The Great Eight

I always get nostalgic at this time of year, thinking back to this brief season of our engagement, which was eight years ago now. I loved being engaged, and even though we elected to have a short engagement, I soaked it up. This week I got out the engagement scrapbook so I could look back over the fun memories we made, and I thought I would pick out eight significant moments from that time to share with you today. (Please note that it is impossible for me to say these are my eight top favorites. It was all my favorite. These are just eight of the moments that feel especially meaningful to me this year.)

1. Wedding Planning Fun!

Ryan proposed to me on a Thursday, and we both already had taken the next day off work to go on an all-day date. Of course I had no idea when I asked for the day off that we would be using that day to plan our wedding, but that's what happened! We drove to Brown County and hiked in the state park. Between the drive (a couple of hours each way) and the hiking time, we had hours to spend planning our wedding! That's when we decided to get married in December and to go to Florida to get married. It was SUCH a fun day - both in the fall scenery of Brown County and in the wedding planning! I hear stories of people whose wedding planning was so stressful because of all the outside opinions crushing in on them, and I'm so grateful ours was just a fun day for the two of us, where we could dream to our hearts' content!

2. Engagement Photos.

By the time we got engaged, I'd looked at a million and three (roughly) engagement sessions of all my married friends, and I so looked forward to being able to be part of such a session! Fun fact: we actually had TWO engagement photo shoots. The first one was in our beloved Matter Park in Marion, and it was a curly hair/casual clothing session. About a week later, we had a few more taken at Ryan's mom and step-dad's cabin, and I wore dressier clothes and had my hair straight for that night. Ryan's mom took all our pictures for us, and she did a great job. The photo above is one of my favorites from both rounds of pictures, and in fact, we have it displayed in our home still to this day. It also features our chalkboards, which we still use in almost every single photo shoot. Though we raced against waning sunlight both times, I had so much fun and love looking at all these photos. 

3. Saying yes to my dress. 

One of the perils of getting married two months after getting engaged (and being oddly proportioned) is trying to find a wedding dress that fits AND can go home with you the same day you find it. I went dress shopping seven weeks before our wedding day, and I'd looked online for a dress I might like. I had fallen in love with one of the dresses but feared it would look terrible on me. (This had always been my experience with Easter dress shopping: anything that I loved online was not flattering on my person.) The night of my dress shopping, I had a smattering of work friends and family with me, and several more from out of state sent in votes via text as the dress modeling went along. The store had the dress I loved in stock and generally in my size, so I was excited! When I put the dress on in the fitting room, I had no idea what it looked like, because there were no mirrors inside the room. When I walked out, I could tell from all the faces that this was it! Sharing that night with so many friends made it extra special. 

4. Building bears with Ryan.

Some of you who have been longtime readers will remember that when we got married, we had an honorary bridesmaid and groomsman in our wedding who were represented by stuffed bears. The bridesmaid bear was in memory of my former roommate, Angela, who died a year and a day before our wedding. She had battled cancer for many months and one of her bucket list items was to be a bridesmaid in my wedding. (I wasn't even dating anyone when she asked me.) I wanted to honor my promise to her, and I wanted to honor my nephew, Kirk, who was stillborn when I was ten. So we made a bear in his memory, too. Ryan and I took a Saturday to drive to Fort Wayne and knock out a bunch of wedding planning and shopping. While in town, we went to Build-a-Bear and made the bears together. I wrote letters to Kirk and Angela and tucked them inside the bears before we stuffed them. It was a sweet memory for me to create the bears and share the day with Ryan. 

5. Working the Mercy Me concert with Ryan.

Because I worked in radio during this season of life, and because Ryan had proposed on the air, having him be part of my work life was really important to me. A couple of weeks after we got engaged, I was scheduled to represent the station at a Mercy Me concert. It was on a Saturday, which meant Ryan could come too, and it was the first time he attended a work event officially as my fiance. Scott Tsuleff and I went on stage to throw fling rings prior to the concert, and Scott introduced me as the newly engaged Bekah Freelan. I LOVED THAT!! People came by the station table to meet Ryan - and from that point forward, I think most of them thought he actually worked there! It was so much fun to share work life with him, and this was the start of it.  

6. Bridal showers everywhere!

I had prepared myself (when I realized how short the engagement would be) to not experience a regular bridal shower. Who had time to plan one? Turns out that three sets of people did, because I was blessed with THREE showers in that short time. (In fact, two of them were on the same day, and the third one was five days later. I wrote thank you notes for a good while!) Ryan's mom and sister planned the first one, and it included friends and family from the area where we lived. A couple of fun facts from this shower include: it was the first time I had met some of Ryan's aunts/cousins/other family members. I needed nametags that day! Also: during the "how well do you know the bride" game, my mom got my birthdate wrong. LOL!! She put down my sister's birthday, which is ten days before mine. Well, ten days and a handful of years. Later that day, my matron of honor threw me a bachelorette party/bridal shower that was SO MUCH FUN! We went out to eat and then out for chocolate and ice cream after. I loved the night and the friends who came to share it. I even got the bride-to-be sash and everything. It was a night I will always treasure. And then a few days later, the girls at WBCL threw a shower at a tea room in Fort Wayne. Lynne Ford prayed a powerful prayer over me and my upcoming marriage with Ryan, and I loved that moment so much! 

7. Creating a wedding together.

I wrote this at the end of our scrapbook: "When we weren't doing all the other fun things in the pages before this  one, we were working hard on the actual wedding plans! Ryan took charge of finding us a wedding coordinator, videographer, photographer, and getting the hotel room and marriage license for us. I worked on all the craft projects...making the boutonnieres for the guys, the lanterns for the girls, and writing the content for our 16 page wedding program. Together we wrote the ceremony and assembled the programs. We did all the list-making and packing to take everything we needed from Indiana to Florida for the wedding, reception, and honeymoon. I did my own pedicure and had my trusted Debbie give me a manicure for the big day. We crafted itineraries for our wedding day for everyone involved. By the day of our departure for Florida, we felt completely prepared and ready to go!" Our wedding really did feel like our wedding because we had put it all together ourselves and loved every moment of doing it! 

8. The road trip to get married.

It was the final piece of our engagement, but what a HUGE memory it was (and still is!) for us. We got married in Florida - and we live in Indiana. It wasn't practical to fly because of all the pieces and parts we had to take with us to make the wedding happen. (My dress, Ryan's wedding attire, the clothes for one of our wedding party couples who DID fly, gifts for our wedding party, our cake and cupcakes for the guest, all the wedding props, and our honeymoon luggage.) So we drove! We left at 1 p.m. on Friday afternoon (after I worked that morning) and drove straight through to Florida, stopping briefly at a rest stop in Georgia to take a 3 hour nap. After a legendary 3 hour traffic jam just 10 minutes from our destination, we finally arrived at our resort, 24 hours after we left Indiana. I was so exhausted that I actually felt sick. We unpacked our car, met our family and friends for a "rehearsal" and then Ryan went to stay with his best man while his best man's wife came to stay with me - and when we woke up on Sunday morning, it was our wedding day! That whole whirlwind of a trip was such an adventure, but it was the perfectly imperfect end to our engagement!

The great eight! Ryan, I had the biggest smile on my face as I wrote this post. I loved our engagement, and I love being married to you!