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?