In the last 3 months, I had a bachelorette party, helped plan and traveled to Ottawa for my friend Val’s bachelorette party, went to my cousin’s wedding in Campbellton, went to Val’s wedding in Ottawa, drove to Toronto for Chris’ cousin’s wedding (a week before our wedding), hosted lots of our friends over (including Sinéad and Peter from Ireland!) the week before our wedding, got married and went on my honeymoon (California!), all this while working, traveling to Miramichi about 8 times and pretty much planning my whole wedding. It was exhausting, fun, frustrating, stressful and annoying.

I knew I had a super packed summer. I knew I should have been doing more for our wedding earlier on in the year. But I didn’t. I had no excuse – it’s just not in my nature to be prepared. I’m a procrastinator and I can only work under tight deadlines and lots of pressure. I suck.

The thing that was the hardest in the last minute super busy wedding planning process was balancing my perfectionist nature with my procrastination. I wanted everything to be perfect, but had no time to make it happen. Well in the end everything ended up being perfect and the only thing that took a bit of a beating was my sanity and sleep schedule. No biggie!

Our wedding day was perfect, fun and simply memorable. Everything went off without a hitch, the weather cooperated and everybody had a great time. We’ve since received our photos from James, our photographer, and we love them. Since I’m about 3 years behind on uploading picture to Flickr, here is a slideshow of our pictures for your viewing pleasure.

Our honeymoon in California was really great as well. We pretty much just ate like pigs and did nothing for 2 weeks. *thumbs up* Photos to be uploaded on Flickr in the next 3-5 years.

Now we’ve been back home for a few weeks, settling back into the rhythm of “normal life”. Work, cooking, grocery shopping, knitting. It’s nice!

Married life is no different than living-together-for-the-last-six-years life. Still, it’s nice to be married and for things to be “more official” now. Having a husband is so much more credible than a boyfriend. Oh, and I’m Mrs. Taylor now!

My aforementioned flaws, combined with the fact that I’ve been busy as shit since we bought our house explain (but aren’t an excuse for) why I hadn’t spoken to my best friend Val since… uh, the end of April I think? Sweet Jesus! (We keep in touch via Twitter and random e-mails, which is actually a pretty great way to stay in the know on the day-to-day, but yeah, overall, we suck.)

Well last night we finally got the chance to catch up. We regaled each other with tales of trips and home purchasing and wedding planning. Val and I are pretty much leading parallel lives right now, which is kind of strange, but I guess not all that uncommon for two people of the same age.

But that’s not where the similarities ended. Val and I quickly found out, through our discussion of her awesome wedding planning and my wedding planning-slacking-offing that we’re pretty much planning the same wedding. Ok, so there are a few major differences, but the really weird part is that we’re doing a lot of little offbeat things exactly the same. We picked the same wedding colours without consulting with each other. We’re both abolishing the whole “head table” thing and sitting with our parents during the reception. We’re both, in our own ways, having non-traditional wedding dresses. We both plan on having four bridesmaids and three groomsmen (probably the weirdest similarity). We’re both in each other’s wedding party (ok, that one is not so weird since we’re best friends and all). And that was just to name a few.

Knowing that we’re both planning our weddings 1000 kilometres apart and still thinking alike kind of makes me smile and makes me feel connected to her even though we hadn’t really “connected” in several months.

I guess I just want to share with y’all that we have zero planned except for our reception venue booked (and obviously date picked). So I guess I’ll see many of you at the Rodd Miramichi River Hotel on Saturday July 31, 2010. I’m not sure what time we’ll be meeting there at yet, or what we’ll be eating, or who’ll be marrying us (and where) beforehand, or what I’ll be wearing, or who’ll be taking our pictures, or… Well, you get it, we have nothing planned.

But hey, I got a groom picked out! Look at this handsome guy!

See you at the party!

Christopher and Véronique’s engagement, the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. Oh wow, you guys are engaged! How did this happen?

Yes, we totally are! Chris and I got engaged on Saturday July 12 2008. It happened something like this: Chris came home from work around 6:30 and we decided to go out for supper somewhere around Centretown because it was such a nice night out. We ended up eating on the patio at Pancho Villa, had a nice meal and came back home. It was quite early so we decided to go see a movie, but we had about an hour to kill. We were just hanging out at home, Chris went upstairs and I was just checking my e-mail and fiddling on my laptop at the kitchen table when all of a sudden he came up behind me and handed me a ring box, got down on one knee and asked me to be his wife. I of course said “yes” (well, after a few “are you serious?”s). Yup, that’s about it, it was nice!

2. Awww!

Yes, so I hear!

3. Was it a surprise? Or was it sort of planned?

It was a total surprise! I mean, Chris and I had talked about getting married and we knew we would at some point in our lives, but wow I totally was not expecting anything anytime soon and had no clue that he had any of this planned. It was a lovely surprise!

4. Have you set a date? Where will this be happening? We clearly need details!

Well seeing as I had no clue I was getting married a mere 2 days ago, we don’t have many details yet. We definitely do not have a date, let alone a year. It will for sure be happening in New Brunswick, probably in Miramichi (where Chris is from). The only guarantee I have so far is that it will be a good time. Yes?

5. The ring! Tell us all about it!

Ah, yes! The ring is simply amazing. Chris knew what I liked in terms of rings as I had showed him a few in stores and we had looked at some Web sites together, but boy did he ever go out of his way… He actually went and got a ring created for me at Howard Jewellers based on various ring design elements that I liked. The result is simply gorgeous! It’s a 14 K thick white gold tension-set ring with a 0.5 K princess-cut diamond. I love it and it couldn’t be any more perfect!

6. Clearly, we are only here for pictures of the bling. Where are they?

Here you go!

Special thanks goes out to Val for the post-yoga class photoshoot at Bridgehead tonight!

7. Alright well. I think that was all of our questions. How can we stay up-to-date on your wedding?

Chris really knows me and he pleased the nerd in me by registering www.chrisandvero.com, which I will be turning into a wedding Web site in the next few months. So stay tuned for more details!

…. Yay!!