If you remember, I announced the super exciting engagement news in the sparkly ring finger post, back on October 18, 2011. At the time, the BF had already moved to Florida, while I was waiting to finish up grad school in Austin in December. In that post, I laid out 5 love celebration (wedding) options that we were considering. What we ended up doing was not exactly any of those options (maybe a combo of 2 & 3, with a possibility of 1 happening at a later date). But, we did do exactly what we wanted. Certainly answering to our friends, family, and co-workers as to why we chose this path has been, well… interesting. Many think we’re nuts (and we kind of are), some are in disbelief, but all are happy for us and hopefully, none feel left out.
Nothing we did was conventional, but everything we did was perfect, at least perfect for us. We had many of the typical parties and ceremonies, just not in the right order, or with big groups of people. (This is why I kind of say we did option 3 from this post.) First up, surprise engagement party. The first one was the day after we got engaged at our friends, Natalia and Ryan’s house. We had planned on hanging out to watch a football game, when they found out we got engaged… they got us a cake, Andy a cigar, and we toasted with champagne.
Rachelle was determined to have a bachelorette party for me. I agreed, if and only if, it was less than 3 people. It was Rachelle, me, and our friend, Eric… perfect! We did a very Jamie style bachelorette party with activities like pizza picnic on the roof with wine from boxes, champagne toast, bachelorette sashes which led to karaoke at Ego’s, and dance party at Barbarella.
Did you have a traditional wedding with all of the events? Looking back the only thing we did not do was a bridal shower, and Andy did not have a bachelor party. Although, I think that is in the works… those boys just take a little longer to plan things. My girlfriends are speedy! Tuesday I’ll share the second dress hunt, the diy bridal portraits, and a second bachelorette party that happened last minute in an exotic locale.
Everything seems perfect!!! I love the non-traditional. We did a sort of traditional wedding in the fact that it was a ceremony and reception. I was barefoot on the beach, walked down the aisle the Beatles, etc so it was more us than a fully traditional wedding would have been. I would have gone completely non-traditional but we were scared to rock the boat. I wish I would have 😉
Congrats again!!
aww your pics are so cute! can't wait to see more of them!
we were pretty traditional with our wedding…i've worked for a wedding planner for a number of years and seen quite a few of them, and it was just really special to me to go through all of the fun milestones myself!