be closer to him. I got my own apartment and worked a quiet office job for a year before we moved in together. Eight months later he proposed and now I have a blog to tell you all about it.

hello!

I'm here to talk about planning my wedding because i'm pretty sure that everyone around me is sick of hearing about it.

So take a look.