Wedding Bells

“We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness—and call it love—true love.” ― Robert Fulghum

On the walking tour of the inn property

A year ago today, I would have never thought I would be planning a wedding. I was still so shell shocked from the divorce that even the thought of being married again was terrifying. But here I am, planning a wedding. I am marrying my best friend. In two months no less. I mean, shoot, we are going to get married anyway, why wait until next year sometime. Plus, 12/1/2012 just has such a great ring to it.

So, by this point, pretty much everyone knows we're getting married thanks to the wonderfulness that is social media. Jeremy wrote a beautiful post about our relationship that you should go read as well. But, I get to tell the story of the proposal. It's a sweet story, because Jeremy is the sweetest. I would like to preface the story by saying that I had informed Jeremy that when he proposed that it needed to be very romantic. I read a lot. I have high expectations. Also, I tend to micro-manage. I try to not do it, but alas, I frequently fail.

Back in the spring I purchased a Google offer for a bed-and-breakfast just outside of Charlottesville, VA. Due to work being crazy with the audit (I'm the finance director), we weren't able to use the coupon until a couple of weeks ago. We got up early on a Wednesday and flew to Richmond. Yes, it was almost two hours away from Charlottesville, but when you're flying stand-by, you take what you can get. After finally getting to the inn after a long day on the road, we pretty much crashed for a couple of hours. After we finally had enough energy to move, we took a tour of the property. The inn was pretty spectacular. There were chickens there, so we felt right at home. We took a hike through the woods,  sat for a while with the resident cats, and then decided to head into town for dinner. 

As the aforementioned micro-manager, I had prepared a list of approved restaurants for the trip. I do not enjoy eating at chain restaurants and I try to frequent restaurants that purchase their meats and produce from local farms. I'm a food snob. I can't help it. We headed to the first restaurant on the list...The Whiskey Jar. To say that it was the best food we've had in a long time would be an understatement. We had oysters wrapped in Virginia ham and covered with Gruyere for the appetizer. Then we shared the fried chicken and collard greens plate and the sweet potato dumplings plate. We also split a bottle of the best hard cider I've ever tasted.  After the amazing dinner, we headed down the road for some ice cream before making the trek back to the inn. 

Once we got back to the inn, we decided we would sit out under the stars for a while. The benches were all wet from the dew so we had to find an alternative to the bench. Jeremy found a log on the wood pile that was long enough for both of us and placed it on the bench. We used my stargazing app on my cell phone to find constellations  We couldn't really see them though because when you're in the country away from the city lights, there are millions upon millions of stars. We quickly gave up and decided to just talk and kiss and hold hands. We talked about how much we loved each other. We talked about how we wanted to be together for the rest of our lives. Finally, Jeremy asked, "are you sure you want to be with me the rest of your life?". I answered that of course I did. He stood up and said "well, let's do this right then." He got down on one knee and asked me to "put this ring on your finger". And of course I did. I teared up a little and we had the sweetest kiss with him still on one knee. It was perfect.

Later back in the hotel room, I asked him if he had been nervous. He said that he knew I would say yes, but he was a little worried that it wouldn't be romantic enough. But being proposed to underneath the stars on a farm, yeah, that's pretty much perfection in my books.

Since we were on vacation, we decided we would wait about telling anyone because we knew we'd be overrun with Facebook posts, texts, phone calls, and emails once the cat was out of the bag. It was so lovely just being able to revel in the fact that we were going to get married. We spent two more glorious days together before we called "the mamas". I think my mama was prepared for it seeing as how Jeremy had asked my daddy if he could marry me. Jeremy's mama was over the moon. And his daddy was too, to tell the truth. 

So we're pretty excited. Jeremy would be happy to just go down to the courthouse tomorrow and get married. And I understand his urgency. I'm so excited to be married to someone who has filled me with so much love, someone who has already been there for me through ups and downs, someone who shares my values and my upbringing, someone who listens to everything that I say and even remembers most of it, someone who I want to stand beside until my last day. I love him. He is already my better half. I can't wait to make it official.

The boy boo, right after we called the mamas.