Wedding announcement and shopping!

8/18/2008 - Last night (August 17th) Christin was asked if she would marry her boyfriend, Aaron. They went to a dock at Lake Hollingsworth in Lakeland around 11:30 PM. Christin was was looking at spiders when Aaron said, "I want to ask you something." She turned around and he was down on one knee and he asked her to marry him! She said. "YES!" WHOOOOOWhoooooo!!!! We knew this was coming and we really like Aaron. They are looking at a date in March 09.
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Below are the details of our wedding shopping so far. Like I said up above we knew Christin and Aaron were headed in the direction of marriage so we were already shopping! :-D

Date: 5/16/08 - Today Christin, Rebecca, and I went wedding dress shopping! David's Bridal was having a sale and we were just looking to see what there was out there. I never thought we'd find a dress the first time. We started looking at the dresses and Christin tried a few on. She didn't like the ones that had the glitter, beads and such on them or anything really floofy or fancy. There was one dress that both Rebecca and I liked, but Christin didn't. We asked her to try it on and she loved it once she got it on. Then we all stood in the dressing room and took silly pictures. The "sales consultant" was so funny....he was massively gay and had blue eyebrows and almost resembled Michael Jackson! Afterwards we went and picked up pizza because Marty and Aaron were at the house and hungry! We had to wait until Aaron went to sleep before bringing the wedding dress inside the house.

On our second wedding shopping trip it was just Christin and me. We were just hanging out and wandering around town window shopping. We went into a silk flower shop next to David's Bridal just looking for some ideas for bouquets. Christin had a particular flower she had found on the internet and she wanted to show me. We found some cymbidium orchids, exactly what Christin wanted. They were green and had a purple center. After that we went over to the Mall at Millenia and went in every dress shop we could find. After finding the most perfect bridesmaid dresses ever, we shockingly discovered they were over $400 EACH. This ended the dress shopping, but all was solved with a trip to the Godiva store and a shared milk chocolate drink.

Now the shopping trips in the middle start running together in my head. We have been to every craft type store in Orlando just looking and picking out what we will need. Sometimes we've had Aaron or Marty with us. Several times we went and looked at Mead Gardens because Christin wants an outdoor wedding. Right beside the amphitheater is a building that belongs to the garden club. One time it was all decorated for a party, so we were able to see it all prettied up. That same day we looked at the old train depot. Christin liked the garden club building best, so that's where the reception will be held.

On Monday, September 1st, at 10 AM Marty, Rebecca and I met one of the garden club ladies to officially look inside the building and to pay the deposit.

On Monday, September 8th, at 9:15 AM Marty, Rebecca, and I went down to rent and pay the deposit for the amphitheater.

The biggest yet shopping trip was Saturday, September 13th. Christin came home for the weekend. All four of us went on this massive shopping spree! We had lunch at Fazoli's and then headed to Joanne's to look for flowers and centerpieces. First of all, we found the centerpieces. There are 2 different kinds. The plants are herbs growing in little pots. One is a long chocolate brown box with three plants in it. The other is a metal box type holder with three plants in it. We had three buggies by this time and looked like a train! Next we found an ivy leaf garland to use at the amphitheater. We hadn't planned on decorating the outside, but this will add just a little bit and look so nice!

I wanted to pick up one of Rebecca's Christmas presents while I was there, so Marty and I said we were going to look for white roses. We did and only found two! Marty went and bought Rebecca's present, took it to the van, and met me back with Christin and Rebecca.

The girls had been picking out the bridesmaid's flowers. Christin looked at all the flowers and said there wasn't anything there. Rebecca started picking out bunches of flowers and putting them together. She did a great job! She must have inherited this gift from Marty's Mom. They were quite entertaining for all the ladies that happened to walk down that aisle.

Our next stop was the ribbon department and the baskets. In one aisle on the way to the ribbons we found a "birdcage" to put the cards in at the reception. It was perfect! After pulling our train around this store for three hours we were ready to check out!

We dropped Marty off at the car place to pick up Christin's car from being aligned. Then he went home so he could sleep because he had to work that night at midnight.

The girls and I went to another Joanne's to find the rest of the centerpieces. We ended up with a total of 10 of each centerpiece. We also found the rest of the white roses! Many of our items were on sale and for the rest we used coupons! I had asked everyone I knew to save these coupons for me, so I had a ton! The ones I didn't use I played coupon fairy and gave away to whoever wanted them. Afterwards we went for dinner and dessert at Toojay's.
It was another great day!