How it all happened

Dan and I met on the internet.

It wasn't a dating site or anything like that, but a mutual-interest site about backpacking in Europe. I planned a trip for the summer after I graduated college, and when I came back I started planning another trip, so I stayed on the message boards there. Dan's brother, meanwhile, was also a regular on the site, and when Dan started to plan a trip to Europe, his brother told him to join up. I read his posts for a few months, and once I IM'd him out of the blue. We started IMing every few days, and then every day, and then hours every day. Eventually I got up the courage to give him my phone number, and that night we spoke on the phone for seven hours straight. He took a trip for a family event to California about a month later, and I met him at the airport - he spent the whole weekend, aside from the one event, with me.

Our relationship was long-distance flights every month, talking on the phone twice a week, and IMing every day for a year and a half. I moved to Colorado in January of 2003 and six months later he moved in with me. We spent a few years living blissfully in sin with our cats, and eventually started talking about maybe making this a permanent thing, maybe, someday. The serious discussions started early in 2006, but everything was still hypothetical, and we went into some stores and I tried on some rings so Dan could see what I liked (not yellow gold, not diamonds) and what looked good on my finger. We talked a lot about engagement and marriage in 2006, but that fall my sister got engaged, and (as I found out later) Dan postponed his plans of proposing at Thanksgiving because he didn't want to take any attention away from my sister and her fiance. At Christmas we found out that our close friends had gotten engaged and were planning a wedding for September of this year, and also found out his brother's upcoming foreign service assignment to a place from which it would be both difficult and expensive to return to the US after he leaves in June of 2008.

In January of this year, we were visiting my family in California shortly after New Year's and my mom took us to a gem show. We saw some beautiful stones and I got excited about the prospect of a ring, but knew it was something Dan wanted to surprise me with so I knew not to expect anything. The week of Valentine's Day, I came home from work to find a box with a suspicious return address on the back porch. I didn't investigate too closely, not wanting to ruin any surprise that I knew he wanted to do. So when he got home from school that night I told him "there's a box on your dresser" and he said "Oh really?" and then he disappeared into the bedroom for a while and came back out with a big smile on his face.

So I was a little suspicious. We had decided a few weeks before to go out to dinner on February 15 (Valentine's day is for amateurs; he's been a server for a long time and knows how tough VDay can be for a restaurant, and it's a lot easier to get a reservation and good service the day after). So I decided to surprise him on Valentine's Day, and I made him a really nice dinner and dessert that we ate when he got home from class that night. After dessert he said "Do you want your present now?" and I said "I thought you were giving it to me tomorrow." He said "You might want it for tomorrow," and went into the bedroom and came out with a pretty box. Inside were peridot earrings and a pendant and I squeed a little. So pretty! And obviously, that's what must have been in the mysterious box.

So I totally was not expecting anything but a nice dinner the next night, and he surprised me by taking me to a REALLY nice restaurant. We had wine and dinner and he insisted on ordering dessert. In between dinner and dessert, he took the silver claddagh ring I've been wearing for 5 years (on my right hand of course) and did a magic trick with it (he's been doing slight-of-hand type tricks since he was a kid, but usually with cards and coins). Anyhow, this was a trick with a napkin, and as he told me the story of unscrupulous fortune tellers during the renaissance era, he took my silver ring and turned it into a white gold claddagh with a sapphire stone and asked me to marry him! WHEEEEE!!! I was totally shocked and didn't even realize what was happening until he opened the napkin with the pretty new ring. It was totally HIM to propose that way, and I was thrilled, and surprised, and I keep looking and my hand and doing little happy dances.

Six months later, I still squee a little when I look at my ring. It's very meaningful to us and our relationship, a little untraditional, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Begin at the beginning

I never thought much about what I wanted in a wedding, how it might look, what I might wear, who the groom might be. The idea never really entered into my head until about two years ago (other than as a brief topic of IM conversation with my fiance before we were even a couple - he said he wanted to get married in a kilt and maybe on a boat, I said I wanted to get married outside, because I do). Two years ago people I knew started to get engaged and married, and I was attending weddings, and it finally hit me that maybe Dan and I would eventually be planning a wedding ourselves. I still didn't think a whole lot about it, but I did start to do some research on weddings, and started to think about what I might want.

We've been engaged for six months now (with seven months to go before the wedding) and it's really interesting to me how things are shaping up. When we first got engaged, there were so many issues that had to be worked out with family schedules and school schedules that we didn't really sit down and think about the kind of event we wanted to have because we first had to figure out when everyone could go and still be feasible to have an outdoor ceremony (turns out it was the end of March of 08). Since we live in Colorado and I've personally seen blizzards here at the end of March, we knew that Colorado was out - we couldn't use our backyard or a park to save money because people might not even make it out of the airport.

Luckily, a connection through my best friend resulted in our getting to use an amazing venue with indoor and outdoor tentable space, a lawn and a beach and a lake in the town where I grew up in Northern California. The money we saved on space (and rentals, since everything but linens was included) was really spectacular compared to some of the other venues in the area (mostly wineries, mostly with multi-thousand dollar site fees). We both felt strongly about having a fun party for friends and family, not a whole lot of formality or fancy stuff, and having the focus being on people having a good time, eating good food and drinking good wine. It makes more sense to have a party in the daytime due to the time of year and possibility of rain/cold, and that's good for our budget as well. The whole thing will probably be over by 5:00 and then there might be an afterparty at my mom's house (she did offer her backyard as a space to have the wedding, but that was a little TOO informal for us and would have resulted in a lot more work for everyone and a lot more stress).

We picked colors based on the colors we both liked and with some inspiration from his kilt's tartan (Gordon dress) and Colorado wildflowers - blue, green, yellow and white. But it's a loose color scheme, and if something doesn't fit in with that we won't care much. My fiance's groomspeople (two men and a woman) will probably match better than my bridesmaids, but that's OK with me - I'll probably knit or buy them matching shawls so they all fit together to some extent, but if they all show up wearing different colors of blue or green or even yellow it won't matter to me.

We have a few ideas about decorating (minimal, since the space is so beautiful) and have already bought some candles and some battery-operated paper lanterns. My fiance, a graphic designer, already put together our website and will be doing our save-the-dates, invitations (I'm really excited about these), and any other project along the same vein (thank-you cards? programs? we're not sure yet). We've got a loose "Colorado meets California" theme, with California wine (natch!), Colorado beer, and some design elements, but again, we're not being sticklers and are just kind of enjoying the process of brainstorming ideas and coming up with what will work for us.

I think I'm really lucky to have a partner who is so into the planning process. I don't think I would want to be planning it all myself, since being here in Colorado and trying to plan something from three states away is stressful enough. And trying to plan a nice party for 75 people, doing lots of the work ourselves, is still going to be a chunk of change for an event in a common destination-wedding location. But so far, we're having a great time planning the biggest party we'll likely ever throw.