Welcome
to Chelsey’s wedding series! One of our Hauties, Chelsey, is engaged and
getting married on April 11, 2015. We thought that our readers could garner a
lot of helpful information through Chelsey’s wedding planning process, so she
has offered to share her experience with you. On our blog, we’ll be sharing
this bride-to-be’s planning updates and tips, and we hope what you'll read from
her will help you plan your big day. Read on to meet Chelsey and discover she
and Robert’s heartwarming engagement story.
March 8, 2014 was epic. It was my 26th birthday
and I started my morning with the Varsity Sports running group for a run and
yoga in the park – a perfect Saturday morning, if I do say so myself.
I made plans with a few friends to eat dinner at Restaurant
IPO downtown around 7, so I spent the rest of my day just hanging around the
house, doing random things. Robert played golf.
When he gets to my house to pick me up, he was early. He asks
if we can leave a little early for dinner because he had an errand to run on
the way to the restaurant. The errand was for his mom. Side
note: his mom scrapbooks…a lot. It’s pretty amazing (he has 13 scrapbooks of
his life to date).
He told me that he needed to snap a picture of Pleasant
Hall, a building on LSU’s campus. His mom was working on catching up his books
through college and Pleasant is where Robert worked as an undergrad. It just so
happens that it’s also where I worked with Robert my freshman year of college.
Although I thought it was strange that we had to go take this picture right
before dinner, everything else about his story made perfect sense and was
completely, 100% believable.
As we drive into the Pleasant Hall parking lot, I pull my
trusty Nikon camera out, hang it around my neck, and start snapping pictures. Robert
takes the camera from around me and starts snapping photos himself. Then, he
puts the camera down and in what feels like one move, gets down on one knee!
I looked at him in disbelief and the sweet words he said are
all a bit blurry to me, but you can guess what the outcome was.
I think I said “Are you serious” about 100 times too many. I
may have interrupted him about 10 times too many. He asked, “Did you say yes?”
With a laugh I said, “yes, of course, yes.”
Robert said with a smirk, “Don’t mind Dana over there taking
pictures.” I look in shock as I see my sister’s friend, Dana, documenting the
whole moment. I run and hug her while she’s shaking about as much as me.
In the car, 20 questions start.
• How long
have you been planning this?
• Who knows
about it? My sister?
• Who am I
supposed to call right now?
• When did you
ask my dad?
• Do your
parents know? Can we call them?
• You get the
idea.
I called my sister. No answer.
I called my parents. No answer.
By that time, we were already downtown for dinner, so I
figured I’d tell everyone at Restaurant IPO.
We parked on the street near the old Little Village. At a
door right before Restaurant IPO, in one breath, Robert says “Let’s make a stop
right here first.” Before I had a chance to question it, he opens the door and
there stands my family, his family and a handful of our sweet friends. Even
Aubree and Gracie made it to the party.
It was seriously the most perfect day ever. Better than I
could have ever imagined with a person sweeter than any words could ever come
close to describing.
It’s one of those days where you get a little sad that it’s
over. I wish I could bottle up every bit of that moment and keep it forever.
It’s the surprise I never thought could be pulled off. It’s the goosebumps I’ve
never felt before.
It’s the perfect question from the perfect person at the
perfect time in the perfect place with every little detail playing out
perfectly.
