And by fun, I mean hanging out with my best friends, eating Totinos pizza and drinking whiskey diets.
For my bachelorette party, Kerry planned a fabulous weekend in Suncadia filled with close friends and family, games, drinks and most importantly, laughter. A highlight was having Amy and Sunny in town – it meant a lot to me that they both flew in for the trip.
Thank you to all my besties for making my bachelorette party one to remember!
When I decided to move to Los Angeles, CA in 2007, I made a promise to my friends and family that I would only be gone for one to two years at most. Well you can definitely say I broke that promise since I ended up living in LA for seven years!
During the early stages of Keith and I’s relationship, I had hinted towards moving back to Seattle but nothing ever came of it. Even as we got closer to getting engaged and eventually were engaged, I still couldn’t get Keith to agree to move back to Seattle with me. Keith grew up in Mississippi before moving to Colorado where he spent his high school and early college years. He had moved to LA for work in 2005 but quickly moved back to Colorado in 2006. It was in 2007, where he would move to LA once more and meet the love of his life (yep, that’s me!).
Keith had never been to Seattle before 2007. However, once he started working for Edelman on the Xbox team, he would find himself making frequent trips to Seattle for work (it probably averaged about one to two times a month). His main reason for not wanting to move to Seattle was the rainy and cold weather the majority of the year.
It wasn’t until early 2013 when Keith’s stance on Seattle changed. I still don’t know what exactly changed his mind but who cares, since it got me back to my home. We started looking for homes in Seattle about mid-March. At first, it was just emails back and forth to each other with Redfin links. We had a trip planned up to Seattle around late March / early April to meet with wedding vendors and it was during this time, we decided to meet with a real estate agent. I had reached out to my friend, Henry, to get his thoughts on the Seattle market. Henry had been a real estate agency for several years now and focused on the Seattle area. Given his track record (as seen on Facebook), I knew we could count on him. We ended up seeing a few houses while we were in town but none that were of real interest to us.
Throughout April and May, we continued to find houses on Redfin and would forward them to Henry, who would check out the houses he thought were suitable for us. There were a couple houses that Keith and I saw separately in Wallingford that we both really liked. We put offers on both houses but luck was not on our side – we were outbid by thousands of dollars! Then one day, Keith came across a quaint little home in Greenlake and sent it to Henry. That same day, Henry was able to take a tour of the house and took a YouTube video so we could get a virtual tour of it. My brother, Andy, even made it over to the house to take a look for us and said the house was by far the best one that he had seen. We loved what we saw so much that Keith made a day trip up to Seattle to see the house for himself, as well as a couple others of course. Of the three houses he saw, the Greenlake one was still the best. The location was amazing, the finishes were really well done and better yet, the price point was a couple hundred thousand dollars less than our max budget! We put an offer in the next day and it was accepted later that evening. We even got it for less than listing price – can you say meant to be?!?
We closed on this beautiful craftsman house in Greenlake on June 3rd, 2013. We’re so thankful we scored this stellar house given the hot Seattle market.
home sweet home
Once Keith and I were “going steady,” I quickly knew he could be / was the “one”. Keith says he knew early on that he wanted to marry me as well but probably not as soon as I knew. 🙂
After a couple years of dating, whenever my family and friends would ask me when I thought he would propose, the response was always “I think soon”. But soon was a little more than four and a half years into our relationship.
In January 2012, we hit our four year dating anniversary and I had a feeling he would propose within the first half of the year. Winter turned to Spring, which then turned to Summer and still no proposal. At this point, I decided to give up on the idea of it happening any day now and accepted the fact that when Keith is ready, he will propose. If you know Keith, he’s not the type of person that “jumps the gun” when it comes to important decisions. He does things in his own time and I respect him for that.
We always talked about marriage, even during our second year of dating. It was around three to four years of dating, when we had started talking about ring styles (this is probably why I thought he was going to propose much sooner than he did…ha!). Keith has always been pretty good about knowing my style and what I like – he knew the ring had to be timeless, vintage with a touch of shabby chic. Although he didn’t propose until October, he had picked out the ring months before. Keith did an amazing job as the ring was absolutely perfect. He even designed it himself!
I’ll turn it over to Keith to describe the proposal:
Jo made it clear that she didn’t want anything public, so I spent time thinking through options that would be more intimate. Originally, I planned to take her on a trip up the Pacific coast during the summertime, stopping in a couple of small cities on the way, ultimately finishing in San Francisco where we have friends. Unfortunately our schedules just didn’t work out, so I had to think of something else. I knew I wanted to get our dog Pearl involved, so I wrote a letter (from her) and tied it around her neck.
On a friday night in late Fall, Jo was working a little later than expected. I told her that I would get dinner started (we had planned to make a roast beef). After she came home from work, she expected to come home to the smell of roast beef in the oven but instead saw Pearl walked down our stairs to greet her and deliver a letter to join me upstairs. I couldn’t see Jo during this time but knew as she walked up the stairs, she would see the dozens of red and white roses that I lined the spiral stair case with in our apartment. When she got to our bedroom, I stood there with our favorite song playing in the background. I gave her my spiel, which I’ll spare you with, before getting down on one knee with ring in place. I remember Jo saying “OMG, OMG, OMG…” about a million times before she said yes. It was a night to remember – we called our closest family and friends shortly after before heading to dinner at a place down the street from us. Till this day, I still owe her the roast beef dinner I promised!
pearl approved!
Keith and I first met at our workplace, Edelman Public Relations, the Summer of 2007. I had been at Edelman for several months before Keith started in August. We were on the same team but did not work directly with each other on a daily basis.
At the time, the office we were in was filling up quickly with new employees so my desk was situated in a random corner by a window. Needless to say, I didn’t make a ton of friends right away based on my location. Before Keith’s first day, I remember the office manager trying to squeeze a small desk to the left of me where Keith would sit for a few months until they moved people around. I was a little nervous about how this would play out and figured I’d keep to myself as much as I could.
On Keith’s first day, we said hi and we both went about our business. He spent most of his day at orientation so we didn’t get a chance to talk much. When Keith arrived on his second day, I was already at my desk with my headphones on and zoned into whatever I was working on. Within a few minutes of Keith logging onto his computer, he chatted me on instant messenger “Are you the kind of person that doesn’t say hi in the morning?” Of course I quickly took off my headphones and turned his way to apologize and say hi.
From that moment on, our morning hellos turned into daily walks to get lunch and eventually led to occasional hangouts outside of work. On one of those hangouts, Keith asked me to grab a drink at a quaint neighborhood Peruvian restaurant before catching the movie, Juno. It was during that hangout that Keith said he hoped to find a restaurant like this one where he and his future girlfriend / wife could become regulars. Of course I had a hunch that he may have been referring to me and secretly, I was hoping he was. Soon after that hangout (or what we now refer to as our first date), we made it official and started dating. The rest is history…
Keeping Up With The Carpenters 