The Perfect Gay Proposal - Statistically speaking!

A few weeks ago we received an email from MyVoucherCodes who surveyed 1000's of Gays and Lesbians to discover what you should and shouldn't do to pull of the perfect gay proposal!

Turns out that true to the stats we got engaged on holiday, our engagements were private affairs and like most girls we went for a something fancy for a ring - well we do wear it everyday!

Our proposals were low key and didn't break the bank but we didn't make it a total surprise - unlike most - we had discussed a time-frame - although we were both taken by surprise on the day(s).

I did ask Laura's parents permission but didn't involve social media although I did get Alison (an old school friend of L's) and her parents involved and it worked out perfectly!

And as for getting down on one knee - well we felt it had to be done :)

Check out our proposals here: Sarah and Laura get engaged!

Our Wedding: Engagement Photos - Our Favourites!!

We are SO excited, we received the rest of our photos from our engagement shoot from Dylan & Sara!

We have over 100 gorgeous photos we love, and we will put some more in an album on our Facebook page (like it while you're there if you haven't already!) - but we thought we'd share with you our top 10 favourites that you haven't already seen here!
 
  

 

Okay, so it turned into more than 10, but we just LOVE them! Hope you enjoy! xxxx

Our Wedding: First Look at Our Engagement Photos!!

We are just so ecstatic to see the first of our engagement photos on Dylan & Sara's website today! They are just absolutely wonderful - we couldn't be more happy with them. It was such an amazing day, we had so much fun with them, and forgot they were shooting a few times! These are two of our favourites we've seen so far:

It really shows in some of the photos how much fun we had - we love D&S's natural style, and can't wait to have them photograph the wedding.

We are just in disbelief, really - we knew they were great photographers, but having not really had much experience in front of the camera (you know, except those taken by Laura!) we were a bit nervous. We can honestly say though they are more lovely than we could have imagined, they captured us wonderfully, and we just can't stop smiling!

Check the rest of the photos out here on their website, and we'll do a full post of our favourites once we get all of them!

It Gets Better.....Well It Has For Me!

Almost 6 months ago to the day I wrote this post (Here) about how my parents did not take the news of our engagement well at all. Re-reading the post is hard in itself, at the time I was at the stage of deciding if we should cut my parents out of our lives.............

Fast forward 6 months and I wanted to record an update - where better to do it than our blog?!

Yesterday Laura and I did what I am sure hundreds of Brits do on a bank holiday weekend - we went to the parents' . What makes this unique for us is that it was my parents' house we were at. It was the first time in 4 years that we drove home as a couple, were welcomed as a couple and spent the day hanging out with family as a couple before leaving to drive home together.

We arrived at 2pm as my Mum had asked us to help get the house ready before the rest of the family arrived. This meant an hour was spent moving chairs and tables, but left an hour for sitting around catching up. That's right,the 4 of us - Laura, me, my Mum and my Dad together- it's all I ever wanted. I knew in my heart that there was no reason why we couldn't all get on, and yesterday proved it.

By the time the rest of the family arrived we had caught up on all our latest news and were in a good place, it was a great way to start the day. As with my 30th party - the one where Laura had been invited without my knowledge and I officially got more for my birthday that I could have hoped for (full post)-  the gathering was in my parents' back garden and we just chilled with my sister and her boyfriend, Aunt and Uncle and cousin and his girlfriend.

Nothing particularly eventful happened, L and I both found out that we are relatively good at boules and not too bad at quiz games, but that's all I ever wanted to happened- us just to be accepted into my family, no drama.

At points I would stand and watch the scene without anyone knowing - not creepy I promise- and wipe a tear of joy away. How can so much have changed in 6 months?

Driving back yesterday L and I were talking about how things have gotten better, we were trying to find out if there was a turning point or something that happened to tip things towards acceptance, especially with my Dad, and neither of us could think of one single moment where everything changed. How strange is that - over 6 months things just changed!

Whenever I have been sent encouraging emails, messages or comments by the wonderful supportive people who read our blog, I always get overcome with emotion and feel so grateful that someone would take that time to share their story and advice with me. Although I always felt somewhat challenged and unable to accept that things would get better for me, for us. It wasn't that I didn't want to believe, it was in giving myself hope I feared that if things didn't get better it would be harder.


The thing I have learnt in the 4 and a half years with L is that you have to expect the unexpected - with family, with friends, with colleagues and with complete strangers, both in the positive and negative. The biggest challenge, however, is being prepared for the reactions- I don't think I could ever advise anyone on when and how it gets better, or how to prepare for it but I could not be more thankful that L has always been there to listen to me.

I know our journey is just getting started and I couldn't be happier with where we are right now. In less than 2 weeks we will be over in the USA seeing our wedding plans come to life and this time I won't be worried to come back and sharing details with my family. My Dad won't be joining us for the wedding - that issue isn't resolved although he's come further in the last 6 months than I could have imagined- and to everyone else -my Mum, my sister, my extended family, Laura's family and of course my amazing Laura, I am so amazed thankful and overwhelmed that differences aside they have all pulled together to support me.

We're Planning A Wedding!!

FINALLY we are going to do a wedding post!! Yay!!

Do you like the banner? We made it for our wedding website, and similar things will appear throughout our big day!

We are so excited to be planning our wedding, even through all the ups and downs that have been going on.

We are getting hitched in Laura's home state of Idaho (woohoo!) on the last weekend of June next year!

Laura's beautiful hometown

First of all, we got ourselves the most wonderful wedding planner - Brandi from Soiree Weddings & Events! We are so thrilled that she is going to help us plan our big day. We thought it was very important to have a professional help us make our day everything we dreamed about because it would be so difficult to plan everything from a different country. We are so excited to work with her!

Because we are super awesome planners, when we were at home in December, we checked out two wedding venues!

Riverside Lodge in Garden Valley, Idaho

We almost didn't make it to this viewing! Garden Valley is about 1.5 hours from Laura's house, but we had to pick up the keys at the office in nearby Crouch (attractive town name, right?). When we got there, we couldn't find the office, so we parked where the Sat Nav told us it would be, and called the letting company. The woman told us we had 'gone too far' and to come back where we came from. So we drove back through the town, and called again. We were told that we were in fact 9 miles away and had to go into Garden Valley. ....Okay.... so we drove. And drove. And drove. Finally, our poor pregnant wedding planner called the woman again. To our surprise, the woman said we misunderstood - that she was telling us where the cabin was, and that we did need to get the keys from her in Crouch. As you can imagine, hotheaded Laura & her dad were seething at this point. They were SO annoyed, and Sarah & Laura's mum were trying to calm them down. L was worried we wouldn't see the lodge before the sun went down - complete disaster in the countryside where there are no lights! When we finally got back to the office in Crouch, she waved us down. The office was - no joke - 100 feet from where we first called her from. So the whole fiasco was because instead of 'you've gone too far' which implied we were far away, she should have said 'oh, you're right here!' Seriously. So Laura & Bob successfully got through the conversation with her without being unpleasant (besides their kick-ass dagger eyes, of course) and we headed off to the venue. It was, thankfully, still light outside once we got there, so all was forgiven :)

We also visited the Roseberry Barn in McCall, Idaho

The barn was beautiful, but we absolutely fell in love with the lodge. Once we arrived, there was just no question. It is in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by mountains and a river, and just absolutely beautiful. The best thing is that because it's so secluded, it can just be one big celebration for a whole weekend!

Beautiful view from the back of our venue

So we booked it! Venue = sorted!

We have chosen our bridesmaids, but as we haven't asked all of them yet we will do a post dedicated to them when we have!! We will say we are so lucky to have so many wonderful ladies around us, and will do as we become Mrs. & Mrs.!

We had a wonderful photographer, Sara Byrne, contact us on Twitter a few weeks ago now. We'd been looking for an awesome Boise based photographer, and we immediately spent hours pouring through her wedding photos - and loved them. We had to book her only a week later to secure the date , and am excited to be her first 2014 booking, and first lesbian wedding! (Though that's not surprising in Idaho, we expect to be a lot of people's firsts!) Also, her fiance and co-photographer has incredible facial hair - and we only work with men with good facial hair (please refer to our mustaches post).

Phew! We've been engaged for 2 months today (the time is FLYING, we are still constantly staring at our rings!) and feel like we've got a lot done already.

Oooh when we were in Birmingham a few weeks ago to see our lovely friends Lauren & Sarah, they took some stunning close-ups of our engagement rings - we thought we'd share with you! They are so beautiful, and we love that they aren't yet scratched haha!

Sarah's ring - it says 'Past, Present, Future' on the inside with a few diamonds - as they say, it's all in the details!

Laura's!

Happy planning!

Love Makes the World Go 'Round: Valentine's Day 2013

Love - it's such a little word, yet there is so much meaning in it. As you may know, our blog is as much a record of us and our lives as it is a place to share stories and news, so when an event like Valentine's Day comes around we like to capture as much of it as possible. Before I get started though, Laura put a status on our Sprezzatura Facebook page that summed up 2013's Valentine's Day for me:

The reason I say that is this year has so far been a year of love coming at us from all angles. Since getting engaged, friends, family, our blog friends, Twitter followers and work colleagues couldn't have been more generous or thoughtful. We've had so many heart warming cards from around the world - from family in Australia to blog friends we've never met, it shows love really does bring happiness. In addition to that we've had such thoughtful gifts from Laura's cousins and our bridesmaids who between them have offered to do our wedding invites, thrown us an engagement party with the best food (by Sarah & Lauren) and been so generous it took our breath away! We really are so lucky!

Back to Valentine's Day this year and we decided once again that we wouldn't do presents because we are SO good at sticking to that rule :) The day started in a rush as I had a 8.45am meeting at work - clearly no-one in my office thinks of romance in the the morning! I did however manage to sneak a card into Laura's bag.

My card to Laura xoxo

Laura had packed me off with a cake tin filled with delicious homemade cupcakes for my team and I was able to put a smile on everyone's face as soon as I had finished my call. Who wouldn't want to start the day with a banana cupcake with the most delicious real strawberry icing?! Certainly no-one in my office resisted. It's amazing how nice it feels to be nice, it was an unexpected present I got to enjoy courtesy of Laura, I even got a few hugs!!

Over at Laura's office, giving out her cupcakes was postponed to after lunch as one of the guys in her team had brought in brownies. However, the feedback on tasting them was pretty much the same as it had been in mine:

We had hoped that meeting at lunch would be possible but now we don't work as close it's only possible if neither of us have meetings immediately after lunch as we have to rely on public transport. Thankfully things worked in our favour, or maybe cupid was playing his part but Laura was able to get a bus and walk the 15 mins to meet me as my tube pulled in to the station. Our romantic lunch date location - McDonald's haha!! Mainly because we knew we could get a table and the service was quick enough to give us time to talk and gaze lovingly at each other, as much as you can in a McDonald's :)  Funnily enough this McDonald's did play love songs the whole time.

The highlight of the lunch date was getting to spend half an hour catching up and enjoying each other company, oh and the fact that I left with this GIANT COOKIE:

I'm a lucky lady, Laura made this!!!

My present for Laura arrived when she got back for lunch and combined with picking her up after work put me as the joint best present giver in her office! I'm not sure if I should be pleased or disappointed! I always like to send L things to show her I'm thinking of her, Valentine's Day or not.

As I was finishing work early, L's generosity continued in her office - each person was given a pack of Lovehearts with historical Valentine's Day cards - this girl does holidays and she does them well!!!

My time at home was spent bringing back part of my proposal. As it had been windy and a somewhat emotional time up at Lucky Peak Laura had said she hadn't had a chance to read all the hearts I had written so I had hidden the hearts when we returned ready for this very day. I laid them out so each one could be read then lit candles and tidied, the lounge was ready for our evening of chilled romance.

I met Laura straight from her office and we ordered Chinese ready for delivery when we got in, as with everything else that day it worked perfectly and by 7pm we were snuggled on the couch enjoying the Bachelor. There's nothing quite like hugging the person you are going to spend the rest of your life with while watching others find theirs.







Laura's card to me was perfect, with photos of our engagement her head was obviously in the same place mine was! There is something about being engaged that made this Valentine's Day feel extra special.


Valentine's Day to me is a great opportunity to stop and make sure everyone I know is smiling but no-one more than Laura - I mean it when I say I love her more each and every day!