We're getting married!

6.28.2011 I was hired at Bonefish Grill in Greenwood, Indiana. Joshua and I met when we were teenagers working at a local restaurant. During down times at work, we would swap corny jokes and burnt cds until our co-workers got so annoyed with us being coy and insisted that we go on a date. Eight years later, that same restaurant is catering our wedding.

#1 Christmas 2011, we joked about all of the hosts memorizing Christmas carols and singing them to the guests as they came in the door. We both loved this idea, so we implemented it (kind of). I don't remember if we ever brought it up to the other hosts, but we took it upon ourselves to memorize "Baby It's Cold Outside." Once we had mastered the song, we would sing it all of the time. At one point, a fellow hostess forced us to sit on opposite ends of a long bench, begin singing, and slowly inch towards each other as we sang. Yea, I know. It sounds ridiculous and well, it was. Luckily, we had gotten to be good enough friends that it wasn't awkward-- it was hilarious! #2 I was cleaning off a booth and Josh walked by and threw a dirty paper towel in the seat of the booth. Confused, I finished cleaning off the table, gathered all of the trash, and threw it away. I walked over to him only to hear him say "Have you ever gotten one of those before?" What? Little did I know that he had constructed a rose out of a paper towel. Needless to say, I scurried back to the trash can to snatch the rose from the garbage pile and smuggle it into my purse to keep forever. I still have it. #3 I gave him a mix CD that included the bands Mandolin Orange and The Courtney Janes. I loved this music and selected it carefully. The condition I gave him for listening to the mix was that he had to be driving with the windows down on a beautiful day. He was very excited to tell me that he absolutely loved the CD! He said that if I were a CD of music, that's the CD I would be; that it was happy and cheerful and I think he used a term like bouncy. He was so excited about this thought that he had to tell his grandpa that he knew this girl that the CD personified. I'm sorry, did you catch that? He loved the CD and the CD is a personification of me? I'm happy, cheerful, and bouncy in a way that can be listened to over and over again? Good Lord. This might be my favorite explanation of a CD ever.

Joshua proposed to me with an elaborate fourteen-hour scavenger hunt. At 7:00 am, he woke me up for a scheduled 15 minutes of ‘snuggle time’. Being a chemist, he’s a pretty calculated person. Throughout the day, there were nine different clues that led me to a spa for a facial, brunch with my best friend, a manicure, a tiki bar with my roommate, the place where we first met, and to my parents’ house. At the end of the wonderful but very long day, he finally popped the question during a card game, Golf, which we played with my parents once a week. I drew a card from the deck that instructed me to flip over my four remaining cards. When I did, the four cards each had one word of the proposal: “Will you marry me?” He then handed me the deck of cards, which he had turned into a ring box by cutting a square in each card and gluing them together. There, in my childhood home, he got down on one knee and stuttered when he said, “Katelyn O’Mara, will you marry me?” It was truly the most thoughtful, perfect, love-filled day.