My FI and I have been dating for 6 years and living together for about 5 and a half. We both have a lot of divorce in our families, and so we were pretty wary of marriage. We attended a friend's wedding in Hawaii in 2007 and my FI brought up the whole marriage thing. I said I wasn't ready and that I'd let him know when I was ready. I loved him, but I just wasn't ready to marry him. Last August we attended my cousin's wedding and it suddenly felt right. I felt absolutely positively ready to be married to him. I started researching like crazy and after 3 days of non-stop wedding research I decided to bring it up to him...that's right, I hadn't told him yet...oops. So he comes home late from work and I sit him down and tell him I'm ready. I cannot tell you how excited he was! It was so cute! I wish I could have planned it better and really proposed to him, but I just couldn't wait. So I guess our proposal story is a little silly. Whatever. We love each other. That's what counts.

Anyway, in September my Mom agreed to pay for the wedding and we set off on planning. We found a great location and were about to put down a deposit when the stock market crashed! My Mom lost a ton of $$ and couldn't pay for the wedding anymore. That TOTALLY sucked! It took me many months of moping and being depressed before I could serioiusly think about the wedding again. I know it sounds lame, but when you do that much planning and it all goes away, it's kind of disheartening.

After telling people for months that we wanted to get married but didn't know how, we finally started figuring out how. We don't have much money, but we adjusted our budget and went back to the drawing board. In March, I found a restaurant that fit our new budget. We were so anxious to get married that we decided to keep our original time frame and get married right before our birthdays in June. ...that's right, 3 months to plan the whole thing! :-) Woo hoo! WE'RE SOOOOOOO EXCITED!