Our Engagement Story

I realized that I've never put the story of how Drew and I got engaged up here, and with less than three weeks until the wedding, now seems like a pretty good time!

The super short version of our engagement is on our wedding website, but we've never written out the long version. I want to make sure Drew and I remember that day with all the details for a long time, so recording everything now (almost nine months after the fact...) seems like a good idea to me. Plus I'm pretty sure some of our friends and family have only heard the short version and might enjoy learning the whole story.

Our Engagement Story: The Long Version
Sometime back around November or so, Drew's family began tossing around the idea of taking a family vacation sometime in January, before the new school semester started up. The plan slowly started taking shape, including an invite for me and a destination - Disney World! Drew and I both grew up in families that frequently vacationed in Disney World, so we were all psyched about the trip. Plus, this would be the first time Drew and I were back in Disney World since our internships (during which we met) ended.

We "officially" received our tickets and vacation plan on Christmas Day.

About to open our Disney Vacation gift! Thanks Mom & Dad P!

On New Year's Eve we were off! Most of the family had already driven down to Florida, but I had to work NYE morning, so Drew and I flew down that day to meet everyone else. We stayed in a condo about an hour away from Orlando that we borrowed from the extended family.

I should probably mention at this point that I had no idea Drew was planning to propose on this vacation. I knew he had already talked to my Dad about getting engaged when we visited my parents for Thanksgiving, but when I didn't get a ring for Christmas I figured we wouldn't get engaged for months. I don't know how I came to that conclusion, but somehow in my mind it was Christmas or forever later. Anyways...

We spent a few awesome days enjoying the warm, sunny weather and the beach right behind our condo before heading over to Disney for the night! We shopped Downtown Disney and spent a fun evening at Jellyrolls before resting up for our one-day Parks marathon (Disney in one day is no joke!).

I should also probably mention that, because I had no idea what Drew was scheming, I unintentionally freaked him out a couple of times. See, Drew was hiding my ring in his ironic fanny pack, which I kept harassing him about all morning. Including hitting it and saying something along the lines of, "What do you even have in there anyways?" Good thing Drew has a pretty solid poker face.

After starting the day at Epcot, we eventually made our way over to the Magic Kingdom. This is where Drew and I met (he worked there), and during the two months or so that we knew each other and were working at Disney together, we never actually had our picture taken in front of Cinderella's Castle. So of course we planned to finally have that iconic picture taken during the family vacation. After lunch Drew suggested taking the picture, so the whole family headed over to the Castle with us. Everyone whipped out their cameras (which I didn't even think was suspicious - I'm clearly super observant) to get our picture.

Our crappy "Castle" picture.

After we took this Drew said he had an "idea" for the next picture and went to go get something out of his fanny pack. This was when I finally got suspicious! I sure am quick one, huh?

He walked back holding a little box, and I could not believe he was going to propose to me! I think I just kept saying dumb stuff like "Nuh-uh! Are you serious?!" for about a minute until he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him!

This is Drew asking me to marry him.

Of course I said yes! And we have plenty of photographic evidence (plus a video) of this all happening, thanks to Drew's family being in on the secret and recording the whole thing. 

Putting a ring on it.

Besides the whole being engaged thing, the best part of this proposal was the reactions of everyone around us. We have so many pictures with people blatantly staring at us in the background, probably wondering what nerds get engaged in Disney World (answer: the same nerds that meet in Disneyworld and plan to honeymoon there as well). One woman even came up to us to ask if we really did just get engaged because her little kids saw the proposal and were wondering.

I can barely even remember what happened the rest of the day because I was still so shocked and happy to finally be engaged to the love of my life. We spent quite a bit of time calling/texting/Facebooking our family and friends to tell them the news and were completely exhausted by the end of the day. All the excitement definitely took a lot out of us!

The cell phone picture I sent my sisters to tell them the news.

And now here we are, almost nine months later and only 19 days away from our wedding. I can't believe this whole engagement journey is almost over, but I am so ready to move onto the next chapter in mine and Drew's life together.

Wedding Shower Recap

Last weekend my wonderful future-mother-in-law hosted a wedding shower for me at our church. My parents and older sister drove eight hours from Illinois to be at the brunch shower, along with lots of local friends and family.

I had an amazing time, and I still can't believe how much love and generosity everyone showed to me and Drew. Thank you so much to everyone who attended, prepared food, and helped make Saturday a special day for us! I'm even more excited for our wedding in October now!

The shower started with a delicious brunch buffet, prepared by many amazing ladies in attendance. Breakfast casseroles, coffee cake, muffins, fruit salad, and many more tasty treats were on the menu. My parents even brought up cupcakes for dessert from Trefzger's Bakery in Peoria for a taste of my hometown.

Eating tasty food with my moms!

After brunch, we played a "purse scavenger hunt" game where different items were read off of a list, and we got points for each item we had in our purses (or wallet, in my dad's case). Some items were pretty standard, like a library card or lipstick, while others were a bit more unexpected, like pepper spray. My favorite part of the game was when my dad, the only male in attendance, scored more points than some of the ladies!

Once prizes were awarded to the those with the most points, we moved on to the main event - presents! I still cannot believe how blessed Drew and I are to have such generous people in our lives. We were completely spoiled by everyone's gifts - dishes, bath towels, family cookbooks, and so much more.

Quilt from my Grandma Anderson.

Fiestaware!

Family (and my handmade belt!).

Drew and I drove everything down to my apartment the next day, and we seriously spent hours unpacking and setting stuff up (we're still not done!). The best part was seeing my apartment start to look and feel more like our place, rather than just my apartment. Everything's a bit more home-y all of a sudden, which is super exciting and makes me wish Drew lived here now.

This weekend Drew and I will be busy with wedding stuff, but not for ourselves. Our friends John and Carolyn are getting married tomorrow! I am so happy for them and so excited to celebrate with them tonight and tomorrow (and figure out how the heck they're decorating our ultra-modern church sanctuary). Congratulations to an awesome couple!

99 Days To Go!

Today is a milestone in our engagement: we finally reached double-digits in our countdown! Only 99 days to go until we are finally married!

Getting to this point has felt like an eternity, and I'm so happy we're so close to our wedding date. It's hard to believe that our countdown started at over 270 days when we got engaged way back in January. Do we really only have about three months left before the wedding?!

Through wedding planning, pre-marriage counseling, and just talking about our future together, I've learned a lot over the past 188 days. So to mark the momentous occasion of reaching less than 100 days until our wedding, here are some of the lessons I've learned along the way:

1. People really do care. I know, duh, right? Of course I have people in my life who care about me. But planning a wedding isn't something I could have or would have wanted to do alone. After all, like I've said before, this wedding isn't for me. It's for me and Drew, for us. 

Sure I've set up a lot of our appointments and have spent way more of my free time finding inspiration and such (and writing this blog), but Drew has been so tremendously helpful in planning our wedding. He has opinions and concerns about the decor, the invitations, and our vendors and shares his input and attends appointments with me. My future mother-in-law has served as a stand-in to appointments (like the wedding cake fiasco) that Drew wasn't able to attend and is helping plan my wedding shower. My mom and older sister drove eight hours to Michigan to help me find my wedding dress. 

The best part? I didn't even have to ask for most of the help I've received; my family (present and future) care about me enough to actually want to help out. (Thank you, by the way, to everyone who has helped us with wedding plans).

2. There's still time. Again, obvious. Especially after I just raved about our countdown reaching double digits. But this is a reminder I have given myself constantly throughout the entire wedding planning process, and it's been a huge help in maintaining my sanity and not stressing out. Yes, there's still a lot of planning to be done and contracts to sign and supplies to purchase. But we still have 99 days left to complete our to-do list. Thank goodness!

3. Engagement is wonderful. Oh, how I love this lesson. Drew and I are only going to be engaged once, so taking time to enjoy this period of our relationship and prepare ourselves for what lies ahead is important to us. The engagement isn't just a timeline for accomplishing the tasks of planning a wedding, although it certainly serves that purpose too. This is a time for us to learn more about each other and our relationship. We're going to be married, and that's huge.

I have a lot of other thoughts on being engaged, but this article from Relevant Magazine does a much better job of summarizing my feelings than I care to type right now.

4. Finances are tricky. Drew and I took the plunge and combined our finances a few months ago, way ahead of the wedding. Partly because Drew's internship pays peanuts, and partly so we have time to adjust to sharing a bank account before we feel like we have to share a bank account.

I'll admit I was hesitant about sharing funds at first, and instead I wanted to maintain separate accounts for at least minor purchases and "fun" money. Once we started talking about money more (thanks to our church's pre-marital counseling class) we realized my plan probably wasn't the best route for us to take. We're both pretty responsible with our spending habits and respect each other enough not to make any ridiculous purchases without discussing things first. With that in mind, we decided combining our finances will be best for us (although not necessarily the right path for everyone in every relationship to take).

Still, I'm caught off guard every now and then when I log in to my online banking and see expenses listed that I didn't make. And seeing twice as many gas purchases popping up sure takes some getting used to. But merging our finances during our engagement has worked out well for us so far, and now we have one less adjustment to get used to after we're married which is a nice feeling. 

5. I am so excited for marriage. Even though there's times that wedding planning has been a huge pain in the butt, I've never once felt nervous or hesitant about getting married. Drew and I are so right for each other and so in love that we constantly talk about how much fun we're going to have once we're married. And having spent most of our relationship long distance (whether 1 hour apart or 20), we're especially looking forward to living together and seeing each other every day instead of once a week.

I'm excited for what the future holds, and the lessons still waiting for me during the next 99 days.