Wedding Wednesday: The Proposal

Part of me wishes I had blogged throughout the wedding planning process. What a neat way to record a time that at one moment seemed to be dragging by and at another flying by with lightening speed! However, I never could make myself sit down and do it. So I'm doing it now, looking back on the 14 months I spent planning the day I dreamed about since I was a little girl!

What better place to start than the beginning?

We started talking about getting married back in the summer of 2009 and we shopping for rings. I made it very clear that he shouldn't buy a ring until he was ready. I knew I was going to spend the rest of my life with him, so I didn't feel the need to say "I need the rock by X or I'm gone!" While I didn't tell him what I was thinking, I was guessing he would ask sometime in the spring or early summer of 2010.

February 27, 2010 was a really pretty, unseasonably(55 or so) warm day. JR and I had a date planned. It is something we try to do each month and this one was our make-up Valentine's Day date because neither one of us like the idea of battling the Feb.14 crowds and waiting four hours at a restaurant we could go to any other day with no wait!

At the time, he lived in an apartment out in suburbs while I lived closer to my job downtown. We were spending the weekend at his place and had plans to go to Bonefish Grill, one of our favorites for special occasions that wasn't too far from his place. He told me all weekend he wanted to go downtown to The Peabody since it was such a pretty day and and I'd received my DSLR for Christmas and could practice taking pictures with it down there. I thought it was odd he wanted to drive 30 minutes in the opposite direction of our destination, but whatever. It was date night!

We made it downtown and into the lobby of the hotel...and saw Charles Barkley. That was exciting. I entertained myself taking pictures of the ducks in the fountain, all the while J was trying to get me up to the roof. He finally convinced me to step away from the ducks and we went up to the rooftop for a view of downtown Memphis. He found a spot away from some crowds, told me he loved me and then he proposed!

After celebrating, we immediately called our friends and family. He called his parents and sent a mass text to his friends. I spent a half hour calling my family and then all of my close friends. We had champagne to celebrate and then went off to dinner!

That's our proposal story! Sweet but not extravagant, it was one of the best days ever!