Tagged

My friend Jessica tagged me a while ago with these questions.

1. Where did you meet your husband?
I was a cage dancer at a local club in Rexburg, ID. Here's a video taken that night.

Ha ha, just joking. I was showing off my sweet moves on the dance floor the night we met, though. It was at a Ricks College dance in 1997. His roommate was out on a date with my roommate and we were sort of aware of each other but had never met. My friends and I had filled up water balloons before the dance so we could chuck them at people walking out. We invited Bobby and his friends to join us. (It's possible that I'm mixing up two different occasions here. Bobby and I can't remember for sure. The water balloon launching may have occurred after a different dance, but it makes for a good story, so I'll just leave it.)



2. What was the first thing you said to your husband? I have no clue. Bobby reminds me of one of our first exchanges, though. It went something like this:

Bobby: "Where are you from?"
Me: "Huntington Beach."
Bobby: "Where's that?"
Me: "You don't know where Huntington Beach is?"
Bobby (with attitude): "No."

I have a hard time believing I could muster up that much sass having been totally mesmerized by his dashing good looks and witty personality, but that's his memory.


3. Where was your first date?
Hmmm.... We went to Preference together. It's a girl-ask-guy dance, but he asked me. I thought that was kind of sneaky, so I made sure to get the word out about who really asked who.

4. Where was your first kiss?
I had never seen Wayne's World before so we all got together and watched it one night after devouring an entire pan of brownies that we dug into with forks. I fell asleep, of course, with my head on Bobby's lap. I woke up a few hours later and everyone else was gone and Bobby was playing with my hair. When he noticed I had woken up, he leaned over and gave me a kiss. It was really short, but really sweet. Incidentally I've still never seen Wayne's World.

5. Did you have a long/short engagement/courtship?
Our engagement was short, I guess. Four months. We had known each other for four years when we got married because he served a mission in between.

6. Where did you get engaged?
I have to tell this story right or it just sounds lame. I had sort of specific instructions for Bobby on how I wanted to be proposed to. I told him I wanted to it to be a surprise and special and romantic, but nothing too kitsch or trite. And not boring or lame. And not in front of a temple. Most importantly, however, I did not want to know when it was coming. Or so I thought.

So Bobby planned to propose to me when he visited me in California for Christmas. He had asked my father's permission to marry me and had this great idea of how to ask me, which I didn't find out about until much later. We both love vintage metal lunchboxes. He had found a Hot Wheels one, in pristine condition, and built this little container within the lunchbox with flaps and stuff to hide little presents to give me for Christmas. One of the flaps opened a box that was the perfect size for a ring. He sort of hinted that he was planning on asking me while he was out there, and I asked him not to! I told him I was not ready.

So then we're back at BYU, it's February and a school holiday was coming up on February 19. He told me, "don't plan anything for the 19th. We're going to spend the whole day together." So I'd have to be stupid not to pick up on that hint. This time I was definitely ready. Bobby's mom lived in SLC at the time and we'd often go up and stay with her. We spent the night there on the 18th and after we woke up and got dressed and ready, Bobby said to me, "So do you have anything you want to do?" I was shocked to hear him say that and I totally over-reacted. Wasn't he supposed to have every minute of this glorious day planned from start to finish? So I did a very girlish thing and started to pout. Perhaps he wasn't going to propose after all. I couldn't hide my disappointment and the day was ruined. We ended up just heading back to Provo and arguing the whole way until finally, around the point of the mountain, I admitted how utterly disappointed I was since I was expecting a proposal. I felt like an idiot when he told me that was his plan- he just really wanted to know if there was anything I wanted to do in SLC before we went back to Provo, where all the glorious proposal plans were scheduled to be carried out. Oops.

A few weeks later, my roommates and I were watching a wedding video at our landlord's house. (He had just recently gotten married.) It was a lovely video, but as I sat there I thought about Bobby and I getting married in the temple and felt so happy and so peaceful and so sure that's what I wanted. I had to see him. He was already asleep when I got to his apartment, but I barged into his bedroom anyway and told him I was ready. (I'm not sure if he knew that I wasn't ready before, but he handled it all very graciously and seemed happy with my announcement.) He mentioned that he had the ring (which was news to me), and asked would I like to see it? I said yes. He pulled the ring out and asked me if I wanted him to propose then or if I would be disappointed that it wasn't a surprise. I insisted that he do it right then and there, in his brown pajamas in his bedroom of his basement apartment in Provo, UT. Now you understand why it takes so long to tell this story. What seems like a very boring and mundane proposal was actually very romantic and kind of funny because that night I realized that I'm a little more of a control freak that I ever knew before.

7. Where did you get married?
San Diego temple. We had a luncheon immediately following in La Jolla at this lovely restaurant called the Marine room that was on the beach and looked out on the shore. Our reception was in Corona the night after. We stayed in a Marriott on Coronado Island on our wedding night and in all of my careful planning, I forgot to get directions to the hotel from the restaurant! Two newlyweds driving off to their honeymoon without the slightest idea of where they were going. We had to laugh.


I tag Julia, Ashley, Erin, Melody, Jill, and Betsy.