 |
| Catie is Engaged! Note the excited dog in the background, but know that he’s always excited. |
We interrupt our regularly scheduled program of fascinating, titillating, amusing, and educational travel blogs with this special announcement:
The second of our beloved progeny, known herein (and everywhere, really) as Catie, is to be married.
It happened like this: boy meets girl, girl meets boy, boy and girl are friends for a few years, girl and boy realize each other are pretty cool, but then girl moves away, boy follows, girl graduates college, boy forms band, girl thinks boy will never propose, and – wham! – boy proposes.
“You knew?” she said the morning she called. Well, it was morning for us, 5:00am on the Atlantic Ocean, to be precise. But back home it was still just midnight and the concert where he popped the question was just ending. We had made it clear to Ryan that she could, and should, call us: it was one of the few reasons we were willing to incur $5 per minute cellular-at-sea charges.
“Honey, everyone knew,” Lori told her. And it was true, everyone knew: everyone in the extended family, all our friends, our neighbors, most of our coworkers, random people at restaurants all up and down the eastern seaboard, and much of the crew of the Norwegian Epic.
We had known, in fact, since January. We were on our way to Asheville, North Carolina for a dance event. Lori’s phone (back when she still had one, LOL) rang. It was Ryan. “Will you help me pick out a ring?” he implored. A few minutes and a box of tissues later, wedding planning had begun, though Catie wouldn’t know about it for another 4 months.
Naturally, we’ve pitched the whole destination wedding thing (would you expect anything less from us?) But Catie, who has always marched to her own drumbeat, had already decided on an Atlanta wedding. And, without us even having to advise it, she’s settled on a long engagement (often necessary in Atlanta, where venues book a year and more in advance). So she (and Ryan, to a much, much lesser extent) will be basking in the limelight for a year and a few months, with the big date currently set for sometime in September of 2016.
Catie and Ryan, we love you both. You’re absolutely certain you don’t want to get married on a Disney cruise1?
1 – Assuming you get some sort of cast member discount, of course.
