Cupcake Creations and an Engagement Celebration

On Sunday my parents along with Todd’s parents threw us a party to celebrate our engagement.  It was a really fun event.  My family is quite big which can be overwhelming.  It was really nice for Todd to be able to spend a little more time with them and also for his parents and aunts and uncles to have the chance to meet a lot of my family.

Celebration Spread

The spread of food was amazing.  Shrimp, lemon drops, fudge brownies, fresh fruit and cupcakes.  Now, let’s talk about these cupcakes.

Cupcakes and Cookies!

While we were still in Costa Rica, my mom began planning for this party.  One email I received asked me what some of my and Todd’s favorite childhood things were.  It turns out she was incorporating some of our favorite childhood things into the cupcakes, baked by Making Thyme Kitchen on Cherry Street, for the party.  I don’t think I need to tell you that they turned out amazing.

Here were the cupcake flavors:

1 – Chocolate Fudge: Based on our mutual love of Mackinac Island these chocolatey cupcakes were the perfect homage to one of our favorite childhood vacation spots.

2 – Rice Krispie Treat: One of my favorite childhood treats, these cupcakes were frosted with marshmallow cream and then topped with Rice Krispies and tasted just like the real thing.

3 – PB&J (minus the J): Todd loves peanut butter and hates jam or jelly in any form so these were just peanut butter.  The frosting was that perfect sweet peanut buttery goodness that can only be found in Halloween’s least favorite candy, orange and black peanut butter kisses, which I happen to love.

4 – Maple Bacon Waffle: Todd loved breakfast food as a kid.  This unique and most delicious cupcake featured a waffle flavored base iced with a thick layer of maple frosting and then topped with a touch of bacon.  The bacon was the perfect thing to temper the sweetness of the maple – unbelievable!

On top of these four flavors there were two types of mini cupcakes, carrot cake and champagne which were just decadent little mouthfuls.  Apart from the cupcakes, we were blessed with a gorgeous day and we had a great time seeing our family for (pretty much) the first time since we’ve been engaged.  We’re pretty lucky, indeed.

*Happy 30th Anniversary (yesterday) to my parents!  Love you both.  🙂

On Wedding Registries

Yesterday Kate and I spent a couple of hours at Target going through our first take at registering for wedding gifts.  With the wedding industry becoming a $40 billion per year juggernaut, there’s some competition for our registry dollars, leading to some very helpful changes (I’m assuming) in wedding registration in recent years.

First, the stores themselves have improved the registering process: you get a little gun and walk shooting items like you’re playing a giant game of laser tag, only you’re the only person with a laser.  Once you select an item, a touch screen pops up where you can edit the quantity (Todd: “How many bath towels do we need?”  Kate: “I don’t know, 6?” Todd: “Kate, you use 6 bath towels in 2 days.”), or delete an item (Kate: “No, Todd, we can’t register for a $60 toilet seat cover.”).  These features were great while we were in the store.  It wasn’t until we got home that we realized the ‘delete’ feature rarely actually worked, and Target has employed a family of monkeys to actually organize the items they sell (for example: our bath towels showed up in the games section, while our hand towels showed up under kitchen).  Thankfully, it’s pretty simple to fix (though rather time-consuming).

Second, the stores now give you gifts, just for showing up.  For example, at Target, if you register for a certain amount of various brands, you get bonus items of that brand for free.  The week after your wedding, everything on your registry is 10% off.

Third, and this one is legitimately genius, the big box stores now provide registry guides and checklists.  These come in handy when trying to answer the questions: “What constitutes the necessary items in a knife set?” or “How many turkey basters should one own?”

Below is a sampling of items we considered yesterday:

1.  The Shake Weight – AKA the most awkward-looking fitness device I’ve ever seen.  I love when infomercial products become so popular that stores start carrying them (see, e.g., the Snuggie, the Sham-Wow, and the Chia Pet).  Although I’m not sure how the business model works there — with informercials, you make a ton of money by charging exorbitant shipping rates.  Obviously, you can’t do that while selling your product at Target.  I guess the exposure alone must be enough.  No, we did not actually register for this.

Now just $19.95 (plus S&H)!

2.  Guess Who? True story: Kate and I nearly broke up over a game of Guess Who?.  For those of you who have played, you know that once you figure out the basic strategy (selecting the most common groups at the beginning, and then narrow it down), Guess Who? is a game of chance.  However, a few years ago I figured out a very clever strategy that has led me to claim myself as the greatest Guess Who? player of all time.  I’m not going to divulge my secrets, but let’s just say that I employed the strategy against Kate, defeated her, and she was furious.  She thinks it is cheating (which it certainly is not), I think it is strategic.  Thankfully, our relationship recovered – but we’ve never played Guess Who? again, so Kate wouldn’t let me register for this either.

3.  Mr. Coffee Optimal Brew Thermal Coffee Maker.  One of the 2 or 3 items (out of 50) that we registered for that I’m legitimately excited about.

4.  Turkey Roaster.  Someone told Kate that it is important to register for everything you will need to cook Thanksgiving dinner.  While this may have been good advice 25 years ago, it is a bit outdated.  First, these items will take up space in what is likely to be a cramped kitchen, wherever we live after we get married.  Second, if, someday, we are cooking Thanksgiving dinner, we can borrow the equipment from our families (who, presumptively, will be coming over for Thanksgiving dinner, unless 28 years of tradition breaks).  Third, and most importantly, it doesn’t fit with my newly created (and still being tweaked) “10 Times in 10 Years” rule: If we are not likely to use the items at least 10 times over the course of the next 10 years (excluding single/limited use items), we are not registering for it.  Seems like a reasonable rule to me.  What do you think?

She said “Yes”!

I give a lot of credit to all the guys out there that successfully pulled off some sort of elaborate rouge to get engaged.  My friend Matt asked his fiancé on the evening her birthday party, so that immediately after getting engaged, they got to spend an evening with all of their friends.  My brother Joel took his now wife running while I snuck into her apartment and filled it with candles and roses, so that when they returned, he could propose in a very romantic (if a bit sweaty) situation.

We're Engaged!

Both of these are wonderful and creative and I understand why men go to (sometimes) great lengths to scheme up the perfect proposal.  It’s the same reason that when I was young, I’d wait until after my family had spent a dinner discussing my recent run of excellent marks at school before asking my parents if I could go to Cedar Point with a friend’s family, or attend the upcoming co-ed, 7^th grade, Halloween party at Corey Vandenberg’s house: I was 99.9% sure that they’d say yes, but I wanted to do everything in my power to give myself the best odds that the .1% chance did not happen this time.

And that’s the same reason men put their proposals up on the scoreboards of sports arenas: it’s public, it’s exciting, you’re caught up in the moment, people are watching, it’s your 15 minutes (or seconds) of fame, so she says yes.  It’s not that you’re tricking her…but you’re trying to, in case she isn’t quite as certain as you are.  And that’s the same reason why men buy gorgeous and shiny and large engagement rings, and present them to their lady at the exact moment of proposal: hopefully the girl will be too excited and distracted by the jewelry to realize she’s committing to a lifetime of college football on Saturdays, the NFL on Sundays, and baseball (“how can you watch SO MUCH baseball?!”) 6 days a week from April through October.

There is also a reason why men go through with these engagement rituals: they lock us in.  The financial commitment of the engagement ring, and the planning and preparation of the proposal make it less likely that we’ll get cold feet right before we ask.  You can try, but good luck trying to explain to your girlfriend that it is only a coincidence, and you don’t want to get engaged, despite the fact that the scoreboard at Yankee Stadium just said, “Kate, will you marry me?  Love, Todd” and you have a diamond ring in your pocket.

Instead of scheming an intricate plan of trickeration, I took the easy way out: go away, preferably to somewhere gorgeous and/or significant to the two of you, and tell the girl how wonderful she is, how much you love her, and how hard you’re going to work to make her happy for the rest of her life, and mean every word of it.  After that, the ‘will you marry me?’ part shouldn’t be too tough.

Kate and I spent this past Saturday at La Carolina Lodge outside of Tenorio National Park here in Costa Rica.  In the afternoon, we took a rainy hike to a pretty incredible waterfall, where I asked her to marry me.  And she said yes.

The Waterfall

When we returned to the lodge, we spent some time relaxing in their natural hot spring, and then had a candlelit dinner (with minimal electricity at the lodge, all of their dinners are candlelit), featuring pork from a pig killed the day before (the closest that this engagement will come to a dowry), and some surprise champagne that I had smuggled up there in my luggage (which reminds me of just how much deceit goes into getting engaged these days).  All in all, it turned out to be a pretty incredible day, and not one that I’ll ever forget.

Thank you, Kate, for saying yes – you have no idea how excited I am to marry you.

I said “Yes”!

Wow.  Where to begin.

I suppose we begin at the start of the hiking trail in Tenorio National Park.  Todd and I set off from there in search of a waterfall, lookout point and lagoon.  About twenty minutes into the hike it started to rain, not a drizzle, a full on, tropical downpour.  We were so close to the waterfall and just kept heading in that direction.  We began to climb down the very steep, stone steps that led to the waterfall and were soon rewarded with the most amazing view looking over the turquoise water.  A few minutes later we were standing at the bottom and the rain was still pouring down.

Todd suggested we head for cover under some trees and once we were there we were just taking in the view of the waterfall, which was simply breathtaking.  That was when Todd started to tell me how much he loved me and the next thing I know, he’s fumbling in his pocket then turns around and kisses me and drops to one knee!  The next few moments are a total blur but I know that somewhere in there he asked me to marry him and I said, “Yes!”.

It was such an incredible moment and I was so overwhelmed with excitement and joy.  I had a million questions and thoughts running through my head but somehow I was able to turn it off and just enjoy the moment with Todd.  We just stood there hugging and kissing and smiling like two fools in the rain, letting ourselves get drenched.

I said "Yes"!

It was at least 10 minutes before anyone else came to the waterfall and it was so great to just have that time all to our selves.  We stayed a while longer and asked the group of people that had come down to the waterfall to take our picture and then stayed even longer after they left.  I didn’t want to leave that place, that moment.  It’s the moment that every girl waits for and here we were, right in it.  I didn’t want it to end!  Eventually though, the rain won and we were too soaked and too cold to stay any longer and we headed back to the car.

The second best part of the day was going back to La Carolina Lodge where we were staying for the night.  It’s a very secluded ranch that uses little electricity and is lit by candlelight at night.  What that meant for us was a night where only the two of us knew that we were engaged and no phone calls to make or emails to send.  It was really wonderful to just be there together enjoy the fact that we had just become engaged, I couldn’t have ask for a better setting to spend that evening in.  We were the only two guests at the lodge so they set up a private table for us and we had a candlelit dinner.  Todd ran down to our cabin to get the bottle of champagne he had snuck along and we enjoyed a toast to officially celebrate our engagement.  The whole experience was just unreal.  I was blown away by everything.

Celebratory Champagne

I could go on and on but I’ll leave it at that for now.  I am so excited to be engaged to Todd and I can’t wait to be his wife.  We are incredibly blessed and have so much to look forward to.