I’m taking a break from our regularly scheduled ring posts to share a contest I just found. I’ve had wedding favor fever recently, and I’m shopping around for the best deals. PWPOnline.com is giving away $50 worth of free favors if you tell them how you’d make your own DIY favor! All the details of the wedding favor contest are on their blog. I wish I’d found this sooner, it looks like it ends on 5/31/09.

I like the idea of DIYing my own candle or food favors. Now I’m going to have to really brainstorm! Once this is over, I’ll be sure to share  my entry with everyone here.

After all my searching, I found the perfect setting at Brilliant Earth.  I fell in love, hard:

I also liked the stance they took on ethical diamond mining. Unfortunately, they were a bit out of our price range. I also wanted to see what we were buying before making a commitment. I’ve read a lot of stories about people having a great experience buying diamonds online, and I’m sure it’s all true. It just makes me nervous. The plus side is that this was a chance for us to avoid the chain stores and support a local business!

We took a weekday in January to go around and visit several local jewelers. Most didn’t have a style like the one I wanted in stock. They were very willing to custom make my ring, but it cut into our budget. Then we went to Rainbow Jewelers. The staff there was extremely helpful and went through several catalogs to find the perfect setting. We found one that looked very similar to the ring above at half the cost of a custom order. Yay! We were able to pick out a beautiful stone and we sealed the deal.

Of course, nothing ever goes according to plan. We got a call from the jeweler about 3 days later with some bad news…

So, I wanted to take some time and share the journey that brought us to my very own Ring Of Dreams.

FH and I started talking about marriage seriously last December. We both knew we wanted to spend our lives together for a while before that point, but our financial situations got a bit more stable and we realized our ’someday’ was now!

After that, I spent a lot of time online trying to find my ideal ring. FH told me he wanted me involved because while he had a good grasp on my taste, this was going to be something I wear the rest of my life. I started browsing sites like Blue Nile and Jewelbasket in order to figure out what I actually liked. My jewelry style tends to be pretty simple. I go for a pendant on a thin chain over a chunky necklace. As a result, solitaire rings really caught my eye.

At the same time, I didn’t want a plain, ordinary ring. I wanted mine to be unique (like every bride before me, I’m sure). I was really attracted to rings with sapphire side stones, or even blue sapphires as the main stone.

I didn’t expect FH’s reaction to my idea of a sapphire engagement ring – he didn’t like it! Well, if I had really wanted it, I think he would have gone for it, but he wanted to get me a diamond since it is the traditional stone for an engagement ring. I didn’t argue it because at the end of the day, he was doing this for me and I was still getting some sparkles.

And that’s when I found the perfect mix of simple and unique….

How awesome is this?

I WANT THIS. I’ve told a few people about my yearning for a bagpipe entrance and the reaction is mixed. Half love it, and the other half think I’m nuts. It all depends on the final location (2o people in a garden doesn’t work, but 70 in a church, yes!), but I already have a piper who’s willing to do it (hi Jim!!). Jim’s family has been with the Wyoming Valley Pipe and Drum band for a quite a while. Which means we’ve been following them on their St. Patty’s pub crawls for quite a while. They’re top notch, if anyone else planning a Northeast Pennsylvania wedding has pipe dreams like mine.

This is the fun part, for sure. we’ve been calling people and telling them our news since the proposal on Wednesday. Everyone has been really excited and supportive! We got a lot of  the regular questions… “did you pick a date?” “how did he propose?” etc etc. I figured I should share more about the actual proposal, then I’ll back track and do a post about actually finding the Ring Of Dreams.

FH came over my house Wednesday night. I was in the back yard playing with Barney:

Me and Barney at Rickett's Glen

When I hugged FH, I felt something in his jacket pocket, but I’ve been kinda paranoid about the impending proposal, so I put it out of my mind. We went inside and were watching tv together for a while. He was being a good boy, rubbing my neck a bit (back to that whole stress thing). He got up kind of suddenly, and went out to the living room, where my parents were. Now, he gets along just fine with my parents, but neither of us have been known to, you know, chillax with them without each other there. That’s when I realized he was asking for their blessing – with me in the next room!!

I didn’t go out, and I didn’t mute the tv to hear what he said. I did start freaking out a bit, but I checked myself before he came back. When he came back into the room, he pulled out the box and got on one knee…. and that’s as far as he got before I went batshit crazy! I was so excited I just hugged him and cried and he clearly knew my feelings on the matter.

So that’s my story! We’re all excited and ready to start this crazy journey in earnest now. I guess it’s time to start figuring out what I actually want to do…

He proposed! SO HAPPY! I love him so much, and I’m so lucky. So, so lucky. I’ll be more eloquent later. Right now, I’ll leave you with a gratuitous ring shot:

All right, I realize not many people are reading this yet… YET. But I wanted to share how excited I was about buying my first domain name. I am now NEPABRIDEBLOG.COM, rather than nepabride.wordpress.com. YAY!

That was easy peasy, and now I look almost legit. Go me.

I was talking with my Maid of Honor (MOH) the other day, and she told me a story that really got me hot under the collar. I ended up maaaaybe making a small scene in the shoe section at Target.

She is attending a wedding this summer with her boyfriend. His uncle is getting married and he is in the wedding party. Apparently, the bride and groom are making everyone in the wedding party, and their dates, pay for their own dinner at the reception. It’s $100 per plate!

I guess what really gets me, is this isn’t a couple of kids fresh out of college trying to get by. The groom is lawyer and I’m pretty sure the bride also has a good job. They’re both in their 50’s, and the groom has been married once before. I don’t think it’s an issue of not being able to afford to feed the wedding party.

I was digging around to see what I could find on the subject, but Google is not being my friend today. I’ve mentioned it to a few engaged friends and they thought it was outrageous. Even FH gave me the suspicious eyebrow when I told him the story. Emily Post did sum it up pretty nicely in a section on dating, however:

“Whoever does the inviting does the paying.”

Am I wrong?

I feel like I’ve got a lot on my plate right now. Maybe a little too much to handle. With some family illnesses on both sides, waiting for the proposal, and a lot of work drama… I’ve been wearing around the edges, to say the least. So, after a few good cries this weekend, I’m trying to come up with a plan to get myself back on track. Here’s what I have so far:

• Appointment with my doctor tomorrow to find a way to cope with/heal the tension in my neck. The muscles are so tight that I have headaches all the time.
• Slowly upping the amount of exercise I get each day. Anything more than ‘none’ is bound to help elevate my mood, right?
• Drink more water.
• Sleep better. I function best on 8 hours of sleep a night.

What else am I missing? Work is it’s whole own beast – I’m going to talk to my boss about how to best delegate and spread things out to relieve my stress and also ensure sh*t gets done. But for home… if anyone has good advice about relaxing, meditating, or anything else to help me de-stress, I’m very interested!

FH and I were out for dinner tonight, celebrating our 4 year dating anniversary, and I asked him how he felt about me blogging about our wedding planning process. Half of the story is his, so I wanted to make sure there were no problems before I got too involved. His response?

“Well of course I have no problem with you bragging about how amazing I am on the internet.”

Hahaha sigh I love him.