"Fine, we can get married..."

While most engagement stories have a resemblance to a love story found in a classic movie, our engagement story resembles more of a comedy. The questions of when we would be getting married started for me around the 1.5/2 year mark of our relationship when we moved in together (which by the way happened in May of 2004.) Jason didn’t really start getting the “when are you two going to get married” questions until his sister, Kirsten got married in July of 2006. The subject of marriage had been brought up many times by me, but Jason always found a way to change the subject and make me forget about the topic that I brought up.

Then around Christmas time in 2007, we found out that Kirsten was going to have a baby. It was a secret for a couple months and wasn’t talked about much between Jason and I because we didn’t want to accidentally give the secret away. In March, Jason let me know that Kirsten was going to announce she was pregnant to the family. While this was a very exciting time, I had mixed feelings…most of them being jealousy. Apparently, I was not very good at hiding my feelings as Jason asked me what was wrong with me one day when I came home from work. My response was, “nothing,” but Jason kept asking, as it was obvious that I was upset. Finally, I decided to let Jason in on the crazy emotions that I had at that point. I explained to him that I thought that it sucked that his sister had met somebody, gotten engaged, gotten married, and was now having a baby…all in the time that we had been together and we still were just “boyfriend and girlfriend.” I also told him that I thought that it sucked that when the baby was born, I would just be the baby’s uncle’s girlfriend. (I have never claimed to not be a crazy person!) Jason’s response to my crazy, jealous person rant was, “Fine, we can get married.” What was my response you ask? While I do remember the exact words in his touchingly beautiful “proposal,” I don’t remember my exact words. I do remember that I told him that “Fine, we can get married” is not an acceptable proposal and that I did not want to be telling our children or grandchildren someday the story of how one day he said “Fine, we can get married.” He said that he did not want to steal Kirsten’s pregnancy announcement thunder and that he would think of a better way to ask me in the future.

So about a week or two later, Jason and I had gone to Happy Hour one Friday after work. I had recently found out that Rent was closing on Broadway and decided that while I had seen it multiple times in Minnesota, I had to see it on Broadway before it closed, so I planned a trip to New York for us in May. At Happy Hour, we were discussing the upcoming New York trip and what else we would do while we were there. One thing that Jason wanted to do was visit a comic book store across from the Empire State Building. I am not big into comic books and Jason is not big into visiting tourist traps when on vacation, so he suggested that I visit the Empire State Building while he hung out at the comic book store. The cheese ball romantic in me suggested that instead of going to the Empire State Building by myself, Jason should come with me and propose at the top. After I said this, Jason just sort of looked at me with a look of disgust and annoyance. The look of disgust came from the fact that he threw up a little bit in his mouth because he thinks that proposing at the top of the Empire State Building is cliché and unoriginal. The look of annoyance came from the fact that in his words, “I ruin everything.” Apparently, he had already considered proposing in New York. His best friend from college, Chris McIntyre, had proposed to his wife Anjali while they were in Minnesota and hanging out with Jason, so Jason had thought it would be cool to propose to me while we were in New York and hanging out with them. Too bad I ruined that one by suggesting it myself, that would have been a romantic story…instead I have this one.

Easter in 2008 fell on March 23rd and we spent the day with both of our families. Jason’s mom and dad came over to my family’s Easter celebration at the Swanson’s. While sitting around and talking, my aunt PJ asked if we were ever going to get married. Jason responded by saying that he already asked me and I said no. With mouths open, everyone was staring at me and the room erupted with cries of “WHAT?!?!” I then had to tell the story of how he asked me and I had to explain that I said no because “Fine, we can get married” is an unacceptable proposal.

Tune in next week for another exciting chapter in our epically romantic story of “Fine, we can get married.”

Where it all began...

So technically, Jason and I met sometime in the fall of 2001 when I started working at Buca di Beppo in St. Paul. When I started, I had to be a Host/Wait Assistant even though I had previously been a server at the Eden Prairie location. Jason was a bartender and had been working there since about 1995. Unless you are a server, you don’t have much reason to hang out at the bar and chat with the bartender so although we had met, we hadn’t really talked all that much. Time passed and eventually I became a server. Sometime around September of 2002, my friend Tesa (who also worked at Buca) and I were standing at the bar toward the end of the night talking about going to have a drink after work and Jason asked us where we were going. We told him that we were going to the Starting Gate and he said that he might stop by when he was done. I was excited about this because Jason never came out with us after work and he seemed like such a nice and funny guy (later I learned that first impressions are not always true...LOL!!!) The Starting Gate was a few blocks from Buca, so Tesa and I decided to ride over together. After hanging out for a little bit, Jason showed up with our manager Phil and we had a few drinks. It was a fun night. One of the things that we talked about was the fact that there was a strip club called Casey’s right down the street and we thought that it was funny that we all drove past it everyday but no one had ever been inside. We decided that we should get a group together some night after work and go there…super classy, right? :)

Sometime around last call, we called it an evening and headed toward our cars. On the ride back to Buca, Tesa asked me when she thought that Jason and I were going to get together. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but then she proceeded to tell me that the attraction was obvious and the flirting going on between us was blatant. The next time that we all worked together, we asked a few people if they wanted to be a part of the group that went to Casey’s. We decided to plan the adventure for Friday, September 6, and we would just go after work. The group ended up being Jason, me, Tesa, Nina, and Mullet (whose real name is Jen Rae.) I have always considered this our “first date”…but now that I think about it, can it really be a first date if there were three other women there?!?!?

So after work on Friday, we changed and headed over to Casey’s. We did not have any expectations that it was going to be a nice place, as we had driven by it for a long time and knew that it was trashy…we did not, however, know that it was going to be quite as tragic as it was! We walked in and amongst the red shag carpet and giant oil paintings of voluptuous women from the 60’s, there were maybe 5 middle-aged men hanging out at the bar. We selected one of the many open tables and sat down. The waitress came over in between taking drags of her Virginia Slim menthol and took our order. She came back a few drags (minutes) later with our beers in a can. Awesome and classy! Mullet and I had won some money playing pull-tabs the previous week, so we decided to each put in $10 and play them again. We won $230!!! After that excitement, one of the “dancers” came out on stage and did her thing. We estimated that she was in her late 40’s/early 50’s. When the song she was “dancing to” was over, she grabbed some money out of her purse and went over to the jukebox to play another song. All of a sudden, we heard Jeremiah was a bullfrog...and she was back on stage to “dance” to Joy to the World. “Sad" is the word that I think we all would have chosen to describe it. Nina had already left by this point, but Tesa, Mullet, and I were thoroughly entertained by the ridiculousness of the situation. Jason was the one that said that we should leave after being there for about 30 or 45 minutes. You know the place is pathetic when the only male in the group is the one saying that you should leave! We decided to listen to Jason and we decided to head to another bar. Tesa took off because she had another job working at Details Salon and she had to work in the morning. Mullet, Jason, and I decided to head down West 7th to Mr. Patom’s (which is now called Shamrock’s.) We had a drink or two there and then headed further down West 7th to McGovern’s. We had a couple drinks there and then it was closing time. Mullet decided to go home, but Jason and I decided to go back to his house because we were having fun and neither of us was tired. Jason gave me a tour of his house and told me about all of the art that was hanging on the walls. At the time, I still had the nasty smoking habit, so we went and sat on the porch so I could smoke. We ended up sitting out on the porch under the blue lights talking until the wee hours of the morning.

Who knew that 6 and a half years later we would be writing the story of how we met for our wedding blog!!!

First Blog Post

My cousin Courtney started a blog for her daughter which I have been obsessed with since she started it. It got me thinking that I should start a blog for our wedding. We'll see if writing a blog is as fun as reading other people's!

I am assuming that it will be mostly me (Kellee) who updates the blog, but Jason may add a comment every once in awhile!

As far as the wedding plans go, we have almost all of the big stuff done. We have chosen our date (November 28th, 2009), venue and caterer, picked a photographer, found a jeweler to make my engagement ring and our wedding rings, asked our friend James if he and his band (The Sensational Joint Chiefs) would play at the reception, and asked our sister's and my cousin Sean, as well as all the cute little kids in our families, if they would be our peeps in the wedding. We have also decided who will marry us...my cousin Brad is going to become an ordained minister on the Internet...now we just need to figure out how to do that so everything is legal. Any advice?

I suppose we do have many things left to do, but November 28th seems so far away, I feel like we have plenty of time (I have a feeling that I will read that sentence in 10 months and laugh at my naive outlook!)

I plan on going to start looking at wedding and bridesmaid dresses sometime later this month or early March. I started my wedding weight loss plan in February, 2008 and wanted to be well on my way to "skinny bitch bride" before I went, so I think late February/early March would be a good time to start that process!

Here are some links to check out if you would like to see our venue, photographer, jeweler, or the band playing at the wedding:

Venue: http://metropolitan.bellagala.com/?fetch=yes

Photographer: http://www.prestonpalmer.com/

Jewelers: http://www.knoxjewelers.biz/

Band: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewProfile&friendID=270730525

And here is a picture of my amazing engagement ring: (Jason and I designed it together with the help of the wonderful people at Knox Jewelers!)