The dress

I know that the groom traditionally isn't supposed to see the dress before the wedding day, but Samantha and I accomplish things when we're together. Shopping is not something Samm particularly enjoys and her family is so excited that they can hardly contain it, which unfortunately sometimes evolves into complete overload. When that happens, nothing happens or gets accomplished. I'm done making excuses for why I went dress shopping with her yesterday, just let me tell you about it. 


Samantha has already explained her knack for finding good sales and I shared with her that my mom and one of my aunts were able to find very beautiful dresses from David's Bridal for extremely cheap. We wanted to have two dresses for multiple reasons, but we decided to check out David's. Last night, we drove out there, fully expecting to see some nice dresses, but be disappointed with the outrageous prices. 


Trying on wedding dresses is a process, let me tell you. Apparently the bride has to put on a bra-slip combo, but after that the changing of the dress happens within seconds. After some problems finding which size bra-slip combo actually fit, we started having dresses appear on the rack outside of her changing room. First one was OK, but the second one, I was absolutely blown away with. I was about to say, this is it, this is the dress. It was $350, but we also needed to add sleeves or something to have it be a little more modest and appropriate. We decided to hold onto it in case we couldn't find anything else and we decided we wanted to spend the extra money. Ohh! back up a second. The first dress had some beads and stuff in the body of the dress and Samm immediately started playing with them and picking. So we decided we didn't want anything too fancy and dressed up just for the sake of it staying together the entire night, through the reception. After that, they ended up taking a few dresses back to the floor. Anyways, she goes through a few more dresses, nothing too spectacular and we especially not having any luck finding one that would look halfway decent with sleeves, plus they were all out of our price range. Samm finally gets onto the manager for bringing so many dresses out to her that were out of our range and she mentions that there is one more that they ended up putting back on the floor because of what was said about beading and playing with it. We decided that we would look at it anyways.


Turns out that this is the dress that we both absolutely loved! We had the alterations woman bring out a shrug type of jacket thing, just something with sleeves and it looked even more amazing! The jacket was amazing and it just works well together with the dress. Anyways, Samantha and her family is going back tonight to buy the dress and jacket and they'll set up an appointment for a fitting sometime later down the road. 


We are totally rocking this wedding planning thing!

Quick Post

I was smiling at myself in the mirror today, something I rarely do, but should probably do more often (you know how a small smile can make someone's day, even your own). I realized, EW!
I got my dress today. Oh yeah, I'm just guesstimating, but I'm pretty sure I got this dress for $500 cheaper than the marked price. You can't beat that! Okay so you can, but this dress is... ah! So gorgeous. If I can find a picture, I'll post it.
But back to my tragedy. I painted a picture to show my dilemma. If anyone has any suggestions to have this fixed by Decemeber, please let me know! :)

Priceless

So, we have been running around and getting things done for the big day! I've only had one breakdown, and thankfully we were in separate cars on the phone, so nobody saw the Broke-down Bride. It was over something we had settled on, but just that: settled. However, in the bigger scheme of things, the choice we made in the beginning makes the most sense.

Our two biggest trials now are one, finding the gosh darn stupid dress, and two, disguising a gym to look like a wedding hall.

However, things have been going really well. Due to strategic shopping, luck of sales, and a high bank of patience on Spencer's part, we have

* flower garland
* flowers for the bouquet
* flowers for throwing bouqet
* most of the ingredients for our centerpieces, which incorporates 3 or 4 things
* shoes for the dress (leftover from prom, that's handy)
* a few more scattered things here and there

and the grand total is: ... ... couldn't tell ya exactly, but I know it's less than $50 :) Talk about smart shoppin! And it doesn't stop there! I fully intend on spending less than $200 for a temple dress and another dress. I know, "Two dresses? Girl you be outside yo mind!" but we deemed it necessary, as long as we can get them both for under $200. I found one I like for $100, plus $50 to add professional sleeves, and then the temple dress, I found a nice one for $40, so there we go! There's just a bit more detail than that, it's not so simple.

We have also decided not to move out of Spencer's apartment now. I'll just be moving in with him until the lease is up. It'll save over $1000 and relieve a bit of stress off our shoulders for now.

There you have it, week 2 of our engagement is over tonight, and we have so many things in line. I think we have roughly 12 weeks left. We can do it! I'm so excited to get to marry this man, and I can't be more grateful for his willing attitude! We are getting so much stuff done! :)

Let the madness begin

We've jumped headfirst into the insanity known as wedding planning. We've got a venue picked out, we've got the reception all planned out and things like that. This weekend, we went looking at flowers and centerpieces for the tables at the receptions and this is what we accomplished:

We went to Hobby Lobby and were checking out the flowers. We decided that we wanted silk flowers so that we can keep them much longer and not lose their color, plus the obvious price difference. We have the flowers for her bouquet as well as the flowers for the bouquet that gets tossed. I couldn't give you the names of the flowers specifically, but her bouquet will be a mix of blue and white flowers (I'm pretty sure one of the flowers is tulip, but I couldn't be totally positive). Anyways, we had all that picked out and we started looking at flowers for boutonnieres and everything but didn't settle on that yet. We also got some flowers to go on the cake and food tables for that little added decoration.

We also got some stuff for the centerpieces for the tables in the reception. We have tulle circles to go under glass bowls that will be filled with little colored glass marbles and water, and we're going to float a white flower in it (one of the same flowers form her bouquet, but not the tulip). We're also going to put flower petals around the bowl on the table. We still need to get the bowls though. The ones we found didn't quite work out for what we wanted so we'll have to go look again sometime.

I'm probably forgetting something which will be filled in by Samantha, but that's what I remember without actually seeing what we bought. We're going to go look at the apartment complex we're keen on this afternoon, and maybe even to David's for a dress. As crazy as this is, I'm loving it, I just can't wait to finally be married to the wonderful woman!

The Proposal

I had been trying to figure out how to ask Samm for such a long time and I couldn't come up with anything legit. On top of that, everything I thought up and tried to take Samm out to ask her, she wasn't in the mood or didn't feel good or some other excuse. 

I had things like taking her to her favorite park to picnic, I tried to get in touch with the operator of the video board at one of the stadiums we went to to watch a game, and we almost went up to the peak of the mountain while we were in Albuquerque. NOTHING. I was kind of getting tired of always carrying around the ring.

About the ring. Kind of a side note, I had gotten the ring but didn't know her exact ring size. I tried being smooth by checking out some of her rings and see which one fit the best on her finger. Again, I got nothing. I even started asking her (she already had her suspicions so I just didn't even try to hide it). I had it sized the afternoon before we went to Albuquerque and I was trying to propose that weekend. Like I said above, nothing worked. Anyways, I decided to just wing it, much like with our first kiss.

We both love sports, we both love football, and we both love Texas Tech. Texas Tech hosted Texas this past weekend and this is a big deal here. Students started camping out Sunday afternoon to secure their spots. After Monday, the number of student camping had already gotten over 800. I wanted to camp out for this, and Samm was just as excited as I was so we set up our tent Tuesday night. We had to check-in twice a day and at the end of the week, we were going to be arranged according to how many times we had checked in. Anyways, check-in was usually at 11 p.m. and then at 4 a.m. and with as many people were out there and as rowdy as they were, there wasn't much sleeping going on, just napping. Anyways, Tuesday night, we're settling in and we start talking about our relationship. I had the ring on me, of course, and I saw an opportunity.

I was telling her how much I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her and how much I loved her. I pulled the ring out of my pocket, but still out of sight, and was starting to tell her that I had something for her that she had been waiting on for some time. I said something along the lines of that this thing that I had for her came with conditions: that she would love me forever and ever, even when I'm being a pooper. Then I told her that I will always love her and gave her the ring.

I was actually more nervous about the ring actually fitting than the whole part of finding what to say and saying it. Luckily for both of us, the ring fit perfectly! We were engaged on September 14.

Now comes all the crazy wedding planning!!

The Proposal, pt II

I was asked very nicely by Samtha to post a picture of her ring. I took this picture with my phone and blew it up a bit so you can actually see. I hope its not too fuzzy. Anyways, I'll post how it REALLY happened later. 

The Proposal

The main post that most people have been waiting for: The proposal. I'll see if Spencer will post a picture of the ring when he tells his version of the story.

We had talked about marriage a lot, and we knew it was headed that way, but I told him he couldn't marry me unless he had a job. So, during the summer, he actually found two jobs. I knew this was it. However, I kept waiting and waiting, no ring, no proposal. He kept dropping "hints", hints that slapped me in the face, it was shocking how subtle they were..."Babe, what's your ring size?" "Will you marry me? Just kidding, that's not how I'm going to do it", "Babe, do you want round stones or square?"...

Then there was the matter of talking to my dad. I kept giving him opportunity after opportunity to be alone with my dad, and it never happened. I was so frustrated after I walked in one day, noticed they were talking, and made every excuse to avoid them, just to find out that he hadn't even brought it up while they were talking. After that, I just decided not to expect it, it'd happen when it would happen.

I started getting stressed though. June turned into July turned into August turned into September. Our 6 month engagement was slowly losing months and we weren't going to have time to get everything ready once it happened and we made the news public! One day, I felt the ring in his pocket, I thought, but I convinced myself later that it was just his wallet, trying not to get my hopes up.

Finally, we set up camp in Raiderville. I had my expectations that he was going to propose at the UT game, so I wasn't expecting it at all, which I think that's what he was going for. We were in the tent, and I noticed him digging around in his backpack but thought nothing of it. Then he turned to me and said something to the effect that this conversation has:

Samm, I have a question.
Yeah? What's that? (Not suspecting a thing)
Will you always love me? Forever and ever?
Of course I will, I will always love you! (starting to suspect something...)
Even when I'm being trouble, or a pooper, or Spencerbob Crankypants?
Of course I will, as long as you will love me when I'm being those things too!
Samm, I will always love you! Will you marry me? (Shows the ring)
*gasp* Trouble! Trouble face! Of course I will, you trouble.

Then he put the ring on my finger, we hug and kiss, then he says "Wait, should I have been on one knee?" "Oh yeah, you better redo it" So I gave him the ring back, and knelt as tall as I could, which was still shorter than him on one knee, seeing as how neither of us could stand in the tent, and he was nearly reaching the top on one knee as it was, and said "Samantha Allred, will you marry me?" And no trouble faces, I said "Yes!"

"I Will!"