Weddingbee Blog

I am a Christmas nut. I’m that crazy lady that you see out shopping who is buying up all the Christmas stuff before Thanksgiving has even hit. The Christmas holiday season is by far my favorite time of the year. They are some of the best memories I have ever had with my family, and traditions are abundant. That warm feeling you get in the month of December—I wish I could bottle it up to save for a bad day. The holiday season is different for everyone, but here is what it is to me.

The day after Thanksgiving is the day I get my tree. As much as I can appreciate and understand the artificial trees, the smell of real pine seals the deal for me. My house is small but I always pick the biggest and fullest tree that I can find. The decorating is a full day process filled with freshly baked gingerbread cookies for a snack and Bing Crosby, Burl Ives, and *NSYNC Home For the Holidays hitting the airwaves. (What? You know you like it too.)

Oh, but don’t you forget Feliz Navidad and Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer. I always felt like I had to apologize to my grandma for the intensity in which I love that song. Christmas movies are among my favorite—A Christmas Story (in my house it is called Red Rider BB Gun), A Christmas Vacation (Cousin Eddie never gets old), Elf, and of course the Original Christmas Classics. It makes me smile just thinking about those movies. Driving around town looking at Christmas lights with a thermos of hot apple cider. The incredible performances at church. Gingerbread houses that never turn out quite right but I love all the same. Baking lemon poppy seed bread to give to my neighbors and coworkers. Waking up way too early Christmas morning just like I did when I was 5 years old.

I could go on forever about what I love about Christmastime. My family has a vast amount of stories and I know there are many incredible ones yet to be told. Over the years Mr. Buck became increasingly aware of how huge this is in my life, which is why he chose Christmas morning to be the perfect moment to propose. We typically do Christmas morning in stages. Together, then to my parents’ house, and then to this parents house.

We had just finished opening each others’ presents and were getting ready to leave to my parents’ house. He said that there was one more present I forgot about,  in the tree. I thought this was strange—why did he put it in the tree? I got up to look and it took me quite a while to actually find it between all of my ornaments. What I found was an empty red box. As I turned around, there he was, proposing with the ring. It caught me so off guard and I was quite confused at first. Why was he on the ground? What was he doing? Why was the box empty? It took me a while to realize what was going on. To top things off, I had bought some mistletoe in San Francisco the weekend before that I had hung up in the middle of my living room, which means he proposed underneath mistletoe. This was the perfect engagement for us.

He had talked to my dad on Christmas Eve, so he was expecting it. I did not know this though, so I started crafting a plan. As excited as I was, it was still Christmas. I did not want the attention to be all on us when we arrived to my parents’. We decided to announce our engagement after everyone had opened presents. I put my ring back in its box and stuck it in my purse. Do you know how incredibly difficult that was? Oh, have mercy!

Once the presents had been opened, the sweet bread and biscotti had been eaten, and the gingerbread coffee had been drank, I slipped my ring back on. We then announced the exciting news to my family. Cue the screams, excitement and laughter. This made my dad feel much better because since he was expecting it, but we had yet to announce it, he figured maybe Mr. Buck decided not to propose. Scared ya a little bit, didn’t we dad?

Next up was his parents’ house. Both of his parents had known he was going to propose for quite a while so his mom already had the mimosas flowing. Now it was time for two more family functions that included copious amounts of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and so on. It was slightly overwhelming at first, but how awesome is it that we were able to share our engagement with family far and wide?

You’ve made it through this post so far, but I know what you really want to see. This wouldn’t be a proper wedding blog if I didn’t show you the goods. I wish we had more pictures of our engagement but it was such a whirlwind of a day that the camera just was not a priority. He did an amazing job designing the ring himself. I absolutely am enamored with the fact that he chose a three stone ring. It was completely unexpected and I adore the thought he put into it. We have a long history together, so this ring beautifully depicts our past, present and future.

Did anyone else get engaged on a holiday? Were you able to immediately share this exciting news with your family, or were you devious and decide to keep it to yourselves for a while?