Not My First Rodeo

Before I get any further, I have confession of sorts.  Although confession is maybe not the most accurate term, since that implies I have a dirty little secret, and I don't.  The reason I'm even bringing this up is because I think more people should be sharing these experiences....

This is not my first engagement (cue scary music).

I am really struggling with what details to include in this post, because now it feels like so long ago, and after a long journey I finally feel recovered enough from the whole experience that it is hard to want to throw myself back into it.  But again, I strongly feel that broken engagements should be talked about.

When he proposed, I was 20 and a junior in college; he was 28 and a very charismatic person.  We had been dating since I turned 18, right at the start of my freshman year of college, but we had known each other for many years at that point.  We already had an unequal power relationship going into our dating relationship.  At the tender age of 18 I just didn't understand why this was weird, because we liked each other, in fact we loved each other, and he started to talk about marrying me within the first month of our dating relationship (he was 26 when we started dating, the age I am now... which is sort of strange to think about).  He gave the first ultimatum that I can remember (you are acting like X, I can't be with someone who is X) within the first six months of our relationship.  I tried so hard to be what he wanted me to be.  He was anxious to settle down and have a family, that was the most important thing to him in his future, and I thought that was what I wanted too.  We planned to get married right after I graduated in August.

But as many of you know, things change from when you are 18.  I had always been a great student.  I love to learn and I love school (major nerd alert).  Despite that, I never had set-in-stone career aspirations, and I had never contemplated graduate school.  That all changed when I found a major I really loved and felt passionate about, and realized graduate school could be a real possibility for me.
It suddenly occurred to me that there may be more things I wanted to do in life besides, or at least before, being a stay-at-home mom.  This didn't sit well with him, and he (as he often did) sparked an argument (he liked to call them 'debates') that he twisted and circled back into his own agenda, eventually getting me to agree that I could go to graduate school (for a Master's only), but I would also be having babies and holding down a part time job.  This situation was the norm for me in that relationship, and I had learned to just keep quiet because that was the only way to keep the peace.

I still vividly remember the first time I truly realized how unhappy I was.  We were having dinner with my parents (at a restaurant he chose of course) and he was talking to them about who knows what (he dominated conversations and made me feel really stupid and invalid, so I didn't participate much), and all of a sudden I realized I was miserable.  I couldn't put my finger on why.  Everything should have been great - a nice evening with my parents, engaged, getting ready for my senior year of college - but I couldn't feel anything but unhappy.

He badgered me the entire summer before my senior year of school to get another job (because going to school full time including a 1+ hour commute both ways and a demanding coaching job weren't enough).  He would be so upset when he got home from work if he felt that I didn't do enough during the day (none of the housework I did counted of course), and I finally found a hosting job at a chain restaurant just a month before I went back to school. In an incredibly ironic turn, that job and the people I met there were what finally gave me the push to leave that terrible relationship.

So you aren't stuck with a completely picture free post, enjoy a baby Melanie on the left during Archaeology Activities Day my freshman year of college! (I enjoy what I do, but anthropology/archaeology is what really speaks to my heart) / personal photo

To keep this manageable, Part 2 coming soon...

Finding a Place to Have this Wedding Thing

Ok, time for some real talk - I did a TON of research on venues before we were engaged.  This probably doesn't come as a shock to a lot of you, but I still feel a touch embarrassed admitting this kind of thing.

But hey, the internet is the perfect place to post sort-of embarrassing things about yourself, right? Right.

The first thing we settled on, and one of the easiest decisions of the whole process, was our ceremony venue.  Daniel is Catholic, and a Catholic ceremony was important to him.  We wanted a church we felt some connection to, which brought us down to three choices - St. Lucy's in Campbell (close to our home, the church we attend the most regularly), St. Rose's in Roseville (where Daniel's Dad lives, and where he received his First Communion, went to Sunday school etc.  For non-Bay Area people, Roseville is a whopping three hour drive from us), and St. Mary's College Chapel in Moraga (my alma mater and a one hour drive from us).  St. Rose's was eliminated for distance, and St. Lucy's was considered but was so clearly out gunned by my beautiful alma mater...

My GORGEOUS school! GO GAELS!! Source

Getting married at Saint Mary's was the perfect way to incorporate both of us in the ceremony - Daniel's religion and my school.  And it's gorgeous.  And not everyone can get married there, only alum, faculty and staff, which I like because I'm difficult like that.  This decision limited our reception search to the East Bay. Onward!

So Daniel and I have A LOT of friends.  We are both social butterflies, and where I am terrible at keeping up with people, Daniel completely makes up for it with his ridiculous ability to maintain friendships.  This leads to A LOT of friends.  We host people at our house pretty regularly, and a typical group size is easily 30 people, and those are just the ones who show up and live in the area, not everyone who is invited.  A wonderful problem to have, I would like to think!  Between this and his large-ish family, I figured we could have as many as 250 - 300 people coming to this shindig.  No, I had not yet conceptualized how much that would cost.

But that's what I was starting with, along with a severe distaste for ugly ballroom carpets like so...

Ick. Source

And the knowledge that our preference of non-peak season dates along with our OCD tendencies (if we could worry about rain and bugs, we would worry about rain and bugs) would require an indoor venue.  And I googled.  I googled the shit out of bay area wedding venues. I spent copious time looking into every venue on WeddingWire and HereComestheGuide that was a remote fit, Yelp (just to see what came up), and just The Internets at large.  I even went as far as to request information from a couple of places before we got engaged (in my defense, it was at the urging of my own mother - she thought it was a good idea to gather information early!).  

I eliminated venue after venue... because I didn't like the layout, or the space was only large enough in an outdoor area, or I asked for pricing and the minimums were in the $20,000 range.  And then I was left with one....

The Bridges Golf Club in San Ramon.

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We were still looking at a 20 minute drive, but for Bay Area standards that is almost nothing.  I liked the look of it, I liked the view, I liked that there were no carpets,

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I liked that the food sounded good, and I liked that there was a cool tunnel to take photos in!

Guys!! A tunnel!!!! Source

Now let's just take a moment to remember I'm not even engaged at this point.  But don't worry guys, 'cuz I found the perfect wedding venue (please hear my sarcasm through the screen!!).

Le sigh.  I was officially a crazy, wedding-obsessed chick.  But the good news is all this prior research came in handy when we were officially engaged and we realized we had to get a move on on picking a venue.

I presented my argument for why The Bridges was the best to Daniel, and although I was really worried it would be out of our price range he encouraged me to call and make us an appointment.  So off we went! It was just as beautiful in person, and the pricing ended up being surprisingly reasonable for everything that was included!  The space, servers, bartenders, food and beverage packages with a nice range of options and lots of customization available, standard linens and an event captain.

My mom had some major sticker shock when I explained the pricing to her, so we briefly visited one other local restaurant that we could have bought out for the evening.  That visit sealed the deal for The Bridges, because the restaurant so clearly couldn't compare even with the higher price point.

So that was that!*

Did anyone else basically have this stuff figured out before they got engaged? (Please say yes so I feel less crazy!!!!)


*Sort of.  In full disclosure, we are those people who read through all the minutia of contracts and email long lists of questions before signing anything, so it took some back and forth before it was that I guess.  

So, What's the Date??

After "Congratulations!" all newly engaged ladies can tell you that this is the first thing people will ask you (guilty of asking it myself).  While still on our engagement high in Hawai'i, Daniel and I took a little time to talk about some wedding basics, and the date was the first thing we tackled.

I couldn't help myself / Source

Now we knew all this planning would ultimately depend on our actual venues and what their availability was, but we wanted to be prepared with a best case scenario date.  We had a few things in particular we were considering while looking at potential wedding dates:

1) We wanted a Saturday.  Our thought was Saturday is the most convenient for our guests, and, well... it's Saturday.

2) Cooler time of the year.  Daniel (and pretty much his whole family) runs very warm.  In fact I always have to bring a jacket to his mom's, because she keeps all the windows open and the fans running practically year round. Everyone from other parts of the country/world, please don't laugh too much at the California girl for getting cold when it is 65 degrees out!  One of his only specific requests was that he did not want to be sweating profusely throughout his own wedding ceremony and reception (understandable).  Here in the Bay Area, that means maybe late September (although recently is has stayed quite warm into the fall months) through May-ish.

3) Not during peak wedding season.  This, of course, is easily taken care of by wanting a cooler month, since that eliminates all the summer months.  This was a hopeful cost saver and a terribly stubborn need to be different, because I'm difficult like that.

4) Not during any major sports season, but ESPECIALLY not during baseball playoff season.  We are big Bay Area sports fans, but particularly huge San Francisco Giants fans.  We liked the idea of not having any big sporting event going on during our wedding (or the day before or after) because we knew everyone would be distracted by the game, including us.  Football season is a big time for our group of friends also, so that was the other main season we wanted to avoid.

5) We wanted about a year to plan.  Because less than that seemed unrealistic (MAJOR props to all you ladies who plan your stuff in less than a year!!), and longer than that seemed, well, long.

These factors significantly slimmed our potential wedding dates to mid-late February, March, April, and May, with March or April being our top choice months.  We briefly considered some fall dates, but that would have been less than a year to plan, and to avoid baseball post-season (October) we were looking at pushing right up against the holidays, which seemed less than ideal.

This gave us a few months to tell people and potential vendors as the questions rolled in, which made me feel way in control of the whole wedding planning thing.  Ohhhh how I would realize later how little this small amount of planning would mean....

Anyone else get moving on their planning immediately after getting engaged? (The struggles of being crazy planner people.)

Our Epic Engage-cation (or Hawai'i: Third Time's the Charm!)

I have a lot to catch you all up on, the the missing time will make sense soon. But for now, I'm back! Please excuse the break...


I had firmly gone into our vacation deciding to ignore every sign I possibly could that might point to an impending proposal.  Realistically, I was pretty darn sure it was going to happen on this trip, but I was going to pretend I didn't know that.

We arrived in Hawai'i and were greeted at the airport with shell leis and a helper guy (technical term) from the shuttle company to help us with our bags.  It was so sweet and I briefly entertained the thought he would propose in the airport.  When I was disgusting.  Luckily, he didn't do that, so we hopped on our shuttle and headed to the hotel.  Now I still had no idea where we were even staying, so I was pumped to pull up in front of the Sheraton Waikiki.

Yea, that was definitely the view from our room. / Personal Photo

It. was. gorgeous.  Right on the water with a beautiful infinity pool! We checked in, and the whole process took a little while, which I could tell was making Daniel nervous.  (File that under another hint I tried to ignore. He told me later he had called ahead and filled them in on his plans, so he was worried the front desk agent was going to accidentally say something, or congratulate us early. Turns out she had been trying to upgrade us but needed to jump through a couple of hoops.) We headed upstairs and the view was AMAZING.  So after spending a few minutes checking things out, we embarked on the plan we had settled on months before when we first booked our plane tickets - lunch at our favorite spot, Lulus.

I was starving, and SO excited for the amazing food! / Personal Photo

We walked down and ordered some of our favorites and indulged a few happy hour cocktails.  While we were there it started raining, so we decided to just wait it out with more cocktails and walked back a little later once it cleared up.  We took this trip in March (it worked best with both of our schedules), so it rained off and on our whole trip, but luckily that sort of thing doesn't usually bother us.  

Except this time.

This time it really bothered Daniel, because he wanted to have dinner at our favorite dinner spot, the outdoor patio at Duke's.  He kept hoping it would clear up, but as it got late we decided to just try the hot spot restaurant at the hotel.  During dinner the topic of a proposal came up, and Daniel said to me in complete and utter seriousness that he didn't have a ring.  This is a guy who will straight up tell you during a poker game when he has an awesome hand, so when he said to me so seriously that he didn't have a ring, I totally believed him.  All I could think was how annoying it was going to be to tell everyone when I got back that he didn't propose on this darn trip. So. Flipping. Annoying.

So the dinner was ok, and the service was fine-ish, and I was exhausted.  All I wanted to do at that point was head up to our room and fall into bed.  Daniel on the other hand wanted to go for a walk on the beach.  He actually had been talking about taking a walk after dinner all day, but by that point in my exhaustion I had completely forgotten. So off we went, and after a few minutes of walking we found a place to stop and sit and just enjoy the waves.  We had spent a few minutes relaxing and enjoying the view, when Daniel started saying all these sweet things about us and what a great point we were at in our relationship and I started tearing up just at how sweet he was being (still actively pushing proposal thoughts out of my head). I also tried to participate in what I thought was a sweet conversation about our future.

After a minute of this, Daniel stood me up.  And my heart about jumped out of my chest.  And my thoughts were running a mile a minute, something along the lines of 'OMG, OMG, I think this might be happening right now.  RIGHT NOW.  Seriously.  Maybe? But what if this is a fake-out? He said he didn't have a ring. But this seems like a proposal.  I need to see the ring, then I'll believe it.  But seriously, is this happening???'  He used my full name and got down on one knee.  And dammit I was still waiting to see that ring before I reacted!  When he finally pulled it out of his pocket I was done.  Crying. Hyperventilating a touch. Basically freaking out. I said yes approximately five million times, and we stood on the beach kissing, smiling, laughing, crying.  It was ridiculously perfect.

Then I busted out my phone for selfies, obviously. / Personal Photo

In retrospect, I was completely interrupting his proposal speech.  Oops.  Classic Melanie, though, so in some ways that made it even better.  And that ring.  OH was it perfect.  Exactly what I wanted, but better than I ever imagined at the same time.  We finally headed back to our room and I walked in to this:

My thoughtful, wonderful FIANCE had rose petals and champagne set up in our room! This set me off again, of course.  And compelled me to have a mini-photo shoot with my amazing new bling.

We were too exhausted to enjoy the champagne that night, but the next morning we had the most amazing breakfast on our balcony.  We decided to wait a day before we called anyone, which was awesome.  We spent the whole day saying to each other, "Hey, we are engaged! And no one knows!"

Showing off my balcony-breakfast-bling / Personal Photo 

I was so grateful he decided to propose at the beginning if the trip, because the rest of the trip was a celebration! After giving ourselves the day to enjoy, we called our family and friends and spent the rest of our vacation relaxing, eating, drinking, and marveling in our new status as an engaged couple.

A small taste of the rest of our trip / Personal Photo

Take me back, please.  Anyone else have an epic engagement vacation? 

An Unexpected Proposal, Sort of

So real talk, the proposal was only kind of a surprise.  I mean, we went ring shopping together, so I knew it was at least on Daniel's mind.

Hawai'i is a special place for us - we made it Facebook official while I was there, and we vacationed there together twice, the last time being in 2011.  So fast forward to the end of 2013, when Daniel said we NEEDED to go on vacation, and we HAD to go to Hawai'i, and DEFINITELY to Oahu (despite having an employee rate at the same hotel company he works for on the Big Island), I may have known something was up.

Too ridiculous to not use / Source

I had, of course, hypothesized about the chances with my girlfriends, who excitedly insisted that it was happening on our vacation.  After some thought about it all, I decided the best thing I could do was not get too caught up in proposal expectations.  The last thing I wanted to do was ruin our vacation.

Guys, that was so. hard.  But I am truly, honestly incredibly glad that I (pretty much) stuck to it.

So Daniel made all the arrangements for our trip.  I had no clue what was going on beyond the dates and flights.  Hint I tried to ignore #1.

A few days before we left, we got pedicures (yes both of us... I got him to get one with me ages ago and now he will go get his feet scrubbed for special occasions. Woot!), and when we got there he encouraged me to get my finger nails done also.  I sent a quick text message to my BFF asking if it was a sign, and that text resulted in Daniel asking if I had been telling people he was proposing in Hawai'i - oops.  Hint I totally didn't ignore #2.

My mom mentioned my dad gave Daniel a hard time, on the same day as said text, asking if he was going to propose in Hawai'i.  Not a conversation I was present for, hmmmmmmm.  Hint I tried to ignore #3.

I'm heading out from our office to pack for our trip, and after spending weeks talking with my mom on and off about proposal possibilities, I mentioned casually to her that they would know before me anyways, because I knew he would ask for their blessing.  Total silence from my mom.  Hint I tried to ignore #4.

So I headed home that night trying really hard not to focus on all the little signs.  The ladies in my family are infamous for figuring out surprises from just a couple of small hints (my dad has learned to not tell us anything), but every time a thought of a proposal came into my head, I ignored the heck out of it.

That night we both stayed up late packing and preparing for our trip, but I was done without pulling an all nighter.  Daniel was not so lucky, so I headed off to bed.  When I woke up his suitcases were zipped up and ready to go, so off we headed to the airport!

Grabbing breakfast at the airport! / Collage made here / Personal Photo

Any other curious ladies out there? I can't help but try to guess surprises most of the time!

Before the Proposal Came the Ring (Part 2)

At this point we had been together almost 4 years, and despite talking a lot about marriage and rings, no actual shopping had been done.  I honestly assumed Daniel would want to shop for it on his own, and I told him that I 100% trusted his sense of my jewelry style since I loved everything he has bought me in the past.  Despite my reassurance, he decided he would really rather I went with him (because let's be honest, he knows I love this stuff and can be super picky).

So one Saturday, we picked a random jewelry store in our area and went for it!

On our way to go ring shopping! A selfie was obviously needed, because I was SO. EXCITED. / Personal Photo

Guys, I love to shop.  Shopping is not difficult for me, I can literally window shop for hours.  But this? This was frickin hard.  Especially when all we knew was what we didn't want.  Our salesperson was very patient with us, especially since we were being super awkward and silly about the whole thing (I felt like a teenager or something).

I think the hardest thing was that we were not interested in the ring styles that make up 85% of jewelry stores.  Also, the more rings I looked at the more sure I was that I wasn't crazy about any of them.  I realized I wanted something delicate, something sort of unique with interesting details, but still very classic.  I was open to yellow gold, but there was almost nothing in yellow gold to look at so we gave up on that pretty quickly.  I also decided I wanted either a round stone or an emerald cut.

The other issue that we found at every jewelry store we visited was that the second I told the salespeople I wasn't interested in a halo style ring and I wanted something simple, they automatically went for solitaires.  Now I LOVE solitaires, but I am planning on getting a plain wedding band and when I put a plain band next to the plain band of the solitaire, I just felt like it turned these beautiful, delicate rings to something that was just too thick on my finger.  The other issue I have with solitaires is the center stone is often set up fairly high.  I am super clumsy, so the thought of constantly worrying about hitting my ring on things was not appealing.

Our trip was not a bust though, after about an hour of looking through all the cases and trying things on I had found three drastically different styles that I was liking.

Please excuse the iPhone quality / Personal Photo

The first ring I liked had a round center stone and channel set diamonds along the sides.

Personal Photo

I liked the simplicity, and the channel set stones made it a little more interesting, but I couldn't help but feel like it's basically the same ring 80% of my friends currently have.  And I'm difficult, so I didn't like that.  I also worried about stuff getting down in between the side stones.

Personal Photo

This next one was the most unique ring we saw.  It has a round center stone and it is hard to tell in this photo but the sides had designs etched into it.  I loved the idea of it, but the actual design was not quite doing it for me.  

Personal Photo

Finally, there was this beautiful emerald cut ring with baguettes on the sides.  I love the vintage feel of this ring, and it was just barely edging the others out as my favorite.  I have long admired Mrs. Treasure's ring (from WeddingBee), so I was totally into this style.  It still just didn't quite feel like the right ring for me.  

We left with some ideas, but nothing solid.  I don't know if anyone else is like this, but when I got shopping I see something or try something on and I have these moments of just knowing is it perfect.  I was worrying a little that I was looking for that same feeling with ring shopping, and maybe it just wasn't going to happen. 

After that slightly disappointing trip, we waited several weeks before we went shopping again.  I had been itching to check out a local jewelry store, Gleim the Jewelers.  I see the owner, Georgie Gleim, at weekly meetings and knew they had an amazing estate collection.  I figured an estate piece gave me a good shot of finding something classic but a little unique.  So one evening we made the trek there and spent a couple of hours checking out their selection. And let me tell you, it. was. awesome.  

The salesperson was wonderful - so helpful and so knowledgeable.  She honed in on my style incredibly fast and brought us to a section of rings that gave me that moment! They were EXACTLY what I wanted, and I just knew it was the perfect style for me.  What was that?  Well we got distracted by the shiny objects and didn't take photos, but there were about 4 different rings all with the same basic settings:

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I just loved the look of the round center stone with baguette side stones.  I actually asked at the first store if they had anything in this style that I could see, but he didn't and tried to convince me it wouldn't look very nice.  

I was totally taken.  I couldn't believe that we had actually found something I loved so much!  The only downside?  Those suckers were expensive.  I did not know exactly how much Daniel was planning on spending, but I had a good idea that they were above what his price point was.  We left with me lusting after those rings hardcore, but trying really hard not to get my hopes up.

I was sure that was it, but Daniel insisted on looking more (I think to be sure I wasn't going to change my mind).  We spent one afternoon going store to store at our local mall, and all that did was convince me that the round stone with baguette side stones was the perfect style. 

So at this point, the process was out of my hands, and I just had to patiently wait. 

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Which I am terrible at.  In fact, I think Daniel thoroughly enjoyed messing with me while I tried reallyreallyreally hard to not go crazy.

Do all guys enjoy this?  Anyone else have trouble finding a ring they liked at normal jewelry stores?

Before the Proposal Came the Ring (Part 1)

So Daniel and I knew we wanted to get married for a long time.  He actually took me on vacation to Hawai'i (it's kind of our place, if you haven't picked up on that) as a graduation gift after we had been dating about 9 months, just weeks before we moved in together.

And let me tell you, our coworkers were sure he was going to propose.  I mean, I was shocked how much I heard about it when we hadn't even been together a year!  Later he admitted that he did actually briefly consider it, but knew we weren't ready to take that step.  Thank goodness for my clear headed honey, because he was totally right.  We burned to a crisp our first day on the beach and still had an amazing trip.  It was also nice to confirm we could spend two weeks together non-stop and still like each other.

On top of Diamond Head c. 2010 / Personal Photo

Anyways, fast forward a couple of years, and we had definitely had the marriage talk.  With the marriage talk came the ring talk.

I am lucky enough to have a dad who was an amateur jeweler in his youth and a close family friend, Uncle D, who is our go-to-guy for any jewelry related purchases.  I had tried to gently tell my previous boyfriends that they really should consult with my family before buying me jewelry, because not only did I already own some really nice pieces, but I'm actually pretty picky (none of those other boys listened, btw).

Now I have a secret to share ..... Daniel is totally picky too.  He probably would deny it if I read this to him before I pressed publish (sorry honey), but he totally is.  So let's start with what he wanted in a ring:

Daniel's Ring Guidelines:

1. No three-stone rings 

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2. No Halos

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3. Approximately a 1 carat center stone (his guidelines, not mine)

Ok, so this was actually way bigger than one carat / Personal Photo

Fairly straightforward.  Luckily, I shared some of his preferences.

Melanie's Ring Guidelines:

1. No Halos (just not my style)

2. Something simple and classic

3. Good quality diamond and workmanship

4. ummmm........ pretty?

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That's right, beyond an incredibly general preference for simplicity and quality, I had no idea what I wanted.  

Next, we go shopping!

Please tell me I'm not the only one with no clue?