The (Re)Meeting

Co-worker/person at the gym who notices my ring/new acquaintance: "You're engaged!  That's awesome!  How did you guys meet?"

Zac/Me: "Oh, it's a long story..."

How Zac and I found ourselves four and a half months away from our wedding day is a story that's about 17 years long (I told you it was long).

Back in 1993, my family picked up from Eagan, MN and transplanted to Joplin, MO - a big small town in Southwest Missouri.  This move meant that, at the ripe old age of eight years old, I'd be joining the third grade in my third elementary school, St. Mary's.

In thinking back, I'm a little fuzzy on how the story progresses from here (what came first, the chicken or the egg?) but all I know is that right around the same time I fell in love with a fifth grader with blonde hair in the lunch room (Zac), my mom also made friends with a lady named Sheila (Zac's mom) at the gym - good ol' Olympic Fitness Center.  Apparently the ladies had more in common than just looking like sisters and eventually they got their husbands together to hang out (there's a story about a cooler here that I'm sure we'll bring up next weekend while we're all in St. Louis). 

In the next two years that we lived in Joplin, John, Sheila, Brittany (Zac's sister, who's a year younger than me) and Zac became our family.  Whether we banged pots and pans at midnight on New Year's Eve, carved pumpkins at Halloween, lounged at the pool for long weekend holidays or just enjoyed random evenings of watching our parents drink too many Rum Runners (sorry, Mom and Dad), we had a blast.

And the entire time, beginning with that St. Mary's lunch room longing to the day we moved to Atlanta (and the one time we went back to visit  Joplin), I had the BIGGEST crush on Zac.  "Oh, Kristin.  You're beautiful and talented and witty and senstive and just wonderful.  He must've had a crush on you, too!" you think as you read this.

WRONG.  I was shy - with bangs, new glasses that were too big on my face (it was the style at the time, I swear!), stretch pants that hiked up beyond my belly button with matching turtlenecks and slip-on shoes (thanks, Mom)  and my nose perpetually in a book.  I've come a long way, ladies and gentleman, and the woman who fifteen years later would kiss Zac first couldn't even make eye contact with him the first time we lived in the same city.  Alas, Zac never knew of my feelings (I also don't think he realized that I could talk, as I probably said three words to him in my entire life).

Fast forward 12 years, after we'd moved again (and again and again...), throughout that time I cherished when my dad would casually mention talking to John and would offer up little delicious tidbits about Zac.  (After he mentioned Zac deciding on the journalism school at Mizzou for college, I suddenly was very interested in the development of my amateur school newspaper skills.)  The next time I had contact with Zac was the day I dared to "friend him" on Facebook.

Finally, in my last year at SLU (Saint Louis University), I longed to move from the Midwest and shake things up a bit.  Los Angeles sounded good, but I didn't know the first thing about what I'd need to do to actually move there.  By this time, Zac had already lived in L.A. for two years so I messaged him on Facebook asking for his phone number and his permission to call and "pick his brain" about life in California.  He obliged and we ended up talking for over an hour about life and catching up.  I remember mentioning to my dad after the fact that Zac talked SO fast and relentlessly that he MUST be on some sort of drugs or something (ed note: I quickly learned that Zac needs no drugs to talk.  He's VERY talented in that arena).

Right after college I found a job in St. Louis and although I didn't get a chance to move to Los Angeles, I did have the opportunity to travel a lot.  Finally my travels brought me to Orange County.  Oh a whim, I called Zac and told him I was down in Costa Mesa, was that close enough to L.A. to come down and visit for a drink?  Costa Mesa is not close enough to pop down for a drink (it can easily be an hour+ drive with  minimal traffic), but Zac told me it was and drove down to meet me.

It's nerve-wracking stuff, waiting for your childhood crush to come visit you when you're all grown up.  But from the first minute I saw him and hugged him, it just felt RIGHT.  I just knew that I had found It. 

Right now I'm at a loss for how to explain it, because anyone who's felt it knows what I'm talking about, but if you haven't felt it there's no way I'll ever be able to articulate it in a way that will make you understand. 

We're making our life together now and we get to bring our families together to REALLY  become family - we get to share a history of memories (again, there are stories here of Drew peeing in Zac's bed when he was 8, Zac scaring Meghan to death with a Chuckie doll, weekends filled with swim meets and movies and Crown video and on and on...) and we have set our family up to fill the future with even more magic and memories.   

Zac was It when I was 8, he was It that night he lied about how long it took to drive to Costa Mesa and he is It now (AND he's the only one whose made me brave enough to watch the movie It).

And that's that.

Welcome! Read this one first.

So far, I haven't really fallen into the "bridezilla" category yet (at least, I don't think so).  In fact, I think that I'm a little TOO laid-back about the wedding, considering Zac and I have had our date set since October 1 of last year and we're just now sending out Save-the-Dates.

Although I've only read a handful of bridal magazines since Zac proposed, they all stress the importance of a wedding website.  The website is "the place for guests to go for details and to learn a little bit more about the bride and groom" - a "very necessary" space for you to be shamelessly self-centered and write about how you met, how he (or she) proposed, etc. 

I was completely against it - everything from the cheesy website templates to the tendency of people to "over share" with guests.  Totally against it until I decided to do it.

So I picked a blog and just started writing.  I'm really really really (really!) getting excited about this wedding and I'm obsessed with where we're having it, the people who will be there and the fact that Zac and I will be married at the end of it all. 

So, please, indulge me if you're bored one day and read through the website.  Like St. Louis in general, our Church, our reception space, our rehearsal dinner space all have such history and romance to them.  Our wedding party is fantastic.  And I'm going to tell how we met and how he proposed only because they're kind of cute stories that I'm proud of.

Enjoy!

Love,
Kristin

The Proposal

Zac and I have considered moving to a new apartment - one with more space and less neighbors.  Four things are holding us back: 1) the big pool with BBQ grills and outdoor patio furniture that makes a great place to hang out on the weekends 2) the treadmills in the "workout center" 3) the ping pong table that makes for great beer pong and 4) the fact that it will be VERY expensive to move out once the property manager realizes he needs to tear out and replace the carpet in the living room.  Why does he need to do that?  We can thank Zac and his proposal :)

It was the Thursday evening before Jill Schommer's (my highschool girlfriend) wedding to Eric Hohmeister in Minneapolis.  We'd both taken Friday off to fly there and still needed to do all the packing Thursday night.  After work Zac met me on Sony's Lot for the weekly Happy Hour on Main St.

It's something we did frequently at that point, so nothing was strange or out of the ordinary.  We left around 7:00ish to pack.  I don't know how to describe this without sounding tedious, but we live literally five minutes from Sony.  I parked in the parking garage at work, which adds about five minutes onto the "trek" home and Zac parked on the street.  I'd say he had a MAXIMUM of five minutes lead time.  This is important in a few minutes.

Once I got home and opened the door to our apartment, U2 was playing in the background and Zac was standing in the middle of our living room, surrounded by a heart of lit votive candles with a rose in his hand and a bottle of champage chilling nearby.  He'd changed from his work clothes into his nice summer suit and he looked so good and handsome.  So I told him so. (What I didn't realize until later that he was sweating profusely, too - with all of the stress and excitement and having only five minutes to change and prepare before I got home). 

My response was, "You look nice.  Oh!  And we have champagne!"  Although I figured he was proposing, I didn't want to think it was happening and then have it turn out to just be a nice surprise for the evening, like he'd made dinner or something instead of proposing marriage.  I didn't believe it.  And kept saying so.  A lot.  Of course I said yes and it was all very romantic and exciting and thrilling and, well, just great.

It was after about 10 minutes that I realized the votive candles on the floor were not placed on any sort of holder and were, in fact, melting into the carpet.  Zac hadn't realized that this was going to happen.  You can even see the little pools of wax solidifying onto the synthetic carpet.

  

We didn't bother cleaning it up with all the phone calls and packing to do.  But I did try to clean it up the next week by putting a paper bag over the wax and then warming the wax with an iron so that the paper bag would soak up all of the wax.  I think it would've worked in a normal situation if I hadn't melted the plastic carpet, too.

So now when you're at our apt you can still see red-stained melted circles of carpet shaped into a heart.  I think it's a great story, but I don't know if the landlord would appreciate the romance behind the accident :).

The Registry

We're registered at Macy's and Target.  We'd be registered at Costco if that was possible.

The Rehearsal Dinner

Rigazzi's on the Hill

The home of Fishbowl Beers, baby!

Our rehearsal begins at 4:00 p.m. at College Church and we'll traipse over to Rigazzi's afterwards for toasted ravs and fishbowl beers.

The Reception

The reception will be held at Lumen Private Event Space - the party begins with cocktails and appetizers at 6:00 p.m. and will continue until 11:00 p.m. with dinner and lots of dancing!

Although the details are still getting worked out, we've booked the DJ (S.O.S. DJs) and have the photobooth ordered.  If you have any requests for the DJ, send them our way!  There is one thing, though - Zac has firmly stated that there will be NO Chicken Dance or Y.M.C.A. played at the reception - so please don't even ask!

Check out the pictures of the Lumen in "The Reception Venue" post.  The place is incredible and I can't wait to see it transform on that fall Saturday evening.  I'm secretly (not so secretly anymore!) looking forward to the moment when I can sneak up to the balcony for a minute during the reception to just watch over the party and count my blessings.  To see my HUSBAND, with his bow-tie undone, playing with his new ring, tearing up the dancefloor and singing too loud with his best friends.  To see my parents laughing with their new in-laws and slow-dancing together, being so in love almost thirty years after their own wedding day.  To see my best girlfriends from across the country (Minnesota, Chicago, Joplin, Los Angeles, St. Louis) come together for the first time to dance and be silly and share in this important day.  To see my brother and my sister all dressed up looking so handsome and beautiful and grown-up - a little different than the big ol' t-shirts we'd wear for pajamas years ago.  To see my huge family - the people who have shaped me - hanging out with my new family - the people who helped create Zac and the people who will be my babies' grandma and grandpa, aunts, uncles and cousins.  To see a room FULL of people who care enough to come to our wedding!  I'll sip my champagne and get that knot in my stomach - nostalgic for the moment before it's even finished.

I can't wait for that moment.

The Reception Venue

Lumen Private Event Space is gorgeous and unique and just plain cool.  But the best part of the space (to me, at least) is the building's history.  

The old Packard dealership had fallen into ruin much like the rest of the midtown/downtown area of St. Louis.  The area has experienced quite a renaissance in recent years with developers taking advantage of the buildings' beautiful architecture and character.  Now an area once decrepit is filled with fancy-schmanzy lofts, restaurants and bars - and we're lucky enough to have our party there!

Below are the pictures of the Lumen as it is now - and then the pictures of what it looked like in the early 1900s.  How cool is that?!

As it is now in 2010...

As it was back then...

Circa 1920s

Circa 1916

The Ceremony

Our wedding ceremony will begin at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, October 16, 2010.  My dad will walk me down the aisle of St. Francis Xavier College Church - the aisle I've dreamed about walking down since I was little.  Every weekened while I was attending Saint Louis University I imagined the day and wondered who I'd be walking towards.  Did I know him yet?  Little did I know that I did, indeed, know him and had known him since I was eight years old!

This year the church is celebrating its 125th anniversary in its current location on Saint Louis University's campus at the corner of Grand and Lindell Blvds.  You can read about the history of the church here. 

The bridesmaids' sapphire satin dresses will look stunning in the church and I just can't WAIT to see Zac standing in his tux at the altar.  I wonder who will cry more?