Wedding Date on Jan 20, 2018

Patrick and I were introduced about 8 years ago through mutual friends. We started dating in 2010, but for only a couple years. It was 2 years of a lot of fun adventures and amazing memories. However, college and career changes caused us to go our separate ways in 2012. Throughout the years, we still kept in touch, and no one could deny our feelings that we still had for one another. Fast forward to 2016, after years of being apart and a bit of growing older and wiser, we decided to give our love another try. Even though it was years later, we picked up right where we left off. The year of 2016 was full of love, travel, adventure and it was the year that Patrick asked me to be his wife. The proposal: Every Christmas Eve, Patrick and I go out to Teppanyaki for dinner, just the two of us and then we spend Christmas with our families. With that said, this was just like any other Christmas Eve for me, Patrick was out all day completing his last minute shopping and then we went to dinner at one of our favorite Teppanyaki restaurants. Thinking back on the day, there were some signs that he was not acting himself, but I had no idea at the time. {He kept his jacket on the entire time at dinner, tried to stall us at the restaurant, and tried stalling on the way home by trying to find a yogurt shop that was open on Christmas Eve}.After we finished dinner, we headed to my apartment. Once we got there, there were candles and rose petals leading up the stairs to my apartment. When I first saw it, I asked "What is this?" and he just said that he didn't know. After I started going up the stairs, I realized that the candles and rose petals were not leading to my door, but went to our neighbors door (a nice little joke my sister thought of). At this point, I am still none the wiser of what is going on. I then open the door and in the living room are roses, rose petals, candles and a big light up sign that says "Marry Me". I was in complete shock. I just kept saying "Oh my God" and immediately started the happy tears, then I turned around and saw Patrick down on one knee. He then said a sweet speech and asked me to marry him. I of course said yes, and then my Mom came running out of the bedroom crying and screaming. LOL {My Mom and my sister were there setting everything up while we were at dinner}.The only thing I ever told him that I wanted, should he ever propose, was that I wanted it to be a surprise. I consider myself somewhat hard to surprise, mainly because I don’t like them, but this was something I definitely didn’t want to know about beforehand. Well, he completely surprised me and gave me the most perfect, intimate proposal that I could have asked for.The Wedding:We both decided that we really wanted to have a destination wedding. We wanted our wedding to be a fun, intimate experience with our closest family and friends. We had a total of 42 guests travel all the way to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for our wedding. Everyone was there for 3-5 days total, and we had events Thursday, Friday and then Saturday was the wedding, so we really got to spend a lot of quality time with our guests, which was very important to us. I have a lot of “favorite parts” of the Big Day. However, I have two moments that stuck out the most to me. The first was during our first look. We went back and forth almost to the day of on whether or not we should do a first look and I am so glad that we did. The day of your wedding is so exciting, but it can also be very stressful, nerves can kick in and once the day gets going, you don’t really have a moment to yourselves. Being able to see my soon to be husband and have that moment of just the two of us, before our ceremony, was so special to us. The second moment that really stood out was our first dance. We decided on a choreographed dance as a special surprise for our parents and wedding guests. We had spent months practicing with an instructor and we were both so nervous to perform the dance in front of our closest friends and family. The thoughts of messing up, being off beat, or falling were definitely running through our minds. Once we were up there together, everything went so smoothly and the guests just loved it! We were so happy that our hard work had paid off and we had so much fun doing it! I would highly recommend dance lessons to any bride and groom. It is so much fun and a great bonding experience through the wedding planning process. Overall, our wedding was one of the most amazing days of our lives. Everything came out better than we could have imagined! We could not have asked for a better way to start off the rest of our lives together!