Today is my parents’ 36th anniversary. They’ve postponed anniversary celebrations until after our wedding because they’re working their butts off to get the farm ready for ours. This is not a fact I take lightly. I’m certain there’ve been more times than not in my life when my parents have put much more effort into me than into themselves.
Tomorrow marks one month until Russ and I get married. Anyone who ever comes to this blog is probably getting pretty tired of hearing about wedding related things. I can’t blame you. For two years the majority of my posts have been somehow related to my relationship with Russ. It’s hard not to be that way, when you write about your own life and the biggest thing in your life is this all-encompassing love for another person.
For the better part of 11 months the majority of my posts have been related to wedding plans. Planning a wedding is all-encompassing in another, far more trivial way.
We’re a month away now which seems like an appropriate time to take a few steps back from buying bridal party gifts and choosing flowers — to take a few minutes to just soak in what’s ahead.
When we’re not planning a huge life event, Russ and I like to do certain things together. We love to camp, hike, go to concerts, run on trails and run through neighborhood streets. We love to drink wine and sit in the backyard. We love to visit with family and hang out by the pool with friends. We love to “chill”.
Our life this past year has been anything but “chill”. It’s been a fast-paced blur of colors and fittings, barn buildings and mass alcohol purchases (for the wedding, thank you!). It’s been a whole lot of weekends taken up by other people and things — all of which are wonderful, but most of which don’t allow us to spend too much quality time just hanging out together.
I’m ready to get back to what we do best. We’re a month away from getting married and I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about it. Should I be nervous? Should I be a little scared because forever is such a huge concept? Should I be more excited about a huge event where we will be the center of attention? I don’t know.
I’ll be thrilled to celebrate with so many people I love on April 23rd. The only bit of wedding planning I’ve been absolutely certain about is this — I want to be married to Russ and I want to celebrate that with as many people I love as possible.
And then I want to get back to what we do best. We’ll have a couple of days to explore Savannah right after the wedding and in June we’ll take a week long honeymoon. The wedding and all related celebrations will come and go. I’ll try my best to be in those moments and soak in the joy of having so many family and friends around at once. It will be as beautiful as I want it to be and I’ll be able to let go of little things that don’t go perfectly as planned — because I know that once April 23rd passes, our forever will be filled with cook-outs, campfires, concerts, hammocks, hikes, Sunday nights drinking wine in the backyard that will someday become quiet moments we, as exhausted parents, savor after the kids are in bed and summer days lazing by the pool that will turn into summer nights volunteering to time races at our kids’ swim meets.
Forever is understated. It isn’t perfect. It isn’t always easy. It doesn’t involve a lot of fanfare. Forever doesn’t scare me. It’s exactly what I want.
I don’t see my fiance during the week, except for occasional lunches. We work different schedules. I arrive home from work an hour or so after he leaves to start his day.
Most weeks we meet for lunch on Wednesday. He usually comes downtown and we pick a spot on a bench or by the river to have a picnic.
It’s both ordinary and extraordinary.
Two weeks ago a group of adults on some sort of work-related scavenger hunt stopped us to ask if we’re together. They needed to find a couple to tell how they got together in a short recorded video clip. They hit record and I said “we were friends for a couple of years and now we’re engaged”.
I didn’t simplify that for the sake of saving space on this website. That is literally all I said. They thanked us and moved on, probably to find a couple with a better story to tell.
But we do have a better story to tell. I left out so many things.
I didn’t mention the story he tells of the first day he met me at work – how he remembers what I was wearing.
I didn’t mention the nights we went out with co-workers to our favorite pizza spot downtown and played pool.
I didn’t say one word about the night we carpooled, entirely out of convenience, and a simple conversation about concerts made us realize there was something more.
I didn’t tell them how we went on our first date to waffle house because it was the only place open when we got off work at midnight on a Wednesday, or how our second date was spent throwing a football back and forth on a local high school field.
I didn’t tell them Russ waited until the fourth date to kiss me (and I was *this* close to thinking I had misinterpreted the whole thing).
I didn’t say one word about how Russ came into my life at a time when I was struggling more than ever with friendships and heartbreak – and how he unknowingly saved me from a weird, stupid spiral of sadness that was so unlike me.
I left out the part about how he makes me laugh hard every single day, and that he laughs at all of my stupid jokes. He even laughs when I tell him (all the time) that he is “the weirdest one in this relationship” because we both know I’m deflecting.
I didn’t tell them this is the easiest thing I’ve ever done, or that his family made me feel like part of their family the minute I met them.
I didn’t tell them that planning a wedding is my worst nightmare and somehow Russ makes it fun.
Somewhere in town there are three co-workers who think they met a nice, boring couple with a terrible story to tell their future children.
Because some things are too big for conversation.
A week or two after we started dating – both of our hairstyles are unreasonably long.
So I did this little thing that, lord knows, Elizabeth Wren Sanders at many different ages probably thought would never happen. I said yes to loving someone forever. These are funny things, proposals. If done correctly then you already know you’re in it forever and saying yes is just a technicality. Regardless, what a thrill.
For weeks I’ve known Russ was going on a guy weekend in Atlanta. He and a couple of good friends do this trip down there to hit a brewery and tour some Walking Dead set sites. They’ve done it twice before. This was going to be the third time, and I made fun of him pretty relentlessly for not being creative enough to come up with a new trip.
We make fun of each other a lot. It’s what we do.
Russ wasn’t in Atlanta. None of the guys were in Atlanta. Their instagram accounts would have you believe otherwise, a detail that proved handy as I sat by the pool with some girlfriends on Saturday and casually scrolled through the ol’ IG (is that what the kids call it?)
That’s right. Russ planned a guys weekend and I very quickly planned a girls weekend to counter it. I spent most of my day laying poolside, chatting with friends, and letting the sun zap all my energy while turning my skin a little darker. My guy was out of town and I’d be alone the rest of the night, though I assumed I’d be headed to dinner with at least a couple of the girls.
-My mom called and attempted to make dinner plans with me. I knew I’d be tired from the pool day and still hoped for dinner plans with the girls. I declined.-
Let me take a moment right now to just tell you that when Russell A. LaFleur makes a plan, he really makes a plan. I can’t even tell you how many people knew about the proposal before I did, but it was the majority of the people within a 60 mile radius who might potentially ask me to hang out on this particular Saturday night.
I continued to hang out with my friends, still assuming someone would probably stick around for dinner.
-My mom called again. This time to make a plan for me to come over to see about a baby goat that would be moving to the farm. I was still tired, and really not interested in taking the 40 minute drive to Liberty. I declined again.-
My friends left. I couldn’t convince anyone to stick around for dinner and by this point I was tired enough to not try very hard to do so.
-My mom called for a third time. Seriously, why won’t she give this thing up, right? I’m tired. She tells me they need to talk to me and it’s important. Everything is okay, but they need to have this conversation while Russ is out of town.-
If you know me at all you know that I heard everything in this conversation except “Everything is okay”. I threw on some decent clothes, didn’t shower, didn’t wash my hair or the sunscreen off my face, and hurried to my car.
They didn’t think I’d come over so quickly. Sunset wasn’t until 8ish.
As soon as I walked in the door my dad stopped me. He told me to get in the car we were going to see about a baby goat. At this point I was frustrated and confused because we were supposed to be having some serious talk and now there I was talking about a baby goat again.
You know where this is going. Distraction after distraction as they stalled until it got close to sunset. Around the time the sky normally glows orange my mom made up an excuse for us to ride on the tractor to the bottom of the hill where we have our legendary (among family and close friends) campfires.
I’m questioning my intelligence now as I share this story with you and wonder how I didn’t pick up on any of the quirks of my day, but I’d also like to take this moment to swear to you that it’s totally normal for my parents to be mid-conversation then randomly suggest we “take the tractor down by the creek to make sure the fire is out before the wind picks up.”
My parents’ property is a giant hill. The house sits on top, and my favorite corner of the land is on the back left at the bottom of the hill. A creek wraps around much of the back property line. The path we take over the hill carries the tractor through a fence on the far right side of the back pasture. From there you can see the trees by the campfire from about eye level on up to the sky, but you can’t see the ground. I stopped my mom near the bottom of the hill and told her I thought the fire had already spread. I could see tiny flames scattered through the branches. She played along and told my dad to hurry up (hurry up on a tractor — nice one, mom).
As we rounded the corner I saw a figure in my favorite blue and red checkerboard shirt sitting nervously by a fire. I burst into tears, because that’s my move, and because I finally knew what was happening.
My sweet parents dropped me off, waved goodbye, then made the slowest exit of all time on a decade old Case tractor that probably moves about 3 miles an hour.
The flames in the trees were candles.
There was no Atlanta.
There was just a boy who’d spent his entire day with my parents hanging candles in mason jars, string lights, and old notes we’ve written each other all across my favorite clearing by the creek.
We read the notes that were hanging. They were some of our favorites. He told me he’d spent the week preparing while I thought he was at the gym. He told me that he picked up topaz colored glitter to cover the insides of the mason jars. He told me he chose notes because he knows how important words and writing are to me.
I cried like a baby as he handed me one last note with my name on the outside and “Will you marry me?” on the inside. Then he got down on one knee, held up my Mamaw’s ring, and said all the things I could possibly want him to say about sharing this life. I’m not going to tell you he cried (but he totally did).
I said yes (spoiler alert).
The craziest thing about it is I’ve been saying yes. For months we’ve been saying yes. We’ve laughed and cried (again, mostly me). We’ve hiked in some old favorite spots and found some new ones. We’ve run together. We’ve thrown the football around almost every week just like we did on our first date. We’ve spent time with each other’s families, and shared big holidays. We’ve grown together into this thing that already felt like forever. The proposal was beautiful. It was perfect. It included all of the things I love most in this world, but it was ultimately just a technicality.
That tree in the back has my parents initials carved into it. Russ and I are hoping to add ours.Shoutout to me for not showering or fixing my hair prior to all of thisThis is me grinning like a crazy person/showing off the ring. Mamaw and Papaw got married in 1949. So it’s at least 66 years old. Mamaw and Papaw happen to be two of the most important people in my life. I am honored to wear this ring.
