Adventures in ParaDyess: Engagement

We’ve talked about the dating years and the proposal, now it’s time to talk about engagement and wedding planning.

We got engaged in February of 2016, but when we got engaged we already had a venue and a photographer booked. We knew we needed to lock those in early because we were planning a mid-busy season wedding and wanted to make sure we had everything we wanted and the venue and the photographer were the most important to us.

I only had one wedding-planning meltdown, which truly is a miracle, and it was because I was in the middle of midterms for my last semester of my Masters program and we had just gotten engaged so I was getting recommendations from everyone for everything and my mom was asking me what shoes I was going to wear and I thought I was going to go crazy! Thankfully it was a temporary moment of insanity lol and we were on our way.

Photo by blessed beginnings photography

We got all of our other vendors booked relatively quickly and painlessly. In May, I got my Master’s. In June, Ryan started at Liberty University online to get his Bachelors. Also in June/July we started looking to buy a house. We knew we wanted to buy and not rent, and thankfully our parents had set us up for success in that department. Neither of us had student loans and Ryan’s parents would continue to pay for his schooling through when he graduated with his Bachelors. I had a Government job and wasn’t making a whole lot at the time, but it was enough that the bank pre-approved us for a loan. Thankfully Ryan had some credit built up and the bank was able to use my income coupled with his credit score to approve us for way more house than we wanted to buy.

Yes we really bought it looking like this

When we started looking at houses, we knew we wanted a fixer upper. Ryan had run a handyman business during high school and while he was getting his Associates and I had worked a lot with my grandpa building things growing up so we both knew our way around power tools. We looked at probably 10 houses, I think over two different days and when we found this one, we saw its potential. And that’s what it was…potential. It was a hot mess express. It was a foreclosure. It had brown moulding, a red kitchen, bugs, popping tile everywhere, parquet flooring in the foyer, nasty nasty carpets, poop brown walls in the hall bath, pink tile in the master bath. It was a WRECK. But we were like hey, we can do it. We put an offer in for full asking plus we paid closing costs and the bank that owned the home accepted our offer. We had a house under contract and were set to close before the wedding.

We hurtled at a high speed toward our wedding date. My mom hosted a craft day with many of my bridesmaids where we made a lot of the decorations for the wedding. Ryan and I worked out a lot. I found my wedding dress. We acquired furniture (most of it for free or from yard sales) I picked flowers, the whole 9 yards. The month of September was the craziest though.

Within about 2 weeks, we had my bridal shower and bachelorette party, we closed on a house, and I turned 23. What a ride.

But let me tell ya, none of that compared to the last month before the wedding. We closed on the house on September 14th. We got married October 9th. We had less than a month to get the house live-able. Thankfully Ryan wasn’t working full time since he was in school so he was able to work on it some while I was at work and I would meet him down there in the evenings. And we would work on the house, stop at AmFam on the way back to work out and then we’d get back to one of our parents’ house at like 9:30 (or later), eat dinner and go to bed. And wake up and do it all over again the next day.

But in that month before the wedding we were able to pull all the nasty carpet and have new carpet installed. Paint all the bedrooms. Paint the trim in the bedrooms. We literally scrubbed walls and counter tops and inside of cabinets. Thankfully we had a lot of help from family. I think one day we had at least 8 people helping us work on the house. It truly was a group effort. But it didn’t leave us a lot of wiggle room. Plus the fact that we were still living in separate houses, him with his parents, me with mine, so we still needed our beds and some clothes and all that. We moved most of our stuff into the house the week of the wedding. I literally went by there on Saturday (we got married on Sunday) and dropped things off and unpacked some stuff. It was so bad that Ryan wasn’t even packed for our honeymoon before we got home from our wedding. We literally got home from our wedding and had to unpack boxes to find clothes and bathing suits to then re-pack in a suitcase to take with us.

It was wild, but I wouldn’t trade it for a thing. It was such a fun season for us. Aaaand I had just gotten used to calling him my fiance when I had to change and start calling him my husband!