Oh my goodness!

We are getting married!

I can hardly believe it.  But at the same time, nothing has ever felt more believable than spending the rest of my life with Kat.  A friend suggested blogging about our experience planning the wedding, and I thought it was a great idea.  I'm sure someday we will giggle and laugh at how stressed out we got, and it will be so fun and romantic to look back on this experience.  I sort of feel like I'm being obnoxious on Facebook by constantly posting status updates about our engagement, so this will be a good outlet for me!

Since Kat proposed to me, I'm going to ask her to do a post about that whole process, since I wasn't in on the secret!

But this was my experience:

I had been wanting Kat to propose for about a year before she actually did.  In fact, last March we went to Hawaii over Spring Break and during one beautiful sunset, she drew a heart in the sand and began to write letters.  M... A... My heart nearly stopped.  I thought she was about to write "Marry me?" in the sand.  But alas!  The next letters were U... I... followed by "2012."  Maui 2012.  Not quite "Marry me," but a lovely moment nonetheless.

Fast-forward 10 months to January 2013.  We had a long weekend for the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday.  So we decided to drive about an hour to the Oregon coast with our boxer, Berta, and have a picnic.  I was taking forever to get my stuff all together in the morning, and at the last minute I started to clip my fingernails before we left.  I didn't want to get sand in them!  Kat asked me, "Can you do that in the car?" and I snapped, "Can you not wait 30 seconds for me to clip my fingernails?"  Little did I know, she was getting antsy because she was going to ask me to marry her at the coast!

So, I finished clipping my nails approximately 25 seconds later, and off we went.  During the car ride, Kat was a little quiet but I figured she was just concentrating on the winding roads.  We were planning to go to the Heceta Lighthouse, which we had been to before, but a few miles before the lighthouse turnoff Kat said, "Let's go to this other beach instead!"  This beach was also called Heceta Beach, but it was a few miles closer than the Heceta lighthouse (confusing). 

So we got to Heceta Lighthouse, having scrounged up barely enough quarters to pay our $3 parking fee, put Berta on her leash, and walked toward the beach.  It was a beautiful sunny day on the coast.  The beautiful blue sky and bright sun seemed worlds away from the weather just 60 miles inland in our home city.  We let Berta off her leash to run around in the waves and we explored the beach, looking for sand dollars (we didn't find any) and taking silly pictures.  After about 15 minutes, Kat said she was hungry, so we picked out a nice dry log to sit down and eat on.  Kat had prepared us a delicious lunch of sandwiches and had even brought sparkling apple cider.

While we were eating our food, she started writing silly things on the sand - I mean really silly - with a stick, like "Andi eats poop."  Then she said she had a really good one to write, but I had to close my eyes.  So I did.  I admit the thought flashed through my head - is she going to propose?  But I quickly pushed the thought away, because I figured she was just going to write something even sillier, like "Andi eats LOTS OF poop."

She told me to open my eyes, and there she was, on one knee in the sand with a ring in her hand.  In front of her knees, the sand said "Marry Me."  Just like I THOUGHT she was going to say in Maui - and I had never told her that story!  Tears have never flowed to my eyes quicker than they did in that moment and my hand flew to my mouth.  I started crying and I could barely choke out a yes, but I finally was able to compose myself enough to say YES!  She gave me the ring to put on my finger, and we sat together and hugged and kissed and took pictures and drank sparkling apple cider.  Berta even gave us our privacy and sat 20 feet away.  I swear she knew what was going on.

I couldn't even finish my sandwich, I was so excited.  It turns out she had gone to the closer beach because she was getting too anxious to wait any longer!  But after she proposed, we went back to the car and drove to the Heceta Lighthouse, like we had originally planned.  We spent the rest of the day at the small beach by the lighthouse, exploring the caves and tide pools there.  We watched the waves crashing onto the rocks and remarked on how beautiful, just absolutely gorgeous, the seafoam color was at the top of the waves where they were the thinnest.  We decided one of our wedding colors should be seafoam!

Once we were ready to come home, we texted our closest friends and family and changed our relationship status on Facebook.  I know it's cheesy, but we both couldn't wait for our profiles to say "engaged" so we changed our statuses on our phones on the way home!  We had such an outpouring of support from the people we love.  I feel like the luckiest woman on earth!!

<3 Andrea