A Love Story

 Some of my friends have already seen this and some were even there. But I wanted to share this with my 

Julie and Roy

2002

new blog family so that you know how Julie and I started our lives together.

So without further ado....

A LOVE STORY

Thursday February 14th, 2002 started out as a normal Valentines Day. Or so my girlfriend thought. You see, we were getting married that day and she knew absolutley nothing about it. But before we get into that, lets back up a bit.

I had been divorced for about 3 1/2 yrs. I had an active social life, never really wanting for a date. I had been in a few relationships that usually ended with me being cheated on. I finally had had it up to here and decided to give up on dating. I was done. I was tired of the games, tired of the bars and tired of being used. I was a little more than gun shy. Hell I was shell shocked, I had post tramatic stress disorder; Dating style.

I decided to concentrate my energies on being a dad and finding myself again. Since my divorce, I had never really took the time to find me. I went from one person, to the next, to the next. I realized that I had so much baggage with me that I had completely lost who I was. So my weekends consisted of my son and I sitting around in our underwear eating popcorn, drinking beer (of the root variety) and watching cartoons. Usually Scooby Doo or Bugs Bunny. It was great to find myself and I am so thankful that I did. I don't think, actually I know, my marriage would not be what it is now without my taking time off to find ME.

Now you know a little background.

Julie and I had met in January of 2000. Now if she was writing this she could tell you the day, hour, minute, what position the stars were in, what moon was where, what song was playing on the radio, what we were wearing, etc. But me being male....We met in January of 2000. We were introduced by a mutual friend, Dusty. The moment I laid eyes on her I was done. Julie was and is one of the most beautiful women that I have ever met. She is also one of the sweetest and kindest women that God ever made.

We dated for a couple of monthes and then she moved in and we lived together for about 1 1/2 yrs. During this time she made it very clear that she wanted to get married. Not in a pushy way mind you. She just put her heart on her sleeve and let it be shown to all. Every holiday that came along that involved any type of gift giving, she was anxiously awaiting a ring. She never asked for one, but I could see the disappointment when she didn't get one. I was still very leary about committing to such a huge step. I always told myself that if I did it again, then it would be the last time. I didn't want to go through another divorce and I didn't want to put someone else through it either. I am ashamed to admit that I put her throught hell. We even ended up breaking up for a couple of months because I couldn't see the forest through all the trees. There were some things that happened that made me realize that yeah, I was a dumbass. Thankfully, I pulled my head out, she took me back, and the rest is history.

So, I finally decided that I wanted to pop the question. But I wanted it to be very unusual. I asked her parents permission and set everything in motion. My plan was to put the entire wedding together without her knowing it. I wanted to propose and get married on Valentines Day.

I had 8 days.

Julie worked for the City of Wichita as a Docket Clerk in the courts. I asked her Judge to marry us and he was all for it. With that done, I had to get all of our friends, family and co-workers on board and they all readily conspired to make this happen. I had the assurance from everyone that this would be kept a secret. I told them that if she found out about it that I wouldn't do it and they could explain to her why it didn't happen. Hey it worked LOL. Now all I needed was the marriage license, dress, shoes, tuxedos, rings, music, flowers, etc. and so on.

I immediatley went down and got the marriage license and was assured by the lady that it wouldn't hit the paper until after we were already married.

License Done

Julie already had a dress that she had bought a couple of years before at one of the wedding expo's at Century II. She found the one she loved and found it for a great price. This was the dress she always wanted to be married in. It was in a big rubber maid box at my mom's house. I had to get it over to my house, get her in it, get it measured, get it out of the house and to the alterations place without her getting suspicious.

Impossible you say? 

I had a plan.

I called my mom and told her than she needed to call Julie and tell her that she had a roof leak and that her dress was getting wet and that she was afraid that it would get ruined. My mom made the call and Julie told her that "it didn't matter. She was never going to wear it anyway". My mom told her that she didn't want to be responsable for it getting ruined and that she wanted us to get it. So, Julie and I talked about it and I told her that I would pick it up the next day at my mom's work and bring it home. Of course it added just a little bit of the "inconvenience attitude" to keep her from getting suspicious about anything.

Dress in the house.

I had Dusty on board and told her that I had the dress at the house. She came by that night. Now, everyone knows that you cannot have a wedding dress around women without someone trying it on right? And since it was Julies, guess who tried on the dress? Now Julie had gotten a little bigger or should I say bustier since she bought the dress. Actually a lot busiter. Like from a C to a DD. Her and Dusty went back to the bedroom and Julie tried the dress on. She called me back to the bedroom to help zip it up. I used this little opportunity to measure with my hand just how far up the zipper went and how narrow across the back it was. After the appropriate amount of OOH's and AHH's and the right amount of non-interest on my part, she took the dress off and re-packed it back in the box.

Dress on, measured and off.

I told her that there was no place for us to keep it. Dusty told her that she'd keep it over at her house and for me to bring it over the next day. So, I put it back in my truck and the next day instead of going to Dusty's, I took it to the alterations place, where I tried to explain to the lady that spoke very little english, exactly what I needed done and that I needed it by next Wednesday. Which was 6 days away.

Dress Delivered.

Now during this time I was also getting my suit done, I bought a suit for Chance, got the music put together etc. I even got Julie a new pair of shoes to wear for the wedding.

The next task was the ring. I was still worried about mine but I knew that I would have to special order it so I figured I would just have to wait. One night I was at Wal-mart, yes Wal-mart, and out of curiosity, I thought I would check out their jewelry deparment and look at their wedding sets. After talking to the girl at the counter, she told me what I pretty much knew; There was no way that they could get a ring big enough to fit me. But the set that I really liked didn't have a mens ring to it anyway. Someone had sold on accident, misplaced or stole the mens ring. It was a beautiful engagement and wedding ring. I started asking about it and discovered that as a trio it was over $1400.00. But as a two ring set, they were pretty much stuck with it. They couldn't send it back because it was incomplete and they obviously couldn't sell it as a trio. I asked to speak to the manager and after about an hours worth of haggeling with the jewelry manager and the store managers, I was able to buy the set for $75.00. Yeah, $75.00.

Ring Done.

Time was getting short and Julie was starting to get a little suspicious. She just said that I was acting a little strange. Gee I wonder why.

Wednesday.  I picked up the dress. It looked great. They had actually added little hooks (like bra clasp)beside the zipper where it got to small around the bust. They added a diamond shaped lace panel that could be removed and this made it so that the dress could be easily altered back to original. She put a new stop in the zipper so that it would stop under the lace panel. The neck of the dress was like a choker so the lace panel just tied everything in from where the zipper ended up to the neck. Looking at it you could never tell that the panel wasn't part of the original dress. I dropped it off at her parents house for them to bring to the wedding. I couldn't be seen with it now.

Dress Done.

They don't make tuxes in my size (that are fashionable) so I ended up buying a new suit. I knew that Julies parents were going to throw a a reception about a month after the wedding and I knew that we were going to have wedding pictures taken which meant that we were going to be dressing up twice. Instead of renting a tux for Chance twice, I just bought him a suit too. We bought tuxexo shoes, vests and bow ties. We ended up saving about $400.00  by buying everything instead of trying to rent tuxes twice. And you'd never know by looking at them that they weren't tuxes.

Tuxedos Done.

I found some real pretty ceramic roses that were actually ring holders. The top half of the flower opens up to reveal a ring holder. I thought these were really cool and would be awesome for the bridesmaids to carry. It also seconded as their bridesmaids gifts. I then ordered some flowers for Julie to carry for a small bouquet.

Flowers Done

I went through my checklist and had everything in order.

Thursday rolled around and I had everything all packed up and ready to go. The plan was for everyone to meet at the courthouse at about 3 o'clock and start getting everything ready. I had her dress, shoes, makeup, hot rollers, curling irons, tuxes, rings, everything else under the sun that I thought she would need, I stopped by the florist, picked up the flowers and went to the courthouse. A couple of my co-workers contacted the media so we also had channel 3, 10, 12 and a Wichita Eagle reporter there as well.

Me and Chance

Chance and I got dressed and then we waited with all of our family and friends for 5 o'clock to roll around. We did a few interviews with the reporters and at about 4:45 pm, we all headed towards the courtroom to hide out.

At about 5 till, just as Julie was getting off work, we had one of her co-workers call her and tell her that she needed to come to courtroom Z and pick up some paperwork for the Judge. She tried to get out of it by stating that she really wanted to get home for Valentines Day and asked if she could get it in the morning. The co-worker told her "No, that the Judge demanded the paperwork and that he wanted it NOW".

The Proposal

We were all in the room waiting for her to show. The news stations had just gone live at 5 with the announcement of a surprise engagement and wedding. We had a lookout peeking out of the door so that we would know when she was about to come in when all of a sudden, BOOM..There she was. She had came from the other direction. She opened up the door from the blind side and the lookout fell right at her feet. She looked down at him, he looked up at her, and I don't know which of them was more suprised. Julie walked in, looked around and saw a room full people staring at her. She instantly had the "deer caught in the headlights" look.

Chance and I were in our tuxes and all of our family and friends were gathered around. The cameras were rolling, the lights were shining and I got down on one knee and said "Julie, I love you more than anything in the world. Will you marry me? About 75 of our closeest friends and family as well as an entire viewing audience on three seperate TV stations were waiting for an answer. Talk about intense.

Julie was still in a dazed and confused state. Everyone got silent, waiting to hear the answer. She finally looked and me and said "UM O.K". Not exactly a tearful response that I had expected but she told me later that she was so surprised and shocked that she couldn't say anything else. Inside she was jumping up and down but outside she was paralized.

Even though I knew the answer, my heart skipped a beat. I said "O.K. Your dress, make-up and everything that you need is in the interrogation room. Dusty and Diane will help you get ready. You have about 58 minutes. I love you". She was still in shock and really didn't know what to do. Dusty came up and took her by the arm. Julie turned around and still in a stupor was led out by her best friend to get ready for her wedding.

We all sat around and talked. The kids ran around and played and we all waited for Julie to come back in. Since my hand and finger were the only things used to measure her dress I was really anxious to see what her dress looked like. I was worried that I hadn't measured it right. I was really afraid that it wouldn't fit and she would be married in a really ill fitting dress. I had worked so hard to make this day special for her and it all came down to my half-assed measurements.

Waiting at the alter

Chance stood up with me as my best man. I always told myself that if I ever got married again that I wanted him beside me. It was important to me that he be the one by my side. He looked so cute in his little tux and even though it got a little boring for him he hung in there until the end.

I proposed live at 5 and about hour later, live at 6, with the cameras going and thousands of anonomous people watching, she came walking into the room, led by her dad and looking more beautiful than I had ever seen her. Her dad handed her off to me and after taking Julies hand I vowed to love her for the rest of my life.

Daddy and Daughter

Saying I do

Sealed with a kiss

On that day I married my soul mate. She is my one true love and my best friend. 

That night she told me that she had read Thursdays paper. Back then they had the marriage license applications listed in the paper on Thursday. The lady at the marriage license bureau was wrong. It was in Thursdays paper that I had applied for a marriage license.  She didn't realize that she was going to get married, she just thought that I might propose because of the way that I had been acting. That was why she was trying to get home so fast. Before she could ask me about it, we were married.

Unfortunaely, she had to work the next day.

On Friday, I got a call from some friends and family out of state. They told me that they saw Julie and I on Good Morning America. I guess they picked it up off of an affiliate station and they showed a tape of the proposal and part of the wedding on the show that morning. It was kinda cool.

We had a weekend honeymoon in Wichita. It wasn't anything extremely fancy. We spent the weekend at the Hyatt, ate out at a couple of nice restaurants and took a carriage ride around downtown. It was chilly and just shy of snowing. We just cuddled under a blanket and enjoyed the ride.

What was really cool though was that no matter where we went everyone knew Roy and Julie. Everyone recognized us. We had strangers coming up to us and congratulating us. It was pretty awesome. For one weekend I was able to make Julie feel like a star.

That was 9 years ago and they have been the best years of my life. She has given me two beautiful daughters and there is not a day that goes by that she doesn't show her love for me. There is no one that I would rather spend the rest of my life with. I love Julie more today than I did yesterday, but not near as much as I will tomorrow. She is my heart and soul. There is no one that could ever take her place. There are just no words than can adequately describe how I feel about her. Sometimes even the word "love" just doesn't quite cut it. She is my wife, my heart, my soul, my life, my love, my best freind, my confidant, my lover and the mother of my children. She is beautiful, caring and has a true, kind heart.

She is my everything,

I love you Julie