Engagement & Planning

Eric pointed out to me the other day that I have a lot of posts where I say "more on that later."  Well I know I've already told you about how we met and our little love story.  But believe it or not there's a lot more to it!  So we (of course) dated throughout the rest of college.  We lived in Boston for two summers, the first in Jamaica Plain and the second in Brookline.  A lot of my pictures from those summers are on my external hard drive, which is buried somewhere in storage...so I'm not going to spend too much time there.  Let's just say the first summer, we worked horrible jobs...most of the time 6 days a week...and I was horrible at my job.  I got pied in the face one day for having the lowest sales...we didn't see each other a whole lot, I fell asleep during the Celtics play offs (which believe me...I will never forget, that's for you babe...) and we lived with two strangers.  One of them had a couch on the back porch and fell asleep on it while smoking a cigarette.  The other...well she walked around naked when no one was home, apparently...until Eric got home early one day.  Yikes.  Let's top this summer off real quick - we ended up almost broke by the end of the summer.  It was certainly a learning experience!  The second summer was much better (aside from the time I had my tires stolen..).  We lived in a gorgeous brownstone, with quiet roommates and had much better jobs.  That was a great summer.

And you know what made it even more special?  In mid-August we took a trip up to Niagara Falls.  And, of course, all of these photos are also somewhere hidden in storage.  On the last night before we came home, late at night, overlooking Horseshoe Falls, Eric proposed!  I wish I could tell you exactly what he said and describe every detail, but it's all a blur!  I do know that, at the time, Miss Kelsey was really into Miley Cyrus.  We went to a wax museum and I was sending Kels texts and pictures of me with Miley (err...wax Miley).  And she wasn't saying anything.  Which was strange, because she almost alwayyys texted me back.  I thought it was weird, but didn't put too too much thought into it...maybe she just didn't have her phone with her.  But NO, I later found out that it was because she knew Eric was going to propose and didn't want to ruin anything!  Looking back on it, at the beginning of the summer we had gone to a Vera Bradley event.  Eric has sort of acted like I was dragging him to the mall and he'd have to amuse himself for a couple of hours while the girls and I were at the event.  Another note, Kels (at that time) was obsessed with Vera Bradley.  I can't find the picture right now, but in the common area of our dorm suite, we had a wall that had a pyramid of Vera Bradley bags on the wall.  It was bad.  Anyways, back to the event...I was worried that Eric was probably getting antsy and annoyed that the event was taking so long so I was getting a little anxious.  I decided that after they did the main drawing for the shopping spree, I was going to head out.  Well right before the drawing, Kels had been on her phone and suddenly had to go the bathroom and didn't even seem to ask if anyone else needed to go.  At the time, it didn't seem too weird because I was pre-occupied, but looking back on it....of all people to miss that drawing, I would NOT have guessed it would be Kelsey.  But can you guess why?  Yep, Eric had texted her and told her that he had bought a ring and she left to go see it.  I mean it's not like any of us won the drawing, but still strange that she would leave!  That was probably at some point in June.  Eric also managed to hide the ring for about two months and I never had any idea.  He kept it in the pocket of a jacket in our closed (that we shared) and I never noticed anything.  I had known very early on in our relationship that we would get married one day...but I wasn't in a rush to do so, getting engaged when we went to Niagara was completely unexpected and I was shocked, but of course said yes!  

After we got engaged, I had one semester of school left and Eric had two.  We got our own apartment, 

had a crazy Husky shipped to us from Wisconsin adopted a little Husky pup,

Can we pause for a second and talk about how sexy we both look here?  Hot damn!

Eric brought me to my first Bruins game, 

finished up school and graduated, 

Eric ran a 10K and we got to walk around Fenway....

Eric got to cross home pate at Fenway, too!  Waiting in line...

And then we got married!  So while we were doing all of this, we were planning the wedding.  I learned a lot from planning our wedding.  Mainly that a lot of what other people find important in a wedding, we didn't.  If you're planning a wedding now...my strongest piece of advice to you would be to do things your way.  Don't just do things because tradition says you need to.  If something doesn't suit you...don't do it.  It's your day.  You're spending a significant amount of money on this day. Why do things you don't want to?  Eric and I decided that invitations weren't important enough to spend the kind of money vendors were asking for.  One of my friends from school helped us design the boarder and we found some language we really liked, created an invite in Powerpoint, and with our not-so-fancy printer, we printed out all of the invitations and response cards and envelopes.  We also never sent out save-the-dates and didn't have programs or menus for anyone.  We danced down the aisle and made our own vows taking lyrics from our favorite songs. 

I've talked to so many people who were just ready for everything wedding-related to be done by the time the day was over...or even before the day came!  Not me...I had a great time planning our wedding and absolutely loved the day.  When it was over I was ready to hit rewind and do it all over again.  I think our friends and family had a great time, as well.  If you're planning a wedding and have any questions or want any completely un-biased third party advice, leave your comments below!  More to come on our actually wedding tomorrow, promise!