10 days...

Well hello there, friend. It's been a while, huh? Well, would you believe that there are only 10 days left until Macy and I get married? Holy schmoley!

So. With 10 days left, what does a guy who's just about to get married think about?

Answer: How 10 days feels like forever!!! 


Nah... that's not true. But I am extremely excited to get to spend every day with my best friend. Macy is an incredible girl and I am really looking forward to beginning our life together.

You wanna see our engagement photos? Well, we got em!

Flashback...

This is me:

In these pictures I am almost two years old. I'm not sure if you can tell, but in the picture on the left I have candy in my mouth. That's because in the picture on the right I am crying. That's because I was absolutely miserable. (On a side note, I was stinkin' cute, wasn't I?)

I have never enjoyed getting my picture taken. This is a trend that clearly started early. An overwhelming majority of my childhood memories of me being grumpy or in a really bad mood involved family picture taking sessions. I'm not sure where my frustration with this came from but it's something that I continue to deal with even now.

Flash forward...

Nobody ever told me that part of getting married meant hours and hours of picture taking. This is probably common sense for most people. I guess I'll have to blame it on growing up in a house full of boys because I was blindsided. 

Enough complaining...

Okay, that's enough of me being a diva. The truth is, it was a pretty nice day. I got the be with the girl I love... There was lots and lots of kissing... It was tough work, but our photographer Elisabeth Kate did a really great job, and I didn't want to pull my hair out the whole time.

Also, did I mention? ...I'm marrying an ANGEL!! 

I'll stop babbling. The short of it is this: as much as I complain about picture-taking, it was a really good experience. I love Macy, and I think these pictures are great.

Enjoy:

We were FREEZING right here! It
was so cold outside our eyes were
watering... I mean icicle-ing.

                     

Tough work, I know...

Um... You probably won't see this one on
our wedding invitation. :)

Again Fuh. Reez. Ing.

Thanks for looking through these with us! We had a great time and were really happy with the pictures. Full disclosure -- I still hope there aren't too many 3-hour-plus photo shoots in my near future, but now I'm glad we've got these pictures to enjoy.

-Brad

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How we got engaged!

Welcome to THE ENGAGEMENT-NESS OF BRAD AND MACY! This is not a "dating blog" so I won't spend a lot of time detailing our courtship and how we fell in love and became forever googely-eyed for each other, but I will tell you the fun story of how we met:

In the beginning... 
I was working at EFY and became friends with Macy's sister Tia. Tia had just gotten engaged so she spent a lot of her spare time doing wedding planning. I joked with her that while she was planning her wedding she should just arrange my marriage while she was at it. She laughed and (with tongue in cheek) agreed to wed her younger sister Macy to me. I kept joking with her for a week or so afterwards that she needed to get the ball rolling on my arranged marriage. Eventually she called my bluff, pulled out her phone and said "Ok, Brad, here's her number." At that moment something kinda funny happened (cliche'? Youbettabelieveit). I was about to just put her phone number into my phone and maybe call her later... Instead, I had an odd moment of ultra-bravery. I pulled out my phone and called her right then. I left a voicemail and said something to the effect of "Blah blah blah... I'm Brad.... Blah blah blah let's go on a date sometime... Blah blah blah this isn't awkward at all, is it... blah blah call me back". Not weird at all. Unsurprisingly (sarcasm), she called me back and left a message saying something along the lines of "Somehow you haven't seemed to creep me out enough to say 'no'... So let's go out sometime!" [I just read this paragraph to her and she jabbed me in the side and said "I did not say that!" ... Ha... it was implied ;)]

Our first date was July 16th. After that we went on more dates, and sometime towards the end of October I realized that I really liked her. Not long after that we decided to serious-things-up a bit. A couple weeks later I realized I loved her. After a while I came to see that we were a really good team and we started talking about the possibility of getting married.

Fast forward...

to the week before Christmas. My original Christmas plans were to go down to Arizona with my family to be with my grandma. About a week before, my little brother Nick found out he wasn't able to get work off, so I decided to stay home with him so my parents could still go (we had other family we spent Christmas morning with, so it wasn't a lonely Christmas at all). Once the Arizona plans changed, I decided to withhold that particular information from Macy in the event that it turned into a golden opportunity to surprise her.

The plan...

was NOT to propose on Christmas Eve. I thought it was too... um... predictable? I'm not sure what I didn't like about it, but it wasn't my favorite idea at the time, so instead I decided that I wanted to surprise her and fake-propose that night. I spent a lot of time scheming different ways to do it, and it kept getting better and better. Eventually I wound up in the possession of a Santa suit, a really bushy beard and a matching wig. I told people that I was planning on fake-proposing as Santa Clause. Everybody kept telling me how mean that was. What!? Mean!? Wouldn't she just be happy that I wasn't in Arizona after all? I was eventually convinced of my cruelty and decided to switch up the game a bit. I had, after all, just purchased the ring.

The morning of Christmas Eve I had a good chat with myself.
"Self."
"Yes?"
"I have the ring."
"Ya."
"I have the perfect opportunity. She thinks I'm in Arizona."
"Mmm Hmm."
"I love her."
"Yep!"
"I want to marry her."
"Yes, you do."
"What am I waiting for?"
"Um.... ?"
I didn't have a good answer to that... So the decision was made.

How it all came together...

This is the part of the story where I tell you everything I went through to make Macy believe that I was in Arizona. Let's go through this chronologically:

Friday December 23: The day that I had told Macy I would be leaving for Arizona. In reality it was the day that I met with her dad to have the "ask for permission to marry your daughter" talk. After a successful meeting with her dad I spent the rest of the day texting her from time to time telling her how bored I was on the car ride down (sent while I was really running errands and working). That night I called her using a prank-phone-call website that makes the caller ID on any phone display whatever number you want it to say. I made it appear on her phone's caller ID that I was calling from my grandma's phone number. That was working PERFECTLY until I ran out of credits on the service and got immediately disconnected. Oops! I quickly called my parents (at my grandma's house) to see if they would cover my tracks, but by the time I called, my mom told me the phone had already rung and that my grandma had just answered it. I frantically explained the situation and my mom took off into my grandma's room to try to save the day (did I mention that this all happened at around 11:00 pm?).  LUCKILY my grandma didn't have her hearing aids in so she couldn't hear a word that Macy was saying! I was able to keep the game going. I called Macy back I told her that the cordless phone I was using had suddenly died, so I decided to take a quick bathroom break since I had just walked in from a long day in the car. She seemed to believe me, but after that I was worried.

Saturday. Christmas Eve: After the shenanigans from the night before, I had to be sure that Macy really thought I was in Arizona. I was incredibly worried that she saw right through the near colossal meltdown that had happened, so after I decided to propose that night I called her mom to bring her in on it.

First I asked her mom if they had any super-Christmas-quirky neighbors that would be prone to dressing up like Santa to bring over a last-minute Christmas gift. Macy's mom said "Yep. That'd be the Anderson's!" So I got a box of chocolates and a Christmas card that read: "To the Hammonds, "Merry Christmas!" From the Andersons".

I also had her mom grab a piece of paper and write down:

"Southwest Airlines flight 0118 Phoenix, Arizona to Salt Lake City, Utah 8:17 AM"

She wrapped up the piece of paper and hid it in Macy's bedroom. About an hour before I took off to propose I called Macy and told her that I had an early Christmas present for her. She asked if it had anything to do with the little wrapped present she found under her pillow. "Yep, that's it!", I told her.  After a second of silence she said to me, ".... What is this? ... Does this mean what I think it does?". "Yep... I'm flying in early tomorrow. You'll get to see me on Christmas day!" She got so excited that she started to cry. That made me feel kinda bad. I felt guilty enough just lying to my future wife, but now she was crying! At least now I knew that she had ZERO idea that I wasn't really in Arizona, and more importantly: she definitely didn't expect to see me that night.

Game time...

I hopped in the car. I was so afraid that my voice would give me away that the entire drive from Heber to Highland I kept practicing different Santa Clause voices. I must have been a pretty fun sight for the other people on the freeway. When I arrived at her house I. was. nervous! I could literally feel my heart beating out of my chest as I walked up to the door and rang the doorbell. I took a deep breath and tried to calm my nerves. Macy's mom answered. She brought me in to the living room and said "Look who's here!".

Enjoy the video of how it all went down:




You may notice that I was sorta fidgety. Don't worry, I was just outa-my-mind nervous. Also, I was worried that if Macy caught my glance it would be game over, so I tried not to make eye contact AT ALL, which made me look kinda weird. But the important thing is that she said YES!! I have never felt so excited and energized and.... giddy (men can be giddy, right?) in my life. It was pure, unfiltered amazing.

Summary: I am the luckiest man I know. I love Macy with all my heart and I can't wait to be married to her! We're getting married at the end of April. So now that the question has been asked and the ring is on her finger, the count down is on...

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- Brad