How We Met - written by April

I met Tim at Mic's Karaoke bar on February 14th, 2006. It was a large crowd and there was a great Valentine's Day party going on. There was hardly a couple to be seen, and Tim and I were both sitting at my normal large round table (A.K.A. The Singles Table). There were several familiar faces at the table, but some people had also brought along other friends that had no plans for Valentine's Day. My friend Betty brought along her friend Tim from her work.

It was a great evening. My normally pessimistic friend Tori had Valentine's Day cards and candy with cute little sentiments and prizes like a hug (a Hershey’s kiss candy), or a hug from Tori. My normally optimistic friend Miriam brought treat bags with black roses, and other silly items like tissue for crying your single eyes out. Everyone was into the spirit of it, and it was one of the best evenings of my life.

We was singing and talking, and I danced on the dance floor with lots of people while others were singing, but I especially enjoyed dancing with Tim. He was also dancing with lots of girls, but somehow at the end of the night, we did dance the last dance together. It was a great duet of "The End of The Road" that had everyone singing along, and at the end of the music everyone just kept singing one more chorus. It was like no one wanted the evening to end. I left that night with flowers, candy, and three phone number that had been given to me ... but none of it was from Tim.

The next night I decided to go to Mic's again, just to see who was down, and low and behold, Tim was sitting at the much emptier round table. This time I sat next to him, and got to talk to him a lot more. I left that night with his phone number.

Dating

In the next couple weeks, we saw each other almost daily. We had been having work parties at various locations for several weeks on Thursday nights, and the first one that Tim went to with me to was at Cheeseburger in Paradise. He met my friends from work and we were having a great time. Tim seemed to get along effortlessly with anyone he met.

They happened to be having karaoke at Cheeseburger that night, and I went up to sing my second song of the evening. Being used to the height of the step to the stage at Mic's karaoke, I decided to step down off of the stage at Cheeseburger while singing. I was going to take the wireless mic and go dance with my friends in the audience. I totally misjudged the height of the step, and fell down hard on my right ankle.

Trying to save face, I just kept right on singing through the whole thing, and according to my friends, did not even miss a note. My boss Dave said he looked over and suddenly I was on the floor, and he never really saw what happened. There was a huge table right in front, full of nothing but cute guys that were trying to help me up, but of course, nothing like that ever happens when you're single!

After my song was over, I went back to our table. Tim asked if I was ok, and I insisted that I was, even though my ankle hurt. I remember Tim asking me "Would you tell me if you weren't ok?" and I said "No!" and changed the subject. Tim had seen me pretty close to my most embarrassed, and hadn't really thought it was that bad, so that was definitely a good sign.

He was very sympathetic in the weeks to come after I had gone to the doctor the next day, and it was indeed a very bad sprain. Good thing it wasn't that cold out when it happened, because the only shoes I could wear for a while were flip-flops! It kind of ruined our plans to take swing dance lessons though.

Special Occasion

My 25th birthday was on April 16th, 2006. I didn't really like the idea of turning a quarter of a century, but decided if I had to, I would have a big birthday party to celebrate. Since my birthday happened to fall on Easter Sunday, there were a limited number of things I could do on that actual night.

I decided to rent Mic's karaoke bar, since they are normally closed on Sundays. It was another great night. I got to sing all of my favorite songs and my favorite duets with friends. Almost everyone I invited was able to make it, and my dad even came and brought my grandma for a while to hear me sing. I love his story about that. "People asked what I was doing for Easter, and I told them I'm taking my ex-mother-in-law to a karaoke bar!"

There were about 50-60 people, and we were singing and dancing, and having a great time. They told us we were the first private party ever to finish their keg. (Yet another reason we cannot have an open bar at the wedding!) At the end of the night Reece (the kj) played a regular CD of what had just become our song "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing" by Aerosmith. Tim and I danced on the stage, and I think 95% of the guests that had stuck it out until 1:00am (which were more than I expected!) were on the dance floor. Definitely a memorable finale to the night.

Tim later surprised me my telling me that they had recorded the whole night on DVD. We got a copy of it a week or so later. That is an awesome DVD! I think that was the best night of my life up until that point.

I think it was after that night that my friends started taking bets as to when we would get engaged. If I recall correctly, the most frequent guess was six months, although our friends Michelle and Jeff beat us out. I remember my birthday party as being one of the first times we saw them together, and they were married before we actually got engaged!

Engagement

Time went on, and life was pretty good for us. We talked about someday getting married, but had agreed the best thing to do was to save up some money before we decided anything officially. He made a comment one night that made me look at him strangely, and he said "No, that was not a proposal. Don't worry, I wouldn't let you down like that."

On December 10th, 2006, slightly after midnight, Tim gave me a single red rose. I asked what the occasion was, and he said that it was "just because." The next day, he gave me two roses. I was now suspicious, and asked what he had done that he needed to buy me roses two days in a row. He still insisted that it was for no reason. I decided to let it go, and wait and see if I got three roses the next day.

Sure enough, I got roses the next day, and the next, and the next. He sent them to my work, to my grandma's house, even to Mic's when my best friend Jill and I went there for girls night on "Day Ten." He gave them to me in front of almost everyone I knew, and they all had theories about what was going to happen, how many days it would last, etc.

I did the math, and had a very hard time figuring out how many flowers there would be. Since it was so close to Christmas, I thought maybe they were leading up to Christmas, but that didn't make any sense. If it ended on Christmas that made it sixteen roses, which didn't make that much sense.

Twelve roses would have made the most sense, twelve days of Christmas, a dozen roses, but that stopped shy of Christmas. The best guess I could think of was fourteen days of flowers, since we met on the 14th, and then some kind of "finale" on Christmas Eve.

On Day Twelve (December 21st), Tim and I went out and had lunch with my dad. We had not planned it, but we happened to run into Jill having lunch with her mother at the same place. A little later that day, Tim told me to get dressed up in the fanciest thing I owned and that he had some things to do, but that he would pick me up in a couple hours. I did as he said, wondering all the time if that was the dress I would be wearing when he proposed to me.

Tim took me to Mahogany's for dinner. A very fancy restaurant, where we did not feel at all out of place in a suit and tie and fancy dress and heels, respectively. I wore the shoes that Tim picked out and bought for me when he took me shoe shopping at Mall of America one time. We had a wonderful meal, with wine, and even something sinful and chocolatey for dessert. Tim reminded me at dinner about what we had said about saving money before we got engaged, and didn't want me to get too excited, and just wanted me to have a fun night. I was disappointed, but tried to do what he said.

After dinner, Tim said it was too early yet, so we drove around some of the neighborhoods and looked at the Christmas lights. When Tim decided we had waited long enough, he drove me to UNO. My dad works at UNO, so I was confused about why were there. We went inside, and into the Planetarium.

Tim had arranged a special show just for the two of us. It was tailored to what he thought we would find interesting, and centered around the Winter Solstice. Finally, the ending date for the roses made sense! It was twelve days, but the twelfth day was not Christmas, it was the Winter Solstice.

The presentation talked about how the Winter Solstice was the shortest day of the year, and how everything got brighter and longer from there. After the show was over, the gentleman doing the show for us said he needed to do something and he would be right back.

It was still fairly dark, and the planetarium stars were still shining down on us. Tim and I got up, and suddenly our song started to play. (Seemed extra appropriate as our song is from the movie Armageddon, and there is all kinds of "space" stuff in that movie.) We danced under the stars to our song.

I was thinking that this would be the perfect time to ask someone to marry you, but when the song was over, we stopped dancing, said thank you to the man that did the show, and left. I was surprised. That was the perfect opportunity, and Tim had not proposed. I thought he really wasn't going to do it that night.

He said we had one more place to go. We went to a hotel. Tim had rented the "Southern Romance" themed suite. We went to the room, and there were rose petals on the floor. They led to a slightly separate little sitting area, which was the only area of the room with the lights on. On the coffee table in that room were the twelve roses for Day Twelve.

I went over to smell the roses and then I heard Tim say from behind me, "I told you I wouldn't let you down." Then he got down on one knee with a ring in hand and asked me to marry him. I started to cry, but somehow, I finally managed to say "Yes!"

Later

After a while, Tim told me that there was one more surprise. He said that he had already spoken to my dad, and that my dad said "Congratulations." He also told me that when he came up to Mic's on "Day Ten" he showed the ring to Jill in the parking lot, so Jill knew.

Jill told me that when we ran into her and her mother on the day of our engagement, she was a little freaked out because she was afraid that she or her mother might accidentally say something to give away the surprise!

I told him that he really had me going. I had given up by the time he proposed. I told him I thought "We're dancing under the stars ... hello!" If he didn't propose then, obviously it wasn't going to happen.

Planning The Wedding

We decided we wanted to get married on another Solstice, since we were engaged on the Winter Solstice, so we looked at the calendar. Spring was much too soon, and we did not really want to get married in the Summer. A year away would mean that we were on our honeymoon over Christmas, and that did not seem like a good idea. That left September of 2007 or March of 2008.

We finally decided on March. June and September are the most popular months to get married, so we thought March might be easier to plan for. It was a long time to wait, but would also give us our choice of places, plenty of time to plan, etc. The Solstice did not fall on a Saturday, but we decided on March 22nd, which would be the first Saturday in Spring.

Also, as it worked out, the following day would be Easter Sunday in 2008, and that seemed to work well. My bridesmaids in from out of town could visit their families for Easter while they were in town, plus, it seemed unlikely that anyone would already have plans for Saturday of that weekend. Also, personally, it reminds me of that 25th birthday party that was on Easter too! (No longer the best day of my life, but still up there!)

So, the wedding will be March 22nd, and we will take the 23rd to spend a bit more time with family, and drive back to Minnesota. On the 24th, our flight leaves Minneapolis, taking us to Rome, and then home by way of Venice eight days later.

So, that is our engagement story, and it is hard to believe it happened a year ago. I hope you all enjoyed it almost as much as I did.

- April