We tell different stories of how we met. He'll tell you we met 3+ years ago at a SuperBowl/Game party -the best way to get the sports crowd and the gaming crowd in the same apartment- where he tried to introduce himself to a cute girl (me) that immediately yelled at him. I yelled at him because we had met years before, and several times since, through our theater background. He felt so bad that he followed me around for the rest of the party, introducing me to everyone, repeatedly. We went on our first date on Friday the 13th, our second on Valentine's day, and have followed each other around ever since. According to our friends he laughs more with me, and my face lights up when he comes into the room. He is my person, and my favorite, and vice versa.
We've been to Singapore and South Africa, Spain and Mexico, Alabama and Indiana, and plan to visit every continent and never stop traveling. We've escaped so many rooms together, seen fantastic shows on and off broadway, adopted a cat named NatGeoZ (nachos, it's a long story) who regularly needs our narration on the angst of her life as a pampered pet, shared favorite book series (Wheel of Time and Discworld) and tv series (Grey's for him and Big Bang Theory for me), and we've made each other better every day along the way. We're looking forward to starting a family together, and I can't wait to see what a great dad he's going to be and all the adventures we have in store.
He designed my engagement ring with a designer in St Louis that was so perfectly me I couldn't have done a better job myself, and proposed by creating a scavenger hunt around the house, calling out our favorite couple memories and enlisting my bestie in the final clue. We picked the date 8.10.2018 because it was a palindrome and we are nerds. And then the planning started. And I HATED it. We couldn't decide on a location, there are so many fun places to go, and favorite places we've already been, and oh my goodness is it all EXPENSIVE, but we finally picked Mackinac Island because both our parents have ties there. We booked the venue and picked the menu, all sight unseen, with the help of Lindsey Marks at Mission Point. All our invitations and information and gift registry links went through Zola.com because I wanted a green solution to the multiple pieces of paper that typically comes with an invitation (and is usually thrown away forthwith). I found the dress I liked and managed to purchase it on eBay for significantly less and had it tailored over the course of a year by a family friend who also makes amazing Derby Hats (Rebecca's in New Albany). My mother graciously allowed me to cut her full length veil from her 1970s Juliet Cap so I could wear something of hers at my wedding. Our small chocolate cake with white mint icing came from Annie May's Sweet Cafe in Louisville (no dairy, no gluten for me), which was shipped plain then iced and decorated by our aunt (the guests had a pretty amazing dessert bar to eat off of instead). My band came custom made from an etsy shop Edwards and Davies, and the man picked THREE tungsten wedding bands from amazon so he could swap looks. I practiced for two months to be able to do my own hair and makeup to get the look I wanted, natural and classic. The flowers shipped on time from fiftyflowers.com and my bestie pulled together a gorgeous loose bouquet of peonies, ivy, ferns, green ball dianthus, and tweedia, with a sprig of blue larkspur as a tribute to a relative and my something blue. We DIY'd our own centerpieces with card games and dyed mason jars (make sure to get the dishwasher safe modge podge!) with fairy lights and peonies in water tubes, photo blocks with b-list Marvel characters holding double sided photos, and captured a lot of wonderful candids with our brand new instapix camera that we're going to add into our guest book. Our friend ran the music through the room's sound system and his sister MC'd the evening. Andrejka Photography was amazing to work with and I can't wait to see what she did, but the photos here are from our family since we won't have hers for awhile yet.
I am a nervous person. I am a worst scenario person. I get myself tied up in knots about how I could try to prevent anything going wrong. But every single thing about this day went perfectly from the weather to the shipment arrivals to the flowers and even to the humor our wedding had with the surprise cheering and music of another wedding across the way. And Fiftyflowers looking out for me, sending texts and having conversations about what flowers should arrive on what date for maximum beauty, was a huge help since I know nothing about flower care or arrangement. I knew from the beginning that I wasn't a traditional bride and we didn't want a serious wedding, and we are so thankful for all the vendors who allowed us to get there within our budget and on our own terms.
