Adventures in Wedding Planning {1}

So, uh, I’m engaged.

It’s still really weird to say that. I mean, the engagement is still new—Chris proposed on March 30th, so it’s only been a couple weeks, so of course the word “engaged” is still weird.

Not to mention “fiancé.”

But once you get engaged, people ask you a) for the proposal story and b) when/where you’re getting married.

So, I’ll take this opportunity to do that now.

Chris and I headed to Bali for a long weekend the week of my birthday. We like trips and tend to travel when we have the opportunity/whim to do so, so planning a trip to Bali wasn’t necessarily a “sign.”

In fact, nothing about the weekend tipped me off. We ate, we went to the Monkey Forest, we rented a motorbike and road it around the island, seeing what we could see. Chris mentioned that he really wanted to go on a sunrise hike, and as he hadn’t asked or suggested anything else, I agreed to go, despite the fact that we had to wake up at 2:30am to be picked up, driven an hour away, and then begin a two hour hike at 4:00am in the dark with headlamps.

We get to the volcano—Mt. Batur—and meet our guide, who was approximately 15. About an hour into the hike, it becomes extremely clear that the hike is actually a climb. A very, very steep climb over lava-rocky terrain.

I was not amused. In fact, I told Chris about twenty minutes from the summit that I was so exhausted I was going to cry, as well as some other choice words that I will not write down.

By the time we get to the top, we’re tired and sweaty and oddly cold. So we eat our breakfast and wait for the sunrise, which was really, truly gorgeous. Then we start the climb down.

Unbeknownst to me, Chris hike-climbed up that freaking volcano with a diamond ring in his backpack, planning to propose on top of the volcano, at sunrise.

But because I was kind of being the worst, he decided that it wasn’t the right time.

So instead, Chris suggested we go to a swanky restaurant at a very fancy resort on our last day in Bali. I figured he just wanted to go somewhere nice and when we pulled up on our motorbike to the Samaya Hotel, we were both shocked at exactly how fancy it was—so fancy that they took us to the restaurant, which is really, actually named Swept Away (because it’s by a river), by way of golf cart instead of pointing us in the direction of the restaurant and letting us walk.

Anyway, we get to the restaurant and it’s just us. This wasn’t on purpose, just coincidence. We order, have a couple cocktails, eat, and then order dessert. Then, before the desserts come out, Chris says, “So, I got something for you.”

And then puts a miniature Tardis on the table in front of me. I open the Tardis, which contains the ring and then Chris gets down on one knee, at which point I yelled, “Oh my God, what are you doing?”

I sort of blacked out/went into shock, so I’m not 100% about what was actually said, but I think he said, “Will you be my companion?” (a Doctor Who thing—since, you know, Tardis) and then I stared at him and finally said yes (or maybe it was “Sure, okay” because I’m an unromantic jerk) and then said something along the lines of, “Except I want to be The Doctor.”

After I giggled like a maniac and the restaurant staff congratulated us and brought over our ice creams—which they did not comp, in case you were wondering—Chris told me about the volcano plan.

Oops.

So yeah. That’s the proposal story!

Which now leads to part b of the question everyone asks: when/where are we getting married?

The when is probably late summer/early fall of 2016. There isn’t an exact date because there isn’t an exact venue yet. And there isn’t an exact venue because, well, we got engaged two weeks ago, and, uh, we live in Singapore and have to get married in the U.S. for it to be legal in the U.S.

“But, Bethany, booking a venue, even from abroad, can’t be that hard. You have the Internet.”

This is true. I do have the Internet. The problem is that we’re not sure where we want to get married, meaning the state, not the venue.

We’re considering both Arkansas, where I’m from, and New York, where we met. There are a lot of pros/cons for both places, which doesn’t make the whole figuring out the where any easier. But, we’ll be in the U.S. in about a month and are going to be looking at venues in both places.

Fingers crossed that seeing the venues will help us make a decision.

But that will be another story for another time.