I can’t believe it’s been nine years for my fiancé and I. Well, nearly nine years. It’s actually been eight years and 11 months.
We’ve been talking about it since 2001, but we’re finally taking the plunge and are getting married next week. Nothing huge or even elaborate. Just us, our three kids, a preacher and our parents and siblings.
We’re simple people and we want to keep our ceremony simple. I have a dress and although it’s not new (a gift from a friend) it’s beautiful and summer-like. I’ll find some simple shoes and Jake will find a nice shirt and tie.
We have our rings and I’ve been wearing mine as my ‘engagement ring’ since the night he officially proposed.
Although we’ve known we were going to get married eventually I fell in love with him all over again when he actually asked me to marry him with the ring.
Some may think we’re just rushing it because our baby’s due Sept. 30, but that’s not the case. We’ve been waiting for the ‘right time’ to do it, and if we keep waiting for the ‘right time’ we’ll be waiting forever. So we’re just going to do it.
When I was a little girl I was never the type to dream about my wedding day. I didn’t ever pretend to be a bride with a faux veil and dress. I mean, who really does that??
Instead of weddings and babies I pretended to be a TV news anchor or a doctor. My big dreams never included babies or a husband, but a career.
But then again, I didn’t know he was out there. Jake is a dream come true and I’ve heard several times from friends and family that I’d better hang on to him because of how great he is.
We don’t have a fairytale relationship – we’re only human so we do argue and disagree about dumb things – but compared to stories I’ve heard about other guys, he is a dream.
We met at a powwow in August 1999 and the first time I saw him I thought he was gorgeous. He was tall, thin, tan and had the most beautiful smile and contagious laugh. On top of that he had warm, brown eyes that I just wanted to stare into forever.
Though I haven’t told many people how we met, we eventually spent several hours together that night at a social gathering after the powwow – LOL – among many other Indians and spent that time talking and learning about each other. I don’t believe in love at first sight but with him I would’ve changed my beliefs.
The next day I woke up smiling and thinking that I had just had a wonderful dream and didn’t want to wake up, but then I remembered that it was true. I actually had spent an evening with someone I wanted to know much better.
But then I remembered he was leaving that day to go back to college at Haskell in Kansas.
To make a long story short, by his spring semester of college and the spring semester of my senior year of high school, he’d moved home to be closer to me. And by the end of the next year we knew we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together.
Nearly nine years later I still get butterflies in my stomach when I hear his voice, when he smiles at me with those dimples, or when I catch him looking at me with those big brown eyes. But it’s multiplied by three now since I see those same dimples, eyes and smile in our three kids.
People always tease me because he does the cooking in our house. Yes, I know how to cook. Yes, I like to cook, but so does he. So he cooks each night (and is a great cook), changes dirty diapers, helps me clean the house, helps the kids with homework, does laundry THEN rubs my back and belly each evening before we go to bed. *sigh*
No, I’m never letting him go and the best part is that next week I’ll be his wife and in September I’ll have his fourth baby.
