God Bless the Broken Road

So here we are, Joey and I, dating, after only knowing each other for a few months. Through dating, we were pretty much inseparable. There wasn’t really a day that we went without seeing each other. One day we were going to the mall for some reason, that I can not remember (possibly because the outcome of that mall trip was far more exciting than what we were originally going for), and we decided to go to a few jewelry stores, and look at rings. It was truly a random thing, and not something that we had really talked about before. We had talked about our feelings for each other, and hinted around at marriage, but we never talked about it as if we were about to actually be married. However, after looking through a few different stores, we went to Helzburg. Well, they were absolutely the nicest and friendliest people that we had encountered all night. Well we looked at rings, and I tried pretty much all of them on, and then Joey looked at me and said “Let’s go ahead and buy one”. I was shocked, and at the same time, having trouble realizing that this was FINALLY happening! (I was only 20, but boy did all those years seem like forever!) Well he told me to get whatever ring I wanted, and I ended up falling in love with a set. So we began the process of purchasing the ring. The store was offering no interest until the next year, so we decided to finance it; well we hoped to finance it! The lady went and input all of our info into the computer, and came back and told us we were approved! So we took the rings and went home. So on the way home, I was wondering, “does this mean I am engaged now?’ I was hoping not, because even though I got to pick my own ring out, I had hoped to have a romantic proposal to go along with it! But before I could think of the words to ask Joey about this, he told me that he was going to hold on to the ring, until he felt it was the right time to ask me, and that way I would be surprised.

Well, that Saturday, Joey asked my dad to go golfing with him, so that he could ask for his permission to marry me. I knew that he was going to do that, but it was just so that when he was ready to ask me, he could. So Joey goes golfing with my dad, and I think he played the worst game in his life, because he was so nervous. My dad said he would go to ask him something, and then he would just say “never mind”. He eventually got up the courage to ask him, and of course my parents loved Joey, and had no problem with it. Later that day, Joey had to DJ a wedding. (He did it for an old friend, and occasionally did it for his friend that owned the karaoke business) Well the plan was to meet him after he got done with the wedding to go have dinner or something. So I got to his apartment, and waited for him. And waited for him, and waited even longer. The wedding ran later than he planned, which left me at his apartment with nothing to do, and not very happy about that. When he finally got home, I was not in a very good mood at all. He told me that he wanted to just go somewhere and get out of the house. So he took me to the savannah rapids pavilion, and we walked down the canal. Well, little did I know, that when we were back at the apartment, he asked me to get him something to drink so that he could get me out of the room and get the ring into his pocket, because as we were walking, he started telling me how much he loved me, and so on, and then got down on one knee, and asked me to marry him. Of course, I said yes! And he was even able to get back up, lol, not that he would be able to do that so easily these days. So here we were, officially engaged. I was surprised! And it was a lot sooner than I thought it would be! My anger from being home alone and him being late went away quickly, and we went to celebrate…. at IHOP. Of all places, we went to IHOP because I had never been there, and really wanted pancakes, and since it was so late, there were few choices!

So here we are in June of 2004, only been dating about a whole month, and we are engaged! We had a lot of firsts that year. Other than the ones I have already told you about, our next first, was our first trip together, which came about in July. We went to the beach with Joey’s family. I pretty much had met most of them, just not his brother and sister in law that lived in MS. Well, the trip was going pretty well, until the day of the cookout for the 4th. Joey and one of his brothers got into about something, and it just went downhill from there. We ended up just leaving and going downtown and watching the fireworks on River Street. It was quite the experience!

Over the next few months, the wedding planning started, and we eventually settled on our wedding date, May 28, 2005, a little less than a year away. Joey and I really never fought…. Until the planning started. Planning a wedding really stresses you out! But the time came, and the wedding went really well, and was completely worth all of the stress and hassle! We were both heading in completely different directions, we thought, but thank God, He crossed our paths. We had gone down so many broken roads, but they all were just leading us to each other.