Our Vineyard Wedding Part 1: Before We Said “I Do”

Yesterday marked our 4 year wedding anniversary. Boy, does time fly! Sadly we were all recovering from the flu in our house, so we really didn’t get to celebrate. We have a dinner date planned for next week instead! Despite that, it has been an incredible 4 years, and I could not see myself going through this life without David. He is my best friend, my rock, and my support. He is truly the most patient and loving husband and daddy ever!

So, today I’m taking a little break from home decor and crafts, and starting a little mini series about our love story! And, of course, I’ll be sharing a thousand pictures of our wedding. Ok maybe not a thousand, but you get the idea. 😉

I’ll start this little love story with how we met.

A friend of mine from high school was dating David’s best friend and roommate at the time. They had told me about David months before we met, but my friend didn’t mention him again until November of 2008. It was then that she wanted to set up a “blind date” sort of thing. Not going to lie, I really wasn’t so sure about a “blind date.” But, I agreed. I’m so glad I did! The 4 of us ended up going to dinner, and then went to a bar to go dancing. However, the music was SO loud (and it clearly was not at all our “scene”), that we just awkwardly sat there at a table while our friends danced. We could hardly hear each other, so were were practically yelling to try to have a conversation. Probably not the best first “date.” But, I was intrigued by this cute quiet and shy guy, so we had another date later that week. He took me to dinner, and I literally talked 100 words to his 1 (I bet you can guess who’s the talker of the family?!). We had a great time, and from there, we continued spending time together. We weren’t “officially” dating (seriously, what does that even mean?) until December 17th, to be exact.

This is one of our first photos together, bringing in the New Year together in 2009!

It seems so long ago! We spent all our free time together while we dated, which was hard in the first year because I was going through my Masters program and didn’t have a lot of extra time. He still stuck with me!

I knew I wanted to marry David pretty quickly, but he had told me something on our first date in a conversation we were having with our friends. He said, “I want to wait at least 2 years before getting engaged.” And no, he wasn’t talking about me at the time! And no, I didn’t ask him that, either! But, after realizing I wanted to marry him months later, I thought, “oh man, he isn’t really going to wait 2 years, is he?!”

Buuuuuut, little did I know…

He was.

Fast forward two years. By now we knew we wanted to get married and spend the rest of our lives together, and we talked about it often. You know, “in the future when we get married…” kind of thing. He had already bought a house that we would live in when we got married, and I (of course!) was already secretly looking at rings. Don’t worry, he didn’t know! 😉

Then came December 17th, our two year dating anniversary. We were celebrating that night by going ice skating and then having a nice dinner out at a resort close by. I kind of wondered if he’d pop the question on our anniversary, but I wasn’t sure.

At the time, he worked out at the resort where we’d be having dinner. He called me before I headed out and asked if I would stop by his house and pick up his ice skates that he had forgotten before I drove out to the resort. As I pulled up to the house, I noticed his car inside the garage. What?! He was supposed to be at work!

When I walked inside the house, I saw this…

He had left a bottle of champagne and a box of chocolates on the table, lit some candles, and had a card on the table that said “Amanda open and read NOW.” So, I instantly read the sweet words he wrote inside the card. At the end he wrote, “as you’ve guessed, I’m hiding in the back room. Let me know when you’re done reading this. I have a question I want to ask you.” Ahh!! This was it! I called out that I was done, and he came out of the room with a box. He got down on one knee, and asked me to be his wife! Um, YES! He had asked my parents a few months before, and was waiting for the right time. He really DID wait 2 years; he wasn’t kidding!

We excitedly called our family and friends, and then went off to go ice skating and have dinner.

We were over the moon that night (and David was totally relieved!).

Every girl needs a picture showing off the ring, am I right?!

We knew we didn’t want a long engagement, so we decided on sometime in May. I would be teaching by then however, so it was a lot harder to pinpoint a good date. We finally chose Sunday May 7th. I’d take off Friday from school, and go back the following Tuesday. It’d be a busy weekend, but so worth it!

We didn’t initially know we wanted to get married at a vineyard, either. I had always had the dream of getting married in Hawaii on the beach at sunset. But, David really wanted a big wedding with all of our family and friends there. So we compromised, and decided we’d renew our vows at 10 years in Hawaii on the beach. Fair trade, right? It was then that David suggested a vineyard wedding. We didn’t have any in our area, so we ended up choosing a gorgeous vineyard in the the Salem area, a few hours away. The following 5 months were insanely busy trying to plan a wedding!

We had our engagement photos taken in the snow from our friend Dustin at Stott Shots Photography, and sent out some save the dates magnets to our family and friends.

Because our wedding was a “destination wedding,” we all drove over to Salem a few days before the wedding. My friends and I went to Portland for my bachelorette party on Friday night, and then got pampered all day on Saturday before driving over to Salem for our rehearsal. All our family stayed at a beautiful hotel where we had the rehearsal dinner the night before our wedding. It was a crazy fun few days!

Our rehearsal dinner was so special with all our close friends and family to celebrate with us. Our uncle even put together a beautiful slideshow of pictures of us both growing up!

One thing that was SO important to me for our wedding was to have amazing photos. I had been following an old friend (who I went to elementary school with!) and his wife’s photography business We Heart Photography on Facebook for awhile, and knew I had to have them shoot our wedding. Not only did they travel up from California to do our wedding, but they stayed the weekend with us and got all our rehearsal and dinner pictures, day of, and day after pictures, too! It was SO fun to see my friend Jacob who I hadn’t seen since 5th grade, and meet his lovely wife Christin! They did an absolutely beautiful job.

Ok, back to the wedding!

Sunday morning I woke up refreshed and so excited to become Mrs. Fettig! To read more about our special day, the two unlikely colors you wouldn’t normally see together that we chose, and why we had to go with our “plan B” wedding plan, you’ll just have to come back soon and read part 2! But first, I’ll leave you with a little teaser…

Thanks so much for stopping by today and reading part 1 of our little love story! I hope your weekend is fabulous!

(You can read all about our wedding in part 2 here!)

(I link up at these fun parties!)