Costs

Through my premature browsing I am seeing a trend on budgeting weddings and where to cut costs and where to spend a little extra. I don't remember where I read it, but the statement was that weddings guest remember these things: the dress, the food, and the entertainment. I think the setting may have been one as well. Anyway some of my recent browsing through magazines have been to get ideas of how to cut cost in other areas like favors and centerpieces. 

Quoc and I are setting aside time soon to sit down and calculate our finances for the next 2+ years. Remember, I am going to stop having an income starting mid-august. Luckily I have saved a good bit of money and I will be taking out a number of loans for school. Again, luckily my school is relatively inexpensive in relation to other local programs. However, I still need to have money for a cost of living not to mention money for a wedding and numerous house projects. With our budgeting we need to figure out how much money we plan to allot for the wedding before we can plan anything for it. I googled the average cost for a wedding in 2007 and there was an article on MSN from a knot.com survey. It goes through the average cost of a dress to the average number of guests. I thought it was pretty informative and interesting. Enjoy.

Tentative Wedding Date

(on already having a wedding date)

Carly: Did you see what I wrote, it said TENTATIVELY.
Me: I know. Do you know what engagement means?
Carly: What?
Me: Tentatively getting married.

Timeframe

So I know that a lot of people have been wondering why we are waiting 2+ years to get married. Well Quoc and I talked about this among many other things prior to getting engaged. We wanted to take our time and really enjoy just being engaged and planning things for our wedding slowly. I didn't want to feel rushed into decisions for the wedding or fall into the Bridezilla stereotype. Someone I knew got engaged on a Friday and on Sunday his fiancee was already dragging him to see reception sites. That is just insane! I must admit though after people started handing me bridal magazines I started getting really excited about planning and Quoc would have to nicely remind me to calm down...being as we do have 2+ years to make any decisions. 

Aside from just enjoying the time we are engaged the next two years are going to be very busy for me. This fall I quit work at HUP and begin school full-time for my CRNA (certified registered nurse anesthetist). The program is intense and most of my time will be dedicated to studying. So realistically planning a wedding within a year or less while in school is not ideal. The fall of 2010 I will be prepping for my Boards and the last week of Oct./first week of Nov. I will take my exam. Hopefully all loose ends will be tied up for the wedding by then and we will get married tentatively the weekend before Thanksgiving. Hopefully that clears up some of the reasons for the wait. 

How It Happened - Asking The Dad

. . .or not

. . .well, sort of

White Anglo Saxon tradition is for the future groom to ask the future bride her father for a blessing or permission to get married. I pretty much thought it was a given but over the years, I've heard both sides of asking and not asking. I really was on the fence about this until I had a conversation with Adam who got married last year.

Adam said to go ask Carly's dad. I then mentioned what if I didn't' get a chance to ask before of the short time between getting the ring and going to the Bahamas. He said that's fine, just call her Dad as soon as the proposal is done and explain that I didn't get a chance to ask him because of time constraints but I wanted to get his blessing in marrying Carly.

I then played devil's advocate and said what about not asking since its an old tradition. He said if a guy married Madison (his 8 month daughter) and didn't ask for his permission he would "beat the kids ass." I got a good chuckle out of that.

I decided that I would ask. On the way back from Erie, I was going to drop by Lock Haven and have dinner with Carly's younger sister Ashley. I then thought to myself that it might be a good chance to help Ashley start moving her stuff out since I had room in my car. It was also the perfect excuse to drop by Carly's parents place to have "the talk."

Things went according to plan. I made it to Lock Haven and took Ashley out to dinner and got some of her stuff to take back to her house. I called Carly and told her I had stuff to drop off at her parent's place and she called them to let them know I was coming. Turns out that on a random Monday night when people are usually at home, Carly's parents were away for prior plans. There was an outside chance that her dad would be there when I arrived at 9:30pm but as fate had it, he wasn't there when I got there. I dropped off Ashley's stuff and came to the realization that I would have to go with Adam's suggestion of asking when I'm down in the Bahamas.

How It Happened - Road to the Ring

With my Mom in the know, it was now a matter of finding a weekend to get to Erie to get the ring. I left on a Saturday at about 2:30pm and got into Erie around 11:00pm. The next morning, my Mom and I decided that the best place to get a ring would be to go to Canada since its tax free. I drove the three and a half hours to get to Toronto where there was a strip of jewelry stores in Chinatown. After picking up the ring, my Mom and I got haircuts at a hair salon and then had dinner at a Vietnamese cafe. On the way back, it turned out that my Mom forgot her passport to get back into the US. I called my sister to figure out what usually happens in this scenario.

I thought to myself, "Man, if you can talk your way into getting your Mom past a customs border g guy, you can talk a person into almost anything."

When we got to the customs officer, I responded cheerfully to his questions and said I took my Mom to Toronto for the day as an early Mother's Day present since I was going back to Philly. After looking at my Mom's driver's license and asking who our President and Vice President were (she answered both correctly), the guy let us through. I then drove back to Erie and the next morning, drove back to Philly.

All in all, driving 1200 miles in 48 hours is all the time it took to get the perfect ring.

How It Happened - Telling Mom

My Mom has always been asking me about when I was going to get married the past few years and has even tried to get me to go weddings of family and friends to try to introduce me to a potential future daughter in law. She eventually met Carly and really took a shine to her immediately because Carly fit the mold of someone she wanted for me which was someone who makes me happy and someone who really cares about family. When I decided to get the ring, I wanted to keep it a secret and the only person I told was my Mom.

My Mom had a trip planned to Vietnam for two months through mid-April to mid-June which meant that we would miss Mother's Day this year. After a few tries planning a trip to Erie that did not work out, I finally was able to schedule the visit five days before we left for the Bahamas. I called my Mom up to tell her I was coming to Erie and when I explained why, she took it pretty well and went through the questions any protective parent would ask:

"Are you sure she makes you happy? Are you sure you want to do this?"

I gave her a very enthusiastic and clear "YES."

She replied, "Alright. Let's do this. Look online to get an idea of what you want and when you get to Erie we'll figure it out."

It was on.

As a side note, Carly was very unhappy upon finding out I was planning a trip to Erie without her and it took a lot of convincing that this trip was more to see my Mom before she left for Vietnam and would have been inconvenient for Carly to go since I was going to be in Erie for only a day and a half.

The best part was that I was able to involve my Mom in picking out the ring I would give to my future wife.

How It Happened - The Inspiration

I still remember being at a wedding with Carly toward the end of February for her cousin Caitlin and her husband Gary. It was the traditional bouquet toss and as Caitlin threw the flowers over her shoulder, I recall thinking to myself how "far to right" the flowers were going. Coincidentally, right into Carly's hands.

The idea of an engagement and marriage was never seriously on my mind. I've told Carly before that I thought of her as "The One" and that marriage was inevitably a matter of time but that time never really had a time frame.

Fast forward to middle of March 2008.

At the company sales meeting in February 2008, it was announced that I made the President's Club trip to the Bahamas. We started getting the agendas and activities planned for the trip. The agenda included:

• Staying at The Cove Atlantis
• Rooms with a view of the beach
• Dinners at fabulous restaurants like Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill
• Swimming with the dolphins
• Sunset sail boat cruise
  

It hit me quickly and suddenly. This trip was going to be something I'll never forget. This trip could be one she will never forget. If I wanted to do something special, I had the best possible environment and situation to do it. I knew she was "the one" and I had the money. . .what was I waiting for? I had to be opportunistic. I had to do the proposal in the Bahamas.