Engagement Photos Have Arrived!

Full Disclosure: This is a backdated post. I wrote it after the blog was created, but have written it in the style of an in-progress blog so that anyone reading from the beginning will get a more sensible narrative than time-jumping like Old Spock through our wedding planning.

We received the digital copies of our engagement photos from McG Photography today, and they turned out much better than I would have expected photos that contain me to turn out. We had a lot of fun at the shoot at the Christmas tree farm, and you can see what winter in the Pacific Northwest is all about in the shots below. Girl Scout Fiancée's homemade signs turned out so well that Bethany asked if she could keep them for other couples to use, and GSF was gracious enough to hand them over. I felt a pang of relief that Girl Scout Fiancée didn't want to hang on to them for her next engagement shoot with her as-yet-undiscovered second husband.

Thank goodness we were captured in our natural environment: sitting.

The blanket is not just for decoration. It was cold!

This photo taken while, off-camera, other people wonder why we decorated a still-growing tree.

Girl Scout Fiancée lassoed me with Christmas lights for this one.

The traditional Evil Fiancée photo.

Right before Girl Scout Fiancée backhanded the photographer (not really).

Engagement Photo Shoot

Full Disclosure: This is a backdated post. I wrote it after the blog was created, but have written it in the style of an in-progress blog so that anyone reading from the beginning will get a more sensible narrative than time-jumping like Ted Theodore Logan through our wedding planning.
 
Today we did our engagement photo shoot. I've never really understood the big deal around engagement photos (maybe because my own parents didn't seem to have any), but Girl Scout Fiancée was pretty excited to do some cute ones to use as Christmas cards this year. While I don't really get it, I'm always happy to make her happy, even if that inexplicably means taking photos that can prove, in a court of law, that she is somehow associated with me. Why she would damage her reputation like that, I'll never know.

Our photographer was Bethany from McG Photography, who did an awesome job. If you're in the Seattle area, I highly recommend hiring her. She was very accommodating to our location request, and made the two of us look great, despite our own insecurities. We took our photos at a Christmas tree farm way, way, way up north of Seattle. Let's put it this way: it was an hour and twenty minutes to drive up there.

I was rewarded for my acquiescence, however. Girl Scout Fiancée allowed me to stop at my favorite nerd bar/restaurant, AFK Tavern (which is exactly as geeky as it sounds) for a delicious lunch of fried foods and beer. On the way home, I lapsed into a food coma (which totally sounds more socially acceptable than "passed out after only two beers") and Girl Scout Fiancée decided to stop in Newcastle to buy our Christmas tree. Unfortunately, it was pouring down rain, but we got a tree we liked and got it home safely.

We're going to use these photos on our Christmas cards, which double as engagement announcements. GSF even went so far as to design some custom signs for us to use during the shoot, which should turn out really cute.

Extra points for figuring out which one of us held each sign.

Disney World Wedding, Here We Come!

Full Disclosure: This is a backdated post. I wrote it after the blog was created, but have written it in the style of an in-progress blog so that anyone reading from the beginning will get a more sensible narrative than time-jumping like the crew of the Enterprise in Star Trek IV through our wedding planning.

Given the title of this blog, it should be no surprise that it's meant to document our journey toward getting married at Disney World. Prior to asking Girl Scout Fiancée to marry me, we had discussed ideas for weddings and had mentioned Disney World a few times, and both of us were amicable to the idea.

As a little background, I'm a huge Disney World nerd. When I was growing up, Disney World was our constant family vacation site. I've been to Disney World over twenty times, the last one coming in 2007 the summer after I moved to Seattle (I got to go to Disney World with my family when I was sent to the East Coast for business by my company, but unfortunately Girl Scout Fiancée had to stay behind in Seattle). I love Disney World, and it was a huge part of my childhood, from the time I was 5 until I moved to Seattle. I haven't been back in over 5 years, and so you can imagine that I'm going through Disney World Withdrawal.

Sadly, Green Arrow isn't there to help me overcome my Disney World addiction.

So when Girl Scout Fiancée and I started really talking about getting married following our recent engagement, we actually had quite a bit of a conundrum ahead of us. We live in Seattle. Her parents are in Pennsylvania. My parents are in Tennessee. It's not fair to someone if we get married in one of those three locations, so a neutral site is fair to everyone.

Very quickly, Disney World took the lead in our idea of where to get married. It was a neutral site in a warm climate, within driving distance for both of our families. With the wedding packages, a lot of the planning is taken care of by Disney; this was a huge plus for me, because I'm already extremely worried about the logistics of planning (and paying for) a destination wedding. Of course, the fact that the wedding package comes with Annual Passes for both the bride and the groom, as well as the likelihood of some very nice hotel discounts, definitely is a major factor; given where we live, a wedding is the perfect, and possibly only, chance for me to justify a Disney World vacation.

The biggest deal-sealer for me, though, is the fact that Girl Scout Fiancée has never been to Disney World. Back in 2009 we did a big road trip down the West Coast, stopping in Anaheim to spend a day in Disneyland. It was fun (and I didn't even let my Disney World snobbery come to the surface), but there was a single moment for me that was so adorable and heartbeaking at the same time that it firmed up my resolve to make a trip to Disney World happen, come hell or high water.

It's after dark and we've got Fastpasses for the Indiana Jones ride, which is completely awesome and I wish there was a version at Hollywood Studios. We're on our way to the ride right as Fantasmic! is starting. We're not stopping (we figure, why stop to watch a show when this might be our only chance to ride a great ride?) when Mickey Mouse appears on the stage for the first time. We're rushing toward the ride, but Girl Scout Fiancée stops dead in her tracks, turns and points toward the Fantasmic! stage, and, in the most childlike voice full of wonder I have ever heard from her, says, "That's Mickey Mouse!" In that instant, my heart cracked into a thousand little pieces; the excitement and awe on the face of my twentysomething year old girlfriend, who sounded so much like a four year old getting her first glimpse of Mickey Mouse, just wrecked me, because the two other guys that we were with were continuing to rush on, and I wanted to stop everything so that GSF could see the show. In the end, she decided to keep up with the other guys and ride the ride, but that was the moment that I knew I needed to take her back to Disney to see Mickey Mouse in the flesh felt.

A mouse with pyrotechnic powers nearly brought me to tears.

So, when Girl Scout Fiancée and I started narrowing down the options, and Disney World started floating to the top, I knew it was meant to be. I'm jazzed about finally getting married, but more than that I'm looking forward to seeing that look of childlike wonder on her face over and over again, this time without having to rush off to a ride, taking our time and seeing everything she wants to see. This is going to be my chance to introduce the woman I love to the vacation spot that has always been a huge part of my life. When visiting Disney World at a younger age, I would see people getting married there and think about how great it would be to introduce someone to Disney World, and now I'm going to get the chance.

So, I got engaged this week...

Full Disclosure: This is a backdated post. I wrote it after the blog was created, but have written it in the style of an in-progress blog so that anyone reading from the beginning will get a more sensible narrative than time-jumping like Marty McFly through our wedding planning.

Over five years ago, my girlfriend and I moved from Knoxville, TN to Seattle, WA so that I could take a job as a game designer at Wizards of the Coast. It was a risky move; at the time, we had only been dating for about six months, and we'd be making a move across the country, thousands of miles from every friend or family member either of us have. We've been through some rough times, and some great times, and the years have seen us do a lot of fun things, undergo changes in careers, and even saw my girlfriend start and lead her own Girl Scout troop (which is why I have dubbed her Girl Scout Girlfriend, so as to protect her true identity from those supervillains who might be reading this blog).

We'd talked about getting married in the past, but the time never seemed right. Both of us wanted to come into the marriage in a good, stable financial place, and earlier this year that became true for both of us. So, after some sneaky trickeration in which I obtained an engagement ring from Marc Williams Goldsmith, a jeweler in her home state of Pennsylvania that she has wanted her engagement ring from since she was a child, I popped the question to Girl Scout Girlfriend this week. Luckily, she said yes. I guess now she's Girl Scout Fiancée!

It was really tough for me to pick out a time and place to propose to her. We didn't really have any places in Seattle that were super special to us; we'd already been dating when we moved here, and neither of us get terribly emotionally invested in dates or other events. With Thanksgiving coming up, I knew we would have a house full of friends (we host Thanksgiving at our house every year for the many, many friends of ours who, like us, moved to Seattle from elsewhere and have no family here) and I knew that Girl Scout Fiancée would want to show off her new engagement ring to our friends. Plus, what better chance for a bride-to-be to be the center of attention than a day when all of our friends are going to be at our house, eating her delicious cooking?

I spent a few months dealing with the awesome folks at Marc Williams and was able to order an engagement ring and have it delivered the week before Thanksgiving. Given that GSF had been none-too-subtly hinting that she wanted a ring from Marc Williams for years, this seemed like a no-brainer. Picking a time and place to ask her was trickier, since we had no special places in Seattle. Worse, Seattle weather in November is not always conducive to romantic outdoor proposals, and I didn't want to do the proposal in anything less than a beautiful, private place.

In the end, I decided on the Lake Wilderness Arboretum, which was conveniently on the way to the town of Black Diamond where we'd be driving to pick up our delicious smoked turkey for Thanksgiving. I fed her a line about wanting to take some photos to send to our grandparents, something we do occasionally to help them keep up with our lives, and, in a quaint little gazebo all decorated with Christmas lights in the middle of a wooded area of the arboretum, I asked, and the rest is history.