Celebrating an uncommon anniversary

Christmas Day means more than Christmas Day for me now. And it's all because of Robert's proposal. We were engaged the morning of Christmas Day last year, so we celebrated an uncommon anniversary this year. Poor Robert seemed disappointed at first that we have been engaged for over a year and still have five months to go before the wedding. But, I keep reassuring him that, although I'm ready to be married to him as well, we made the smartest decision and will reap the benefits of taking our time. We got the first pick of our date (Memorial Day weekend, an extremely popular date), and we got the first pick of our venues (the only Catholic church in town for the ceremony and the nicest hotel in the area for the reception).

This morning I was reminiscing. This time last year, on December 29th, Robert and I were visiting local family and friends to show off the ring and to celebrate our engagement. He and I went to Johnny Carino's (which has apparently shut down here due to some sort of drug crime or other), had a delicious Italian dinner, and started one of our many future wedding planning talks. In the course of this conversation, we figured out how many people would be in our bridal party, what our preferred dates would be, where we would like the ceremony and reception to be held, and what sorts of "themes" we would prefer. Of course, as we learned, deciding upon the date of your wedding depends entirely upon the availability of your preferred venues. We only have one Catholic church here, and, with me being a born and raised Roman Catholic, it went without saying that I wanted a Catholic ceremony. We made an appointment with the priest after the first of the year (literally the day the church office reopened after the holidays), and we met with him to discuss dates. Robert and I have a lot of out-of-town guests (more than two-thirds), and we wanted to hold our wedding on a long weekend for their sake. Our priest looked at his calendar, we looked at ours, and that's how we decided upon May 23, 2009.

(Funny little factoid: in the course of our conversation this time last year, I had said off-handed, "So, basically, we'll have save-the-dates, too, which will say our date, like May 23, 2009. Ha...wouldn't it be funny if we did get married on May 23rd?" This was before I knew it was a Saturday. And this was before I knew it was the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. Neat how those little things work out...it's like I always knew our anniversary would be May 23rd.)

The priest penciled in our names on his calendar but explained that, until the deposit had been received, we were not guaranteed the date. He told us we were the first couple to approach him for this date (a year and a half in advance, mind), so we'd get first dibs, but we'd need to make the deposit soon. That meant that we had to find a reception site fast, too. A few days after our initial meeting, the priest called me and left a message saying, "Hi Amanda, I wanted you to know that I've just spoken to three other couples who are interested in May 23, 2009. Please let me know if you still want this date." I called him back immediately, secured the date, and dashed over there with the deposit. We ran a risk now because we had a church but no reception site, so with bated breath we toured a couple of hotels. Fortunately, these same three couples who were interested in the only Catholic church in town had not yet approached the hotels. We were the first to ask for May 23 at our hotel of choice, secured it a week later with a deposit, and then the entire process began.

When we told our (unmarried) friends that we had our date and venues set, they were humored by how fast we acted. "Why are you doing this a year and a half before the wedding? Aren't you jumping the gun?" Nope. Not when you're getting married in a small town on one of the most popular wedding weekends in the height of wedding season.

So, that said, why not May 24, 2008 (Memorial Day weekend)? Or August 30, 2008 (Labor Day weekend)? Well, we considered these dates. I had a problem with Labor Day weekend for a couple of reasons. The first is that it's only a couple of days after my sister's birthday, and I didn't want to take away from her celebration. The second is that it's at the beginning of the semester, and I wasn't sure how logical it would be to try to move, get married, and begin teaching classes in the same month. Our problem with Memorial Day weekend this year was that it would have only given us five months to plan, and we would likely have not had as nice a wedding as we're having. And we'd probably not be able to pick the venues we did.

Are we tired of waiting for our wedding day to come? Yeah, pretty much. But has it helped us to have so much ample time to plan? Absolutely.

When we returned home after our trip to Breckenridge and Atlanta (which I'll write about later), Robert said, "On our drive back, all I could think about was how tomorrow morning will be the first time in two weeks that I won't get to wake up and see you first thing in the morning." No, we didn't bunk up on our vacation. But we were able to spend our mornings together after crawling out of our beds. The realization hadn't hit me yet and saddened me...but I'm also excited to know that neither of us were annoyed with each other or tired of seeing each other.

Is it May 23, yet? :)