10. the cake/food: i love food. so tell me about what you had at your wedding!

Our venue had menu options and we chose the “Dinner in the Garden” option.

Butler Passed Hors d’oeuvres:
- Mini quiche with swiss cheese and sautéed spinach topped with a cherry tomato wheel
- Flatbread pinwheels with fresh deli meats and cheese rolled in a flatbread

Buffet:
- Garden salad with summer vegetables paired with a buttermilk ranch dressing
- French demi rolls with sweet butter
- Honey roasted herb chicken breast
- Creamy scalloped potatoes with a blend of shredded cheeses
- Brown sugar glazed baby carrots

It was a painless decision since it was delicious! Our dinner was served to us so we didn’t have to go get our own dinner like everyone else did. I actually don’t really remember eating because we were so distracted with everyone congratulating us and talking with us. We were pretty much on our feet all night long anyways!

I wanted our cake to be black and white of course with polka dots! The lady from the bakery suggested that we mix it up with polka dots and stripes. The cake was included in the package and all we needed to do was pay a little more for the fondant.

I really liked how they did our cake because they did a wonderful job and offered to re-create an anniversary cake for free instead of having us take home the top cake to freeze. All we had to do was call in and tell them our name and what flavor we wanted.

By the way, I can’t believe our 3rd year anniversary is coming up later this month!

9. the reception: where was it at? show us some pictures! what day did you get married?

We got married on November 24th, 2008 which was on Monday the week of Thanksgiving. We thought it was a perfect day so family and friends could come and stay longer. Most of my friends were still in college at the time so it made sense to do it during Thanksgiving break. Also a lot of my family relatives wanted to stay for Thanksgiving. It was much cheaper to do the wedding on Monday anyways. It was nice since we had more than enough time to have our bachelorette/bachelor parties before Monday.

We got married at Stonebridge Manor, a grand old estate that was turned into a wedding venue. We got married in the backyard and the reception was also in the backyard too in a 6,000 square foot tented pavilion.

I’m glad we had the ceremony and reception at the same venue. Everything about the estate was gorgeous! Now I’d love to go back and re-live the day again.

8. the little accessories: you know, veil? shoes? jewelry? what did your bridesmaids wear?

What accessories? I didn’t want to wear a veil and my mom convinced me to try it on when we were dress shopping. I hated how it looked and never imagined myself wearing a veil. So that was out of the picture.

I bought my shoes at Payless, haha! I’m cheap like that when it comes to shoes and I found the perfect gold flats there. I didn’t want to wear heels because if I did, I would be taller than Tyler. Also I always wear flats so it made sense.

As for jewelry, I didn’t really want to wear a necklace since my strapless dress already had enough glam going on in my bust area.

You can say I really focused on the big things and didn’t really focus on the small things because I forgot about earrings. So luckily for me, one of my bridesmaids let me borrow her pearls and I’m glad that happened because the pearls were beautiful!

My bridesmaids were great and made everything easy for me. I really liked Bill Levkoff’s dresses and brought in some of the girls to take a look at the dress and they all liked it! I didn’t want them to spend more money than they had to so I told them to wear any black shoes that they had. It all worked out well.

I think our hair is more important! A friend of ours who does hair did all of the bridesmaids’ hair at the hotel while I had mine done at the salon.

I guess I was a simple bride after all.

7. the dress: was it what you always imagined? did you have it made for you? white or ivory?

I knew right off the bat that I wanted a strapless dress and it had to be white. I don’t have anything against ivory but I just wanted my dress to be white because of the colors in our wedding.

Shopping for a dress was fun but it was hard finding the right one that I was also comfortable in. I tried so many different dresses on but thankfully from one location and two different trips to David’s Bridal store.

This is the dress! We ordered it and had it sent to another store closer to my apartment at the time. It was perfect but when I went in for a fitting once they got the dress, we realized that it was a little bit too short at the bottom so they had to get another dress sent in. Thankfully there was no major wedding dress drama and it was all taken care of. I’m not a high maintenance girl so choosing a wedding dress was fairly easy for me.

I still have my wedding dress stuffed in the closet. Even after the wedding, I had left it in the trunk of my car for 4 months. Oops! I don’t have any intentions of preserving it. I would have liked to do a trash the dress session but I think after almost 3 years, it’s kind of too late to do that!

6. The colors: show some of the flower and colors you used.

I was so nervous when it came to choosing colors for the wedding since I like a lot of colors and go through color phases where I might be into yellow for a while then the next I’m into pink. So we decided on black and white to be our colors and to have pops of red here and there.

I really like calla lilies so I had white calla lilies for my bouquet. My bridesmaids had red roses with red carnations. Tyler had a single white calla lily and the groomsmen had red roses.

As you know my love for chandeliers & polka dots, I wanted to include them in the wedding. So I used a chandelier on our wedding invitations & programs. The polka dots were included in the centerpieces. I didn’t want our centerpieces to be too tall because they’re not “deaf friendly” since it’s hard to see someone else signing across the table if it’s too tall.

5. engagement/bridal pictures: let’s see them!

We had our engagement pictures taken 2 months before the wedding. Way too late, I know but we wanted our pictures taken in Arizona not New York. Also it was just the perfect timing since our really good friend was a photographer at the time and did our pictures with his sister.

Since we had just moved back to Arizona, we didn’t really have that many friends at the time so my mom hosted a wedding shower for us. It was nice since it was just a small get together with family friends. Tyler didn’t know some of them so it was a perfect time to introduce him to them before we got married.

4. The ring: tell us about it! did you pick it out? did he? pictures! tell us about his ring too!

Occasionally I would look online and see which rings I liked and always emailed Tyler the pictures with a brief message, “FYI- I like this ring!”

I sent him another picture earlier that summer when he proposed and didn’t think anything of it. Of course all the pictures I sent him were from Tiffany & Co. I didn’t know where else to look and he knew I was fine with the ring not being from Tiffany & Co. Maybe on our 20th anniversary?!

He got my ring from Shane Co and with his mom’s help. Because we were in college, we didn’t really have any money saved up so his mom paid for the ring. That was really sweet of her to do that! This was why I was so shocked and did not expect him to propose because I knew we didn’t have money for a ring yet.

We bought his ring at Shane Co a few months before the wedding. He wanted a simple white gold ring and we found one that he liked and was within our budget.

But he lost his ring at the lake about 6 months after the wedding.

We never found it and unfortunately we didn’t have our rings covered at the time. So a year later for our anniversary we had money saved up to buy him a new ring. We both actually like his new ring better than the one he originally had.

P.S. Missa Lee and I were trying to take pictures of our rings during lunch and who knew taking a picture of the ring is so hard? Thanks a lot, Missa Lee, for posting a crappy picture of me.

3. Proposal: how it happened, how long you were engaged for, was it a total surprise? pictures of that….etc.

We both were living in New York and Tyler had just graduated and I still had 1 more year left to go. At the beginning of the summer we both went home to see our families. After 4 weeks at home I came back to NY because I had signed up for summer classes so I could graduate on time. Tyler stayed home for a few more weeks.

The night before Tyler came back to New York, we were both online and a few days earlier, I sent him a surprise through email with 100 reasons why I love him. So that night, he sent me an email back with 100 reasons why he loves me. He was slow at responding my IMs and I automatically assumed it was because he was busy with his family and packing. Little did I know that he was on the phone with my parents to ask my dad for my hand in marriage.

Tyler’s flight was not coming in until around 11 that evening so I hung out with my roommate at our apartment until it was time to go pick him up. My mom was texting me constantly asking me when I was going to the airport, if I was already there, to tell Tyler hi and to ask if I was by myself or if my roommate was going with me. I thought it was a bit weird since it takes a while for Mom to text me back and why does she care about all the small details!? I ignored it and just answered all her questions.

So I left for the airport and I remember it was raining. As I was parking in the garage, my mom was still asking me more questions “It’s raining? Be careful!” and “Has Tyler arrived yet?”

I was so excited to see Tyler so I kind of ignored my mom’s text messages at this point as I walked into the airport.

I was at the security checkpoint gate waiting for Tyler to arrive. We hugged and kissed and walked together to the baggage claim area. I kind of noticed that he was quiet but I didn’t think much of it though because I knew it was late and he was probably tired.

We got 1 of his bags and as we were waiting for the other bag he seemed to be so focused on finding his bag. Then I saw a duffel bag come out and only caught “Steph V” on it and I immediately thought how cool it was that this bag belonged to another girl here with the same name as me and I looked around to see who this “girl” was then looked back at Tyler to find him on his knees.

Right there it clicked in my head that the bag was Tyler’s. He asked me to marry him and of course the first thing I said was, “are you serious?” over and over and he assured me that he was serious! So obviously I said YES!

As we were walking out to the car, I texted my mom to tell her the news and then realized that was why my mom was texting me like crazy because my family knew. I was definitely surprised and had no idea what he was up to!

We got engaged on July 14, 2007 and got married on November 24, 2008 so we were engaged for 14 months. 14 months was the perfect amount of time for us since we started planning our wedding quickly after the engagement while I was finishing college.

2. When you knew he was the one: self explanatory..but how and when did you know?

It’s not like a movie where I knew one day. It was something that happened over time. During one summer in high school, Tyler came to stay with me for 4 weeks. We had so much fun together and after his visit, I realized that there was not one single time where we both got sick of each other. So from there I started seeing him in my future.

The fact that we survived our long distance relationship during the last 2 years of high school was a huge thing. We knew that we wouldn’t be putting ourselves through this if we didn’t see each other in our future.

Also another moment was when we were talking about going to college together. Throughout college we learned how to be with each other after being in a long distance relationship then we lived together with some friends during our last few years of college. It was a great learning experience for both of us. I love having “what if” conversations so of course Tyler and I talked about our future together a lot.

We’re good at expressing our feelings and thoughts to each other so it was no surprise to us and everyone else that he was the one for me and I was the one for him. We were even being asked all the time when we were going to get engaged!

So technically I think I knew Tyler was the one for a long time but I didn’t really think about it at the time because I was so comfortable with him and we both were happy with our relationship!

Tyler and I first met on my first day at the deaf school (sophomore year in high school). I was outside of the dorms. We lived there during the week and went home on the weekends. Anyways, so I was talking with my friends when Tyler came up to me and awkwardly asked me what my name was. He didn’t really know how to sign at the time so he was clumsy and he didn’t even understand what I said when I finger spelled my name. He smiled then walked off. This was just the beginning…

Tyler never gave up trying to talk to me and sat with me on the bus when we went home on the weekends. He’d even say “Hi, mom!” to MY mom. Of course my mom thought he was cute and sweet! I shrugged it off because at the time I was dating someone else. I was at the age where I was interested in boys that were so cool and not so nice like Tyler. I enjoyed Tyler’s company as a friend and nothing more than that. After school he would always go to his dorm and finish his homework and call his Mom for their daily chat then come over to my dorm to hang out. My dorm counselor always came to my room to say, “Tyler’s here to see you!”

The body language is so obvious!

The day came where everyone was discussing who was taking who to prom. Tyler asked me to go to prom with him and I told him I would as friends only. One day after school we all were hanging outside with our friends. One of my friends said she thought Tyler was cute and jokingly said that she should ask him out. I quickly reacted by saying, “noo!” and then realized I did like him but was afraid of getting into a relationship mainly because my family was moving to Arizona that summer.

Prom 2001

Tyler visiting in Arizona during one summer