The Love Shack

James really wanted to propose to me around Christmas (2006) I think mostly because we were visiting my parents but he hadn't yet found a designer that he "clicked" with alot were super swamped and saying the ring would take months and months. So instead he asked my dad for approval while we were visiting, and found this stone as one of my christmas presents, he did not say the words "will you marry me?" but I knew it would happen soon. We had already been talking about marriage and life so the proposal was not a huge surprise but the stone was...funny story or at least to me we were at my aunt and uncles a few days before christmas celebrating with them, and I noticed a similar stone with a different quote in their dining room and said "oh I love these, always the perfect wording!" And James got this funny look on his face, I just ignored it thinking he was being his weird self. Well prior to going to my relatives we had been shopping, he went his own way to look for stuff and saw this stone...and picked it up, then said "no she will think its tacky and cheesy" and put it back down. Ha! So after visiting with my relatives and him seeing me excited about theirs he made a trek back out to the mall fighting with the crowds determined to get this stone!

We were married in the Dominican our "celebration of love and life" non traditional wedding, we wanted to involve our guests as much as possible, so I had one of my best friends say a speech and explain a Blessing Stone Ceremony, we wanted to remember what everyone had said so we had our guests write it on one rock that we kept, here are a few favorites, I believe the top left is from my mom the top right my sister, bottom left my dad, and bottom right Dianna who did the ceremony....needless to say there were alot of silly sex and baby making ones, lots of laughs and embarrassed faces when I asked everyone to read them out loud ha! My favorite from the best man Nick who took our pictures I can't seem to find, I think he used a yellow marker and it has faded...but it said something alot the lines of crazy sex for ghaki making, Ghaki is sort of like devil child, or just young kid, in Japanese it was James' nickname in his group, passed down from the original ghake Nick himself, since James was the youngest in their group (they went to highschool in Tokyo)

And this we bought while we were in the dominican, I have a totally cheesy love center sort of thing set up on this window, with a little stone statue from the wedding coordinator from our hotel, this stone, the quote stone....lots of stones, an orchid from James lots of sentimental "junk" hahahaa.