Our Untraditional Engagement (& other little wedding details)

Chances are, that if you don't hang out with me, Andy or any of our close family members or friends, you had no idea we were getting married.

Rewind back to some random day in April 2015. I had an awful dream that Andy had died. It was so realistic that I vividly remember sitting down with Levi and Rex and I was about to tell them that he's gone when I jolted awake.

I took that as a sign. A huge sign.

I nudged Andy awake and said, "I had a dream that you died. We need to get married."

At that time, we had been together for 6 years. Living together for over 5.5 years. We had a 2.5 year old child together. We knew we would get married. Someday. EVERYONE pretty much knew we would get married. Someday. Why not now? What's wrong with right now?

So, we took about a week to mull things over. How many guests would we have? When would we have our wedding? What do we envision it looking like? How much money is this going to cost us? We had a lot of variables to consider.

I wanted to do it sooner than later.

My dad has been progressively losing his ability to walk since 2012. He needed to walk me down the aisle. I'm his only child.

We'll get married this fall. 5 months from now.

So, we started telling our close family. Then our close friends.

We set the date for September 26th. I wanted to get married at our cabin. Surrounded by only the people we were closest to.

But where would our guests stay? Our cabin is small. It could be cold outside. It could be rainy. The hotels and motels in the area are nothing to brag about. So, I did some digging. I found an amazing house we could rent on a private lake right in the same little town as our cabin. 7 bedrooms with space to sleep 22 people throughout the house. I toured it (without Andy.. it interfered with nap time and he trusts my judgment) and I fell in love with the place!

So, we'll have the wedding at this house! And we'll make an entire weekend out of it! BUT we agreed to sign the marriage license at the dining room table at the cabin. So we could make it officially, official at our most favorite place.

Well, things got rolling with planning the wedding and then we started talking about rings. I didn't have a ring on my finger. We're already "engaged", what would be the point in getting a ring right now? None, really. So, I decided I didn't want to see my ring until we were at the alter. It was one of the best decisions ever! I am so, so glad I waited to see it. It was the highlight of my whole day. Andy could not have designed a more perfect ring for me!

That's not the only thing we did different.. We also opted not to post anything on social media about us getting married. It wasn't a "secret" (we were just fine with word of mouth) but it just felt right to me to not post anything, anywhere online about us getting married. It made our day feel more special to me now that I look back on it.

September 26th, 2015 was such an amazing day. The weather was great, I never felt stressed, everything went just as planned and here we were, promising our commitment to each other in front of 45 of our closest family and friends.

We had the wedding I had always dreamed of... && more.