Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Addresses!

Glenn and I have officially jumped in to the wedding plans with both feet! It will be held May 19th for sure and our reception will be that night in Salt Lake, with one in Idaho afterwards in June. We are having so much fun planning all the wedding reception stuff and we would love for you to come share with us! I'm busy collecting addresses (getting it done early so I don't miss anyone) but I know I don't have a lot of your current contact information, especially you high school friends! So if you haven't already heard from me and given me your address, in one form or another... email, text, facebook... and you would like and invitation please leave me your address or you can email it to me! Thanks everyone!

Monday, January 10, 2011

I'm Getting Married!!!

As many of you have heard, I’ve found Mr. Right, Glenn Barton, :) and we’re getting married! I figured you might want to see him and hear the proposal story, so here it is.

Glenn and I started ring shopping and we had decided to keep it a secret from all our friends and family so that when we finally announced we were engaged it would be a surprise… and really exciting. So we went to many ring stores to start figuring out what I even liked. I still remember walking into the first ring store and holding Glenn’s hand as he proclaimed “We’re here to look at your engagement rings!” Inside I was freaking out! Me? Ring Shopping!?!? ha ha. So fun! We finally started finding things that I liked and things I didn’t. Finally we went to Kelly jewelers that Jessica’s dad owns and I saw a beautiful ring there. I put it on… it fit perfect… it looked perfect on my hand… after we left the store I just kept thinking about it, and loving it. It was as if I had found my glass slipper.

So Glenn bought the ring and had it for almost a month and a half before he proposed. I was just waiting for the moment to arise. He asked me out on a “mystery date” on the night of Thursday December 16th. I had my suspicions that it might be that night. He wouldn’t tell me anything that we were doing… and I love surprises so I didn’t bother to try and find out. So he arrived at my house to pick me up with a vase of flowers. They were red roses and star gazer lilies, with a few Christmas additions of pine and holly. The bouquet he brought me on our first date was red roses with star gazers as well, although I didn’t know at the time that’s what they are called. But it was perfect cause they are so pretty and smelly, and they are called star gazers! So with an inkling that this might be a special night we took some pictures and left for our mystery date.


We drove to a restaurant in sugar house that we hadn’t been to before. It was an Italian places called Lugano. The place looked like an older home that had been fancied up. It was dimly lit with fake candles on the tables to give a “candlelight feel” we ordered our food, and it tasted REALLY good. We finished dinner and headed to our next destination.

We parked at the gateway and started walking. We walked into the Clark planetarium and went right up stairs, as we approached the dome theater a young man was waiting for us said, “welcome, right this way…” we walked into the theater and no one was in there. The “sky” was lit up a light pink. We chose the best seats in the house and the narrator, Holly, came to talk to us. She said, “Hey it looks like you guys are lucky! You have the whole place to your selves. Usually I tell people to turn off their cell phones… but you can take all the calls you want, just let me know if you want me to pause the movie!” ha ha. After she left I got Glenn to confess that he had reserved the entire planetarium for a special show for just the two of us.

We watched “The Ultimate Universe” all about how the stars and planets are created and interesting Universe facts. Then after it finished we did some “star-gazing” they put up the current night sky, what the sky would look like if we were to go outside and look. Holly narrated it, pointing out where constellations are in the sky as well as Jupiter, and a neat cat eye nebula that were visible as well. She pointed out Orion, The big and little dipper, then moved to another common constellation Cassiopeia, the Queen and her King Cepheus. I love the stars and constellations and everything to do with them. When Glenn helped me move right after we started dating one of the tasks was to put the glow in the dark stars back up on my ceiling. I love having them up, but there are a lot of them so it is no small task. I try to put up a few of my favorite constellations, so I told Glenn he could pick one out to put up. He put up Cassiopeia and Cepheus… the king and queen together in the sky. So they became our special constellations that we would look for in the night sky whenever we went star gazing. So, back to the story, as she brought up this special pair of constellations I got excited and nudged Glenn a bit. She brought up a visual depiction of the king and queen in the sky and said, “These two actually have a very unique love story… I’ll tell you about it.” Then a song that had become really special to us “Just the Way you Are” by Bruno Mars started playing the theater (a pretty instrumental version). I was a little confused and looked at Glenn, “Is that our song?” Before he could reply words appeared up on the dome screen…

“Cepheus and Cassiopeia: The Real, Untold Love Story

Not many people know the real love story behind this royal couple. It’s the kind of legend about which fairy tales are written.

Here it is…”

Glenn had written our love story in the form of a fairytale, a story of the constellations. A king and queen brought together for eternity. He included funny inside jokes, and special moments, tying in lots of pieces of our dating story. As our names appeared on the screen I began to cry (but don’t worry it wasn’t the ugly cry). Every piece of the story fit perfectly and had me smiling and laughing… on top of the crying. ha ha. The story finished with…

“The brilliance of their love flourished when they were together, but they still lacked the one element needed to join them permanently in the heavens. To be together, they needed to find a star with such perfect radiance that it could bind them forever. Such a star would be able seal them in the heavens for eternity. Fortunately they were able to find that star. It’s known as…The ARCTIC STAR!”

The name of the diamond center stone in my ring is called the arctic star. Awe... Then a bright star appeared on the screen and raised high into the sky, Glenn stood me up, took my hand and talked to me for a bit and then got down on one knee and asked me to spend forever with him. I of course said YES!

Afterwards, we were so happy as were Holly and Rob the people who ran the planetarium for us that night. We got a few pictures taken.


Then we went to the melting pot for dessert. While enjoying our food we decided to drive to Idaho that night (we ended up getting there at 2am) and surprise my parents in the morning with the good news.

The date is planned for sometime in May… possibly the 19th. I’ll let you know. It’ll be in Utah and then a few weeks after we’ll be having an open house for all our friends in Idaho.

And here are some pictures of the ring...





Here's the view from the side... one of my favorite parts. :)