Bride-to-be Blogger Alyse: To-Do Lists — And The Proposal

The royal-wedding scones from the day of Alyse and Kevin's engagement.

I love lists. My current wedding planning lists are broken down into several forms: There’s a Master List that has everything from the venue location to cocktail napkins on it. Then there’s a To Do List that has things like “book a venue,” and “order cocktail napkins” on it. Then the To Do list is then broken down by month. Necessary? Absolutely not. But my love of lists started well before I was engaged. The list-making and -keeping process has kept me sane before, so I see no reason to not continue it while I wedding plan.

Kevin knows my list-making habit intimately. In fact, he gets his own To Do lists every now and then, which he secretly loves. (There is a sub-part to the wedding list entitled “Kevin’s Wedding To Do,” but I have not disclosed it in full yet). So that’s why I thought it was perfect that Kevin included my love of lists into his proposal!

A major background detail to the whole story is that I had become a little (okay, a lot) obsessed with the royal wedding. A friend (and bridesmaid!) and I had planned a royal wedding-themed party for that Friday night, April 29th, at her apartment. We were going to watch the wedding and enjoy British-themed food and drinks.

I woke up at 3:45 a.m. to watch the full royal wedding coverage by myself and bake some scones for the party. Some think that I knew the proposal was coming — but the fact that I got up at 3:45 in the morning to bake scones should dispel any of those thoughts. I definitely would have slept in a bit more if I knew it was the day.

That evening, Kevin was running very late to meet me to go up to the party. I was pacing. Even though I watched the entire wedding that morning and spent the entire day looking at recap pictures, I did not want to be late to the party! He eventually called and asked me to wait please and to get this piece of paper by the computer for him. I saw an envelope that I had not noticed before that said “Alyse’s To Do List” on the front. The list had many things on it — and the last item was to meet him in the park by our apartment.

Of course, I knew what was going on at that point, so I quickly changed from my Kate Middleton outfit — did I mention that I was wearing a blue wrap dress and a fascinator? — and met him in the park. There were so many things going through my head, like, Is there no royal wedding party? Am I going to have to eat all of the scones by myself?

He got on bended knee when I got to the park and proposed. We then went up to the party to share the news with our friends. They didn’t know Kevin was going to propose, but knew something was up — it was certainly not like me to be late to the royal wedding party! The night and weekend were perfect. Our parents came up for brunch on Sunday to celebrate and made us reenact the scene in the park. And I only had to eat half of the scones.

How are you breaking down your wedding planning tasks? Any other list-lovers out there? Share your list love — or proposal story! — in the comments.

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