My fiancé, Mark Tate, and I have actually been together 10 years and engaged for 7 this July. We met through my cousin the summer before our senior year of high school (we went to different schools) and have been together since. We are practical and wanted to finish college and settle down into careers before getting married and starting a family. Our engagement happened so early because we took a month long back packing trip to Europe together with a friend (one of the groomsmen) to see another friend from Germany who we met through an exchange program (she’s coming from Germany for the wedding!). Mark knows how much I love Paris and while we were there he surprised me one evening with a fancy dinner and a beautiful walk across the Pont Alexandre III bridge to see the eiffel tower from afar. Right at 11pm as the eiffel tower began it’s hourly light show he proposed 🙂 He knew that even though we wanted to wait to get married he couldn’t pass up a proposal in Paris.
I love to read. When I saw that I really mean it! I average at least 4 books a week, mostly romance and mystery. I also love playing with my cats, venturing on walks through woods around our house and geeking out on nerdy computer stuff (I work as a systems administrator in the IT world). Mark loves playing guitar, listening to Pandora 24/7 including everything from old country to rap, spending all his time outdoors with our animals and most importantly to me he loves cooking and recently found out how amazing a weathered copy of Joy of Cooking can be 🙂 We share a love of food, craft beer, cornhole, NPR, the Florida Gators, Netflix (we haven’t had cable in years), and Mario Kart. Fun stuff! This is actually a really fun email to write so far 🙂 Our favorite date night would be a casual dinner followed by visiting a local brewery. Our honeymoon is a road trip through Colorado to see the sights, enjoy the atmosphere and visit some of their breweries so ultimately a date night that lasts all week!
I’m there for the marriage and spending time with friends and family! I do love organization though so all that cooking I mentioned has been fit into lists/schedules of tested recipes, times to start them and who is contributing and cleaning up for each meal 😉 Reflecting for this was another reminder of why I love my fiancé (quirks and all) so thank you so much for asking all those questions and sparking my thought process for my vows!
