Firing up the grill for food and fun...

On Saturday the 29th was the big engagement/house warming party for Elizabeth and me. We got up early and quickly got cleaned up and made a last-minute pickup around the house to make the place look nice. Everything was going okay, the table was getting set with the snacky stuff, I was about to fire up old Betsy (my big man grill) and I was going to cook my butt off for everyone.

But then, it happened. The strawberries that we got for chocolate fondue later in the day were bad. So I had to run to the store to get them replaced. Just as I was leaving I saw our first guest arrive. It was Henry from church. I rolled my window down and told him I had to go to the store and that I would be back soon. As I went to the store I got a text from Elizabeth that people had started to show up and that I needed to hurry back. I was thinking maybe one or two people had shown up.

But when I got back to the house we had a good crowd of five to six people were there. Chris Koppenhofer and his family were some of the ones there, and I got a smile on my face when Chris showed me what he brought. It was a chocolate habanero. Chris has a love for the hot stuff greater than mine and whenever he goes down the the path of heat and pain, I must follow like a good apprentice.

But first, I had to get to work before my date with the fire. I fired up the grill and got to cooking. Once the grill was ready, I cooked up a huge plate of hot dogs and hamburgers. I love cooking on a grill. I think it really is a true guy thing to cook using open flame.  I guess it just wakes up the caveman part of a guy to sear meat with fire. Fire good... cook meat.

During all of this we had the house blessed by a friend of ours named Macie. She did a wonderful job of doing the houseblessing. I was happy to go through the house room by room and get our home blessed. Then came the food for everyone to eat. I felt so good to see everyone enjoy the food that Elizabeth and I had made for them.

Then... Chris pulled me aside and asked me if I was ready to try the habanero. Ohhhh...yeah! You better believe it. He cut up the pepper on a paper plate and smiled at me. I was about to eat my first habanero! He put some on a hot dog and I put some on a burger. My God! The heat! The pain! The flavor! I loved it. Every single second of it I loved it. He said his mouth had gone numb from the pepper and I was right there with him.

Elizabeth asked us what we were doing and I told her the truth. She looked at Chris and called him the devil on my shoulder. Hmm... yeah. She got that right.  We then went and put hot sauce and habanero on burgers and went for a second round. Mmmmm... the pain was good.

After the battle of heat and flavor I did my best to talk to everyone and be a good host. Elizabeth had made a slide show and burned it to a DVD for everyone to watch. It was pictures of her and me and the kids from the last two years, telling the story of our time together. The show finished up with our trip to Florida and the big day at Disney when I went down on one knee and proposed to her. Every time I saw that part I had to keep my feelings in check and try not to get misty-eyed.

Later in the day, I fired up the grill again and cooked pork steaks for everyone. The guests kept coming and I kept making the food. I didn't mind it at all. I will have to say that I had a wonderful time seeing everyone and cooking for them.

Elizabeth's friend Katie stopped by with her son and joined in on the fun. When she watched the slide show, Elizabeth pointed to the picture of me on one knee and said I tripped. I said that I did trip; I tripped on my heart for her. That got me a slight kick from Katie, who always says that I make her teeth hurt from my mush. Ehh...it was worth it. Anything for love and Elizabeth.

Bread, Salt and Wine

Saturday was our engagement party and houseblessing, and probably one of the best days of our life together.

Ever since we found our house last spring, people have asked us when the housewarming would be. Now, some people seem to be able to unpack in a week or two, maybe a month or two... not us. We were combining two households and storage units into one, we had the massive expense of my car repair and we had a house to furnish.

It took six months. Hey, I'm pretty sure I was three years into my post-divorce apartment before I got this far. As it was, in the weeks before the party I was still dashing madly around, getting the last few bookcases to finish the library, picking up a ficus at Garden Ridge...

In the meantime, Jimmy tripped on something and asked me to marry him. The question everyone asked after "when is the big day?" was "when is the engagement party?" So we decided to combine the two into one event, which might actually return us to socialization after six months of crazed unpacking/working/traveling.

The trouble with planning a party among our friends is that we have... a wide variety of friends. We have friends from the convention circuit. We have friends from church. We have friends from work... well, I do. We have friends from the kid stuff. We have all these circles that don't often connect with each other. Better yet, try finding a time, day and place when all these people are free.

So we decided to have an all-day open house, so people could come and go as they liked. After calling up caterers and take-out places and laughing hysterically at the prices, I decided to do the cooking myself.

I planned meals in stages with plenty of appetizers and beverages. We bought citronella torches for the back yard around the firepit to stave away mosquitoes, and Jimmy fired up ol' Betsy (his gigantic Man Grill that was his birthday present from me and my folks this year). I bought a sheet of wedding scrapbook paper for people to leave messages that will go into our wedding album.

And I created a slideshow of photos about 20 minutes long that ran in the living room. It started with me as a little girl and Jimmy in the Air Force - which was about the same year, heh heh heh - and went through our youth, meeting on the book tour, falling for each other, introducing our kids, living together and getting engaged.

There was the mad flurry of cleaning and shopping beforehand. There was the last minute rush to finally finish unpacking - except for those last few boxes of papers. I started cooking on Wednesday. Quiche and banana bread for the morning crew. Hamburgers, hot dogs and chuckwagon beans for the lunch crowd. Pork steaks and red potato salad for dinner. Appetizers included a cheese ball, veggies and dip, swedish meatballs in homemade sauce and baked brie. Desserts included chocolate fondue, a cookie platter, Mom's Kickass Chocolate Pecan Pie and my pitiful attempt at a tiered white cake. Homemade lemonade, iced tea, coffee and my mom's citrus punch recipe, or an approximation thereof.

And we were a tad nervous, too. I wondered if it would be so crowded that people would be uncomfortable... or worse, nobody showed up and we felt like idiots. Would people really spend part of a beautiful Saturday just to wish us well on our engagement and new home?

It couldn't have gone better.

Our friends started showing up about an hour after we opened the doors, and we had a steady flow all day and into the night. The house was never empty. The slideshow got so many viewings that I'm still hearing the music in my head two days later. We had just enough food; the only thing we overbought were the hamburgers, and I can understand why they didn't go so quickly; to everyone who ate them, I'm very sorry and we will not cheap out next time. I will go cut up my shoes and barbecue those; it'll be a better texture.

The lunch crowd should have come back for the pork steaks at dinner. Jimmy outdid himself. Yum.

The highlight of the day was when my dear friend Macie conducted the houseblessing. Macie will enter seminary next year, so this was her first run at blessing things. Technically you do not have to be ordained to bless a house; Mother Bennett had told us we could do it ourselves if we needed to, and she was unavailable due to a severely broken leg.

Macie did a wonderful job. We found the official format in the Episcopal Book of Occasional Services, and we began at the entrance and worked our way through the major rooms in the house. (Yes, there's a blessing for the bathroom. I had an attack of the giggles. I can't help my irreverence; it always amazes me that lightning has never struck me in our services.) The candle we lit stayed glowing on the dining room table for the rest of the day.

For all the jokes we made about our ghost and Macie's role as The Exorcist, it was a very special moment for us. I've never had a house blessed before, perhaps because no place has ever felt like home as much as this place does. I've had apartment after apartment, and even the duplexes I shared with my first husband still felt like waystations. This house is our home, our new life as a new family. It wasn't just walls and floors that Macie was blessing; it was our family, and it was very special to us.

And then we were back to the partying. I don't think I sat down for more than five minutes at a time all day. Whenever someone left, two more someones would arrive. And despite insisting that no one need bring anything, we received such bounty that it left me speechless. Not just gifts of decoration to add character to our home; gifts of meaning, like a starfish passed down from a friend of the family who died several years ago, or an Indian blessing upon our house, or the rainbow cross Macie used in the houseblessing.

One friend brought the traditional bread, salt and wine: bread, so the house will never know hunger; salt, so that life will always have flavor; and wine, that joy and prosperity may reign forever. That's a paraphrase from It's a Wonderful Life, of course, but the tradition holds still.

Speaking of wine... apparently our friends think we need to drink more. Oh my! We took a picture at the end of the evening with the numerous wine bottles we have collected. Never mind all the beer they didn't drink; when you consider that Jimmy and I will generally make a bottle of wine last six months to a year, we are stocked for wine until our tenth anniversary. We would be the world's most inefficient alcoholics; neither of us can finish a beer, we have to split it. I said that we will have to have another party just to use up all the wine!

Things started to wind down later in the evening, and our last few guests left about 10 p.m., our stated closing time. Katie stayed a little while to help us clean up, but surprisingly, there wasn't much to do. Our dear neighbor Cindy had wandered into the kitchen and did the dishes already, and the boys had kept the trash cleared pretty well. Within half an hour, the leftovers were packed up and the house looked great.

And then I sat in my living room and marveled. So many people came by to wish us well, not only in our home, but in our new life together. People came from around the corner and across the river. Many more sent well wishes through the internet, since they couldn't come. It was humbling and powerful to be the recipient of such love.

I've known for some time how blessed I am. It was a beautiful day to be reminded of it.

I think we'll celebrate with some wine. We have plenty.

Things I've learned from bridal shows

I have now attended enough bridal shows to meet practically every vendor in the area. Never let it be said a reporter doesn't do research.

What have I learned?

• There are two varieties of reception halls. First: lovely and elegant halls with in-house catering and open bar that begins at $17-25 per person and goes up from there (with additional 20 percent service charge, 8 percent tax and let's not even begin to talk about the booze). Then: your average social-organization meeting hall, which will let you use whatever caterer you want or bring in nothing but cake and punch... but has all the beauty and aesthetic atmosphere of your average school cafeteria.

If anyone in this area had a big room that was actually pretty, set up tables and chairs and let you use your own frigging caterer or no caterer at all, they'd clean up. I mean, the line would be out the door. Hey, my retirement plan!

• Photo booths at wedding receptions are a thing. I really can't wrap my mind around this. A wedding is, by its very nature, the most-photographed five hours of your life. Everyone's got a camera, and there's at least one person running around who is actually paid to capture important moments on what we no longer call film. Hell, there's an app that lets your guests all upload photos together to share.

So why do you want to pay $800 (no, I'm not making that up) to stick an ugly box in your reception hall that belongs at the local mall food court? Are people really that excited to get a not-passport photo the size of a postage stamp to commemorate your happy event? I have never seen this at a wedding in my life, but they're all over the shows.

• Worst transportation option: A bright pink Hummer-style limousine. I mean this thing was Hello Kitty pink, if Hello Kitty went to Vegas. I thought Katie was going to strangle me when I made her look inside.

Coolest transportation option: a converted trolley, with plenty of limo-style seating up front and benches in the back, lovely and old-fashioned. Unfortunately it cost more than twice what the small buses do.

Of course, those have a healthy dose of Vegas too: flashing neon lights and black-plush bars inside, with poles that I will assume are to help people keep their balance while the bus is in motion and not for use by strippers.

• Most overpriced reception venue: Sadly, the Peabody Opera House. Sure, it's one of the most staggeringly beautiful buildings in the city, and you can get your wedding portrait taken on the grand stage - who wouldn't want that? Your first clue should be the required minimum $3,000 deposit. I wish I could tell you what the total cost would be, but once I calculated it out I had myself a sad little chuckle and tossed it into the OMGNOWAY pile.

Runner-up: The Union Station Marriott. Granted, lovely place. But $85-106 per person is just the start. There's an additional room rental charge for the Grand Hall. There's a 24 percent service charge - I guess the waiters don't get a cut of that $106. That puts just the basic hall at a cost higher than my last car, at a total of more than $13,000 to feed 125 people. They throw in a honeymoon suite for the bride and groom for free... but be prepared to cough up $25 a head if anyone wants breakfast.

• Coolest reception venue: the riverboats. Jazz combo playing on the decks, full-service meal and you float up and down the Mississippi to celebrate your union. Alas, far too expensive.

• Most disappointing venue: A reception hall that, from its pictures, was not too ugly AND let you use your own caterer! I drove madly to its location, sure we had found our spot... it's a bowling alley. With the "reception hall" in the basement. You get to listen to the bowling balls rolling over your head while you dance. Oh well, back to the drawing board...

• Most ludicrous fee: One reception hall charges one dollar per napkin if you want a color other than white. Never mind that they have boxfuls in the back room and it takes absolutely no more effort to bring out blue or maroon napkins than white. A buck a napkin.

Which means it's somebody's job to sit there and count the napkins. Probably wondering where he went wrong in life that this is now his vocation.

• Chintziest trend: Fake wedding cakes. They have beautifully designed and decorated fake cakes, made of styrofoam or something inside the fake frosting. Looks perfectly real! But it's not. They rent you the fake cake, everyone sees it and goes "ooh, ahh." They hide two slices behind it for the "cake-cutting," so you get the "full experience."

Then there's a couple of sheet cakes back in the kitchen, and that's what gets served to your guests. They are blissfully unaware that you "cut" into a fake block of decorated styrofoam because you were too cheap to buy a real wedding cake.

JIMMY: That might be something to -
ME: I thought it was the cheapest, chintziest thing I've ever seen!
JIMMY: Oh. Right.

Look, I'm all for saving money. We will rent tuxedoes and buy a used gown and skip the open bar and if my DJ friend isn't available we'll dance to an iPod. But let's avoid fake food, okay? What's next: wax apples and painted-wood cheese blocks on the buffet? "You thought we were feeding you, but it was all a joke! Ha ha!"

• Best sample food: The dark chocolate cheesecake from The Regency. Ohmigod. Yum. Runner-up: The Gateway Center's mini-buffet and Bellemeade Manor's chocolate mousse.

• Most inscrutable vendors: Florists. Not one florist I saw at any show had a price list or would quote me actual costs on their flowers. Now, it's nice to tailor the flowers to a bride's style, and blah blah blah hand-tied vs. whatever they do to hold the thing together that isn't tying, roses good gardenias bad, etc. I could find out more solid information from 1-800-FLOWERS than I did from any florist. Sure, they showed me beautiful pictures, but could one of them say, "You've got five attendants each, two fathers and four mothers and grandmothers? Hmmm, I can do that for $325 base price, here's a list of extras and their costs."

Is that number sane? How would I freaking know?

• Cheesy thing that was actually kind of cool: One reception venue will mix a special drink just for your wedding - the ElizaJimmy, or whatever. They will design it to your taste and even make sure the color matches the bridesmaids. At the first show I thought this was the silliest thing I ever heard of, but I must have had some kind of spell cast on me at these shows, because now it sounds nifty. I think I need a vacation.

• A note to a certain institution about which I was briefly quite excited: If you have a lovely reception hall in a historic location, and you want to book weddings... buy some tables and chairs. Seriously. Because the price is right and your place is lovely. But you don't have tables and chairs. So we would have to rent them, which starts at, say, $7.50 for a round table that seats six. Then it's a buck a chair - for the cheap folding chairs. Then tablecloths - that's another $11 per table.

For a wedding of 125 people, that's more than $500 and we haven't rented china, glassware, a big table for the front of the room, or those blessed napkins. Plus you have to pay for delivery and setup. And you want them cleared out by midnight, which means the wedding party gets to wave goodbye to the guests... and start taking down the tables and chairs. How fun!

• An open letter to bridal shops: The average woman in the U.S. wears a size 14 and weighs 162 pounds. Granted, brides are often younger women who have not yet borne a child, and thus skew smaller. However, if I ask you how many plus-size gowns you carry and the answer is "one," I'm not going to bother driving to your shop. It's a waste of gas.

Also, if I tell you my wedding isn't until 2014, pushing me to make an appointment this weekend is just silly. If I have to tell you six times in our brief conversation that I'm not looking for a dress until next summer and you keep pushing me to make an appointment, I'm crossing you off my list.

• Best freebie at any bridal show: A little stress ball shaped like a tuxedo-clad groom. My new favorite toy.

• Finally.... ice sculptures are still silly.

Happiest Place on Earth

Let’s start with this: Jimmy is a terrible spy. Absolutely awful. If I ever need to hide a body, the very last person I will ask is Jimmy. 

This story is the perfect example. I pretty much figured out he was planning to ask me to marry him when he asked me to wander around the mall and tell him which rings I liked, and by the way, what’s my ring size? Subtle, my darling.

And it’s not like we hadn’t talked about it. The subject of marriage had been broached on a number of occasions. Early on it was the subject of massive fights, as I had burned the bridal T-shirt many years ago. Jimmy is a traditional fellow, though, and he wanted me to make an honest man of him. We’d talked about the practical aspects of marriage, the emotional side, the commitment (gulp!), the religious components. In most things we had reached a good rapport.

He was acting all squirrelly, and there was that day at the mall about a month before we were supposed to go to Florida. He was definitely up to something. And there would be a number of opportunities, including the highlight of the trip: Disney World. 

As we got closer to the Florida trip, it became harder and harder to keep him from telling me what he was up to! I was reduced to covering my ears and chanting, “Hush! Hush! Hush!” Worst. Spy. Ever.

We planned our day at Disney World carefully, because we could only afford one day. We determined we would spend the whole day at Magic Kingdom, since the park-hopper tickets cost more. I purchased a guidebook that gave a very specific plan of attack that gives you the maximum opportunity to see the major attractions with a minimum time in line.

Of course, we were going the day after Independence Day. Lines were pretty much inevitable. Still, we had good luck: crossing the lagoon within minutes with my dad, my stepmother Karen, my niece Alexis and her boyfriend, and of course Ian, my son.

It was so exciting to watch the castle grow big as we approached the park. Quickly stashing our stuff in lockers, we hustled to Space Mountain, which we’d identified as our top priority.

Even first thing in the day, the line at Space Mountain ate most of an hour. We chatted in line, looked for hidden Mickeys, and enjoyed the hell out of one of my favorite rides.

Dad couldn’t ride Space Mountain, so we caught him with my folks afterward. The plan was to go on to the castle and get a family picture taken, because our next stop was the second-longest line: Splash Mountain. We wanted to get our photos taken before we got wet. 

So we approached the castle. A few words on this: I love Disney castles. I grew up a Disneyphile; when I was young, my family would go to Los Angeles every other year to visit my dad’s family, and we’d usually do a couple of days at Disneyland. It isn’t just the happiest place on earth for me; it’s also my childhood bound up in one place. It was history, adventure, imagination and magic all in a fantasy kingdom ruled from a castle. 

From the time I was a little girl, I had a daydream about a proposal at Disneyland. A Cinderella coach whisking me away to the drawbridge was a frequent theme; dancing on the drawbridge was another. 

In almost every way, I prefer Disneyland to Disney World’s Magic Kingdom. Disney World has much more to do overall, but the Magic Kingdom is a smaller version of Disneyland, with some of its best attractions scattered in other lands. 

But the castle at Magic Kingdom is so much better than Disneyland’s castle that it takes my breath away. Blue spires topped with gold rising above white granite – or that’s what it looks like, and I don’t care about forced perspective or optical illusions. 

We wanted to take the family photo, but there was a parade going on. We discovered later that this parade occurs three or four times during the day. It was a really cool parade, with catchy music and dancing characters. The noise was so loud we couldn’t hear each other at all, and the crowds were heavy, so we decided to wait out the parade before taking the picture.

I sat on the curb and waved to Donald Duck, family emblem. Jimmy wandered about, talking for a few minutes with my dad. Finally the parade ended with one last refrain and blew Mickey-shaped foil confetti into the air, which Karen and I quickly gathered up for later scrapbooking.

Then we took the family photo, and fortunately a stranger agreed to take our group shot so I could be in the photo too. We were standing in front of the castle, not on the drawbridge, but the plaza below it. 

Then Jimmy drew me away from the others, and I tried to point where we should head next – either the side passage to Adventureland or through the castle.

Instead, he held my arms and started to speak. I heard about every fourth word, because it was still loud and he was speaking very softly and very quickly. I tried to get him to talk louder, and he leaned in and spoke… very quickly and very quietly in my ear. Something about “I’m asking you…” and something else about begging.

And I got the hint when he dropped to one knee. 

He was still talking too quietly, but I figured out what he was asking. Even I’m not that thick. He pulled out a small gray ring box and opened it. 

There was a lovely silver promise ring I had seen when we were at the mall that day. It was small and subtle, with a row of blue and white sapphires. 

He caught my left hand and started to slide the ring up my finger, and I had to suppress a mental giggle: I hadn’t said anything yet! Later he told me he was hedging his bets. I also heard that my friends told him to a) tie me to a chair and/or b) glue my shoes to the floor before asking me to marry him, but he settled for getting that lovely ring on my finger before he finished asking me. 

“Yes,” I told him. I was pretty sure whatever he said was agreeable to me. This is not the entry to explain why we’re getting married, of course – that’s a different post. This is about the proposal to end all proposals. 

He stood up and kissed me, while my family took a zillion pictures and cheered. Then he held me, and I held him, and it was a little while before we remembered there were other people in Disney World that day.

We turned and saw my family, all beaming at us. My niece was madly texting, and my stepmother was holding a pair of Mickey Mouse ears. One was white, with a tiny tiara and veil. The other was black, with a tuxedo front and mini top hat. They were already stitched with our names. It seems someone had the inside track!

In fact, the rest of the day proved everyone was in on it but me. Ian had spilled the beans to my mother and stepfather a week before when he was visiting them. I don’t know how my sister found out, but my dad and stepmother had planned ahead. Not only the ears, but when we got back to the condo that night, they had a bottle of champagne chilling in our room beside engraved flutes with our names on them. Disney, of course.

It was absolutely perfect, romantic and beautiful and imbued with all the sappiness at which Jimmy excels. Later I made him repeat what he’d said at the foot of the castle, so I’d know for sure what I was getting into. It was beautiful, and the fact that he was so nervous even after all the talking and the unwavering support of my family was frankly adorable.

He’s all sniffly right now, because next to me he’s working on his version. As I said before, this isn’t the time to talk about why, just how. But the shorthand is, I love this man. I intend to be with him until death do us part. And may God have mercy on his soul! 

Well worth the wait...

I’ve been asked what went through my head the day I proposed to Elizabeth. That day was very special. We got up real early on July 5^th to be able to spend the entire day at Disney World.

I had planned to ask Elizabeth to marry me since last year. Now the time was drawing close to finally ask her. I WAS SCARED! But I was going to do this one way or the other. I was able to sneak the ring out of the suitcase and into my pocket without Elizabeth seeing it. I went into the kitchen to get something to drink and Elizabeth’s father and stepmom were in there. They knew what I was planning on doing and Karen (stepmom, or just Ma as I call her) asked if I was nervous with Pop (Elizabeth’s dad) smiling at me.

“Yep!” I managed to squeak out. “You better believe I am.”

She told me to calm down and not to worry. But the thought of going through with this and being told ‘no’ was still haunting me in the back of my mind. We finally got on our way to Disney a little late, but at least we were finally going. I tried to act calm and normal, but my nerves were all over the place.

“Will she say yes? Will she say no?” kept running through my mind.

Elizabeth looked at me at one point and asked me if something was wrong. Oh boy, if she only knew! But I told her I was just tired and need a caffeine hit. If I don’t have my soda, I’m a zombie like out of one of Elizabeth’s books. After the hour drive, we made it to that magical place called Disney. We rode the ferry across the river and I hugged Elizabeth and pointed at the castle.

“Hey look! Cinderella’s Castle! It looks incredible,” I said, giving Elizabeth a kiss.

“Yes. I’m glad we were able to come on this trip.” Elizabeth answered.

We made it through the front gate and then security. Then we were in Disney World! Wow! I could feel the magic of the place start to hit my body. I felt like a young kid again and wanted to start to ride the rides and see all of the Disney characters.

Then I saw the castle again… and the desire to ask Elizabeth The Question started to hit me hard. I had planned to ask Elizabeth in front of the castle. Just like she told me that she always dreamed of when she was a child. Now to get her to the castle and pop the question.

“Come on!” Elizabeth yelled with excitement. “Let’s get to Space Mountain!”

“Space Mountain first?” I thought to myself. “Oh well…I can wait.”

Boy is Disney huge! I thought the walk to Space Mountain took forever. Then we got there, and the line wait was forty-five minutes!

“Shit!” I thought, and gritted my teeth at having to wait.

           

We went through the line and finally got to ride Space Mountain. I will say that it was a real blast riding a roller coaster in the dark. But even through all of the twists and turns and screams of fun, I was thinking of the castle and asking her the question. After the ride we met up with Ma and Pop outside.

Ma whispered to me. “Almost time… are you ready?”

“Yes,” I whispered back, “I am more than ready.”

But…first things first, I went to a drink stand and got me the largest soda they had. God, was I needing a caffeine hit to the brain. Elizabeth gave me snark for getting a soda, but she sure didn’t mind taking a drink when I offered it to her.

We started to make our way to the castle. We had planned to take family pictures and then let the kids run off and be kids. My heart was starting to beat out of my chest as we drew closer.

Then to my shock, there was a stupid parade going on right in front of the castle! Both Ma and Pop looked at me with a look that said, “This boy just can’t catch a break.” We worked our way through the crowd to the front of the castle. A part of me wanted to go ahead and ask her despite the noise of the music and the cheers of the crowds.

“Just calm down.” Pop said. “No sense to ask her if she can’t hear you.”

He was right, of course. So I held Elizabeth’s hand and waved at Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy as the parade went by. After another long eternity of waiting, the parade made its way around the square in front of the castle and the noise calmed down.

“This is it!” I thought with my knees shaking. “Now or never.”

I took Elizabeth by the hand and took her to the front of the castle and drew her close to me.

“What? Don’t you want to get your picture taken in front of the castle?” she asked me.

I drew in close to her and started to whisper to her. I will always remember the words that I said to her.

“I love you. With all of my heart I love you. You mean everything to me. So I am asking you… no, I am begging you, on one knee.”

At this point, I pulled the ring out of my pocket and went down to one knee. The sight of me doing this made Elizabeth catch her breath and hold her hand to her mouth.

I opened up the ring box and showed her the ring. I took her hand and slid the ring on her finger. She was smiling now and I gladly smiled back to her.

“Please let me be your husband and you my wife.” Yes! I asked her the question.

She smiled down at me and I could see the tears of happiness in her eyes and felt mine flowing down my face already. She bent down toward me.

“Yes.” She whispered to me.

I jumped up and grabbed her in a tight hug and gave her the biggest kiss I ever could. Yes! She had said yes. Thank you God for bringing her into my life. She said yes, and I will remember this moment forever. I looked at her and kissed her again and whispered to her.

“Let’s go to Splash Mountain now.” 

First Time for Everything

I went to a bridal show. That’s right. I went to a bridal show and it was my idea to go to this one. When Elizabeth went to get her hair cut last month, they had flyers for Metro East Bridal Ball. I showed them to her and said she should check this one out. 

I then also said I should go with her. This got me a weird look but I told her I was telling the truth that I wanted to go. I heard from Elizabeth how much fun she had going to the first two she went to so I decided that it was time for me as the groom to show my support and go to one with her. After all…this marriage involves the both of us, so I need to do this sort of thing with her. 

So this was my first time going to a bridal show. It was a VERY small show. I was expecting something along the lines of one of the conventions I have gone to when it came to the size of the room. But it only took a few minutes to walk around the room and see pretty much everything that was there to see. Elizabeth told me that the other shows she went to were much larger and had all types of food tasting, cake tasting, and other fun things to do. This show had two caterers and one baker displaying their food. A little bit of a let down, and made me feel like I missed some fun she had at the other shows. 

The baker there had really cool cakes on display and I got to ask the question that I’ve been wanting to ask. "Can you do Godzilla?" The baker looked at me and said with a straight face, "Yep. We have done other dinosaurs so we can do Godzilla." A 3D cake of my hero! Wow, that would be cool. Asked them how much it would cost…they said they couldn’t tell me. It would depend on the design. Ouch. Can’t tell me a price off the top of their heads, best to stay away. 

We both sat down and watched the fashion show showing off the wedding gowns of a local dealer. Most of them made me think, "Crap! Women wear those things to get married in?" But I saw a couple that made think how beautiful Elizabeth would look in them. 

So how was it being the one of only two grooms (the other guy was sitting in front of me) at the show? Not bad at all. I had fun looking at the different stuff with my future wife and tasting the food that was there. (Wish there had been more to try out, but oh well.)  I enjoyed the show. I hope I get the chance to go to another one with her. As a couple, I think it’s important to do things like this together. Besides… free cake. YUM. 

The Bridal Ball

First off: why does this blog exist? Answer: Our friends are evil.

Jimmy Gillentine and I are engaged. It's a long engagement. Jimmy asked me to marry him on July 5, standing in front of Cinderella Castle at Disney World. (Now how does a girl say no to that?)

But getting engaged doesn't make us any less broke. We have two cars to pay off before we can afford to get married. And we're both writers, with three or four books coming out next year between us. Two day jobs, three kids and four books makes for a busy year. So we're not getting married until June 2014.

Still, I'm a planner. I like checklists and budgets and calendars. Therefore we are scouting out the things we want or need for the wedding now, to get an idea of what it will cost.

That means the dreaded experience of... the bridal show.

I've been to three so far. Shut up. I don't want to miss any vendor that might give me a better deal, okay?

I went to one at the Gateway Center with my stepmother, where I stood in a cyclonic booth and caught money flying around me, which ended with a $180 credit toward the tuxedos. I went to the Giant Ridiculous Bridalpalooza in downtown St. Louis with my friend Katie, so she could share snark with me while we asked every baker if they can do a Godzilla groom's cake.

Today it was the Metro-East Bridal Ball, hosted at the Regency Conference Center. This time Jimmy came with me, and no, I did not force him or drag him kicking and screaming. He was curious and he wanted to go. (My father: "Wild horses....")

Unfortunately the Bridal Ball was very small. There were only three rows of vendors, several of whom I'd already seen elsewhere (the money cyclone was back!). Only one cake vendor - but they can do Godzilla. Two bridal shops, but neither has a large inventory of plus-size gowns.

The upside was that unlike the other two shows, I actually saw the bridal gown show. In both other shows, it took me long enough to walk through all the vendors that I missed the show each time. This show was so small we had visited all the booths that interested us in half an hour.

That meant poor Jimmy had to sit through model after model wearing skin-tight mermaid gowns while obnoxious music blared - seriously, one dress was so tight I could tell what kind of underwear the girl was wearing.

That said, some of the dresses were kind of nice, and I was glad to see one of the four models was not a stick. She wore a few dresses I wouldn't hate. I've posted elsewhere (and will again here) about the ridiculous dresses I've seen while shopping - is there some rule that says 90 percent of all wedding dresses must be strapless now? Still, none of them were really exciting - certainly not enough to pay $1000 for them.

The highlight of the show was the moment I tried to put my arm around Jimmy and ended up elbowing him in the eye instead. He is a long-suffering man.

In all, the show was all right, but a bit of a disappointment after the first two. I think we'll wait until the next Big Ridiculous Show in January to try again. After all, nobody has the real prices for 2014 yet, so this is all just ballpark figures to give us an idea how much to save.

Oh, and why this blog exists? Our friends suggested that we write dueling blog entries about our engagement, because men and women experience these things differently. I think they just want to see me write nine paragraphs about a tasting and watch Jimmy write, "Food was good."

So it's all their fault.