First Anniversary part two: Planning a surprise

Where were we?  Ah yes, our first wedding.  To catch up and read about our wedding part 1, click here.

In order to tell the whole story, we need to back up quite a bit.  I'm talking March 2010.  I went up to Ann Arbor with Lucy for part of my spring break.  It was during this trip that we decided to go ahead with a surprise wedding.  I immediately started looking up venues and photographers.  I had originally wanted to get married at the Brookfield Zoo because we love the zoo, but being the foodies that we are, we wanted to go with our favorite restaurant, Meson Sabika in Naperville, IL.  Right before we moved to Madison, we told our parents that we were going to go to Meson Sabika for lunch.  If our parents had dined there before or were really familiar with the restaurant, they would have known that they don't serve lunch.  We met with the event planner and booked the place on the spot.  Easy peezy.

Oh wait, except that my best friend and sorority sister had gotten engaged just months before and was planning a wedding for July 2011 and Andrew's brother just got engaged.  Panic ensued as I prayed that neither would pick our day or one close to ours.  I really didn't want to have to share our secret so early, but thankfully we didn't have to.  Both picked dates a few weeks before and after our wedding date.  PHEW

Fast forward a couple of months and still dodging those engagement questions.  Now that we were living together, people were expecting it.  I even remember my mom asking me one day when we were going to get engaged.  I just shrugged and said "eh, eventually."  However, the dreaded wedding dress shopping was quickly approaching and I knew I couldn't do it by myself.  I told Andrew that we would have to tell our parents soon.

We were planning to go back to Geneva for a weekend in October.  I called my parents and told them that we wanted to go to dinner with them and Andrew's parents.  Of course, everyone assumed that we were going to tell them that we were engaged.  We went to Molcajete on October 22, 2010, snacked on some chips and salsa and ordered some food.  My mother was giddy with excitement.  I wanted until after we order to spring the news on them. It went something like this:
Me: Ok, now I know you're all thinking this, however, we're not engaged.  BUT we are getting married... next July.
Everyone else: wait, what?

I proceeded to explain the surprise wedding concept and why we chose this type of wedding.  They were all on board, but pretty disappointed we weren't celebrating an engagement and even more disappointed that they were sworn to secrecy!  My dad thought we were just getting everyone together to announce that we were getting another dog.  Good guess, Skip :)

My mom is a wonderful person and immediately jumped in to help me with everything.  If it wasn't for her, we wouldn't have had the wedding that we did.  I booked all the big stuff, but she did flowers, decorations, favors, set-up, all of it.  And all that little stuff is a lot harder than the big stuff!  Also difficult: wedding dress shopping.  I dreaded it.  I probably tried on 30+ dresses at 5 different stores, and even left in tears a few times.  My poor mother and future mother-in-law.  They had to endure the search and the let down so many times.  Now that is something I'm glad I don't have to do again.  Don't get me wrong, my dress was very pretty and perfect for our wedding, but I didn't love it.  In fact, it still sits in a closet in the garment bag.  Should probably get that cleaned and preserved, right?

Remember that best friend and sorority sister who was getting married at the beginning of July?  Well, I was in her wedding, so that meant lots of wedding talk.  There were so many times I almost blurted it out.  "Oh you can totally wear pink shoes with your wedding dress.  I'm wearing hot pink with mine!"  It was torture trying to keep this secret from everyone, especially my closest friends.  I know it was even harder for my mom.  But she was such a trooper :)

As you know from Part 1, we got married before our wedding.  It just seemed right for us.  We didn't plan it all along, but it just happened.  We had originally wanted Andrew's brother, Chris, along with my brother, Sam, to perform the ceremony.  They are two of the people who know us best.  However, Chris didn't know about our wedding and we struggled with telling him about it and having him be apart of it and leaving his older brother in the dark.  In the end, Sam already found out (Marc let the cat out of the bag, oops!), so I asked him if he would do it.  It would be our surprise to Mom and Dad because they had no idea.

We invited everyone to our wedding under the guise of an engagement party.  Andrew was going to surprise me with a "proposal."  So people were thinking that they were coming to surprise me, but we surprised them instead :)