The Mandy in Chandy

That's a great tip about the birthday cake! I plan to "test them out" sometime this year before the wedding to see if the plain cakes are "good enough" and also make sure I can decorate it decently

aww that is so sweet! Not many guys would remember something like that!

Welcome to BDW! Your wedding is gonna be here before you know it! congrats and

Good luck to every one of you awesome ladies!

Thank you! Yes, he is very awesome and sweet and smart and WAY too good for me and doesn't know it! and I think I'm pretty awesome so, yeah

famous: amos

Do you work for the same company i do?? lol!! My company has many photosharing sites blocked (such as photobucket) so I can't get all the pics either. You're not alone!

Do you work for the same company i do?? lol!! My company has many photosharing sites blocked (such as photobucket) so I can't get all the pics either. You're not alone!

Congrats ladies and good luck! thanks for all you do for us and BDW!

Those are great! I love the idea of using them as placecards!

Chad and I met online in March of 2008. I had been posting weight loss videos on YouTube for almost a year when I ran across his videos. He had just started making his weight loss "vlogs" and I was more than eager to welcome him to the community. I felt an instant attraction to him, and started to become quite flirty! I spent months getting to know him online, not caring that he lived 500 miles away. There was something about him that I knew was important- significant. I would ask him hypothetical questions like "what if I were passing through KY, would you meet me?" and he'd say no, and explain that he is shy and how he never really had a serious relationship before. Which blew my mind because he is quite a catch! But he felt he needed to wait til he found the RIGHT person before having any kind of commitment...and he was scared I lived too far away for us to work. But there was still an attraction there we couldn't ignore. Finally he agreed to meet me in August and we planned a mini-vacation to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC- which was close to a halfway point between our states. We had an amazing weekend and hit it off immediately, as you can see by these pictures. Being away from him was unbearable, so 3 weeks later I took the 8 hour drive to KY to spend Labor Day weekend with him. And then I travelled there once a month for the next 5 months before my mom got sick and I had to stay home to be with her. He started to visit me during school breaks then (he is in his last year of college.) I went up for Valentine's day and I planned a romantic dinner for him, and we had his apartment to ourselves. The night before I noticed he was very fidgety and restless. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with him. He couldn't sit still! The next morning we got up and had breakfast, got dressed, etc and he mentioned us opening our gifts to each other. I thought it was just weird- it wasn't even lunch time yet! I assumed we'd exchange gifts at dinner. So I agreed and he set up my camera to record us, which didn't raise any concern for me as we were ALWAYS filming ourselves for youtube. He opened his gift (I got him a wireless router) and then I opened mine. Now, you have 2 choices. You can either a) watch the following video and see it all unfold or read the story below. I recommend watching the video, but if you don't want to do that, it's cool. Here's the video link: YouTube - A Chandy Proposal Here's the story in case you can't/don't want to watch: So I open my gift and inside is a small black scrapbook. Each page was decorated to fit what the text said. I started flipping through the pages and reading them. On the first page it says "Chad and Mandy" in a heart 2nd page says "Two lives intersect though they are miles apart" 3rd page: A graphic of Kentucky and South Carolina 4th page: Pictures of each of us separately 5th page: "A Man and Woman brought together by fate" 6th page: "But how could this relationship work when separated by such distance" 7th page: "The man and woman knew that this was worth taking a chance" 8th page: Picture of us together 9th page: "Everything they were feeling was justfied when they had their first kiss" 10th page: "This was more than Frienship, this was True Love" 11th page: "As time went on their love grew stronger" 12th page: "The two of them looked forward to every moment they could spend together" 13th page: "But the distance between was sometimes hard to bear" 14th page: "Still, these moments apart made the man realize" 15th page: "Just how much he loved the woman and how he wanted to be with her forever" 16th page: Silhouette of a man on one knee in front of a woman 17th page: "And so the man asked the woman to MARRY HIM" at his point I, in the weirdest voice that has every escaped my lips said "Oh my God" He got down on one knee and proposed! We decided to have a destination wedding since no matter what, people were gonna have to travel if they come. So I got my heart set on a beach wedding and we chose Sullivan's Island, SC, near Charleston, as our wedding destination.

haha! this is something I wish my two new puppies could read. As for my other dog, she already thinks she's human and there's no changing her mind!

wow $3/pp is not bad at all! Great finds! I can't wait to start finding things for my OOT bags!

I am going to be using my iTunes playlist on my laptop and I getting a $99 (on sale) insignia 5.1 speaker system. It has decent reviews on the site I looked at and you can't beat the price. I even thought of making my own announcemnt audio files and having someone play them when it's time

Everyone always loves talking about themselves! hehe thanks for this! What is your first name? Mandy How Old are you? 29 Where are from? South Carolina What is your occupation? Customer Service Rep Do you have any pets? 3 poodles! Haylee, Bosco, and Sophie Where is your destination wedding? Charleston, SC on Sullivan's Island What is your FH/Husbands name? Chad What is your favorite fruit? Watermelon, sweet cherries, and black grapes What is your favorite movie? Wedding Singer, Where the Heart is, pretty much any adam sandler movie What kind of car do you drive? it's paid off, that's all I care about! lol It's a cavalier What is your favorite book? Twilight Series, The Time travelers wife What is your favorite season? Summer and Fall What kind of music do you like? All types! except for death metal Any siblings? Too many 1/2 siblings! Where is your favorite place to travel? Kentucky where my FI lives What year did you graduate highschool? 1998 What do you do for fun? Watch movies, shop, play with my puppies When is your wedding? July 17, 2010

Red or Black grapes and peanuts taste like PB&J

female dog: poodle

this is a great list! Thank you! It's easy to forget some of those things when you are busy planning the fun parts!

Thank you both! LeAnne- that was some really good advice and just what I plan to do. While I can afford the taxes and all on the house, I don't know if being here is worth it. Luckily since the wedding is a year away I'll have all this time to live alone before I remarry. i am not terribly close to my family, and my job is, essentially, just a way to pay the bills. Moving on won't be hard for me, but I do need to be the best ME I can be before I try to be a wife again. I hope the next several month will serve as a way to do that. thanks again, y'all are great!

The new ideas sound great. You could also get some clear glass squares and glue the confetti on the bottom, then use those as stands for the vases

I need to unload somewhere, please forgive me for how whiney this message will probably sound. I am not really looking for sympathy or someone to say "oh you poor thing"- I need hope. I need someone to tell me this WILL all be ok, because right now I feel like I am one pulled thread away from being unraveled. Let's start in 2004. I was engaged and living with my fiance in a house we bought together (but was in his name.) We had dated for 9 years and were highschool sweethearts. We were engaged for 2 years and I could not get him to commit to a date. Plus he treated me like crap. I left him, moved back home with my parents. I lost everything I invested in that house. While living with them I met a guy online. After 2 weeks of dating we got engaged (which I later found out he thought was a joke) and he expressed to me he wanted nothing more in this world than to start a family with me. I knew I had problems with fertility because of PCOS, so I suggested I go off the pill so we'd have time to try before we got married. We didn't tell anyone about our engagement (I was such an idiot back then) because we hadn't been dating long. We moved in together and in 3 months I went of my Pill and got pregnant the first month. We planned to go ahead and get married, though we weren't quite ready. I ended up miscarrying in the midst of wedding planning, and I didn't want to get married anymore. I saw what type of man he really was, but I was scared and hated living at home with my parents, so I married him anyway. (again with the stupidity thing) A year and a half later after all those months of mental abuse, neglect, and heartache I filed for divorce. (he was addicted to online gaming and was controlling and manipulative) He tried to commit suicide a few times and was fired from his job for not getting help and then commited to a mental institution. He left the state and moved 1000 miles away. Thankfully I don't have to deal with him anymore. I moved back in with my parents in the house I grew up in. A house that has always meant a great deal to me. A few months after I moved in my mother decided she wanted to downgrade to a townhome...And while I was welcome to move with them, my childhood home was going to be sold. I was devastated. So we moved, and my father's help began to decline. He had COPD and congestive heart failure. I nursed him every day before and after work until he died in January of 2008. I was a daddy's girl, I miss him very much. Mama and I moved back to the old house because it hadn't sold yet, and she was homesick. We sold the townhouse immediately and had the other house paid off immediately as well. All we had to worry about were utilities and food. I paid some bills in return for her letting me stay there. Mom and I were getting along seemingly well, though she was trying to control who I dated to the point that (even though I was 27) I had to sneak around to see anyone. I became close to a guy I met during that time and we saw each other as friends for 9 months. Then I met FI online. We were both making videos for a weight loss community on youtube. I saw him and immediately knew he was meant to be a big part of my life. I actively pursued him and finally, after 3 months of courting I got him to agree to meet me. We met halfway (from KY to SC) and really hit it off. We continued our relationship online and also with monthly trips to see each other (an 8 hour drive.) In February, after about 9 months of dating, he proposed. I couldn't have been happier! But my happiness was clouded with sorrow for my mother who found out a few months before that she had late-stage lung cancer. As her health declined and she became bedridden, I, along with my 2 sisters and aunt and cousin, started sharing daily care for her. She was bedridden, very sick and weak, and in hospice care. I was her evening and weekend caregiver, and the other shared the daytime duty til I got home. It was a very stressful time for me. I was a prisoner in my own home, and felt helpless wishing my other didn't have to suffer. She died 3 weeks ago. Now that my mom is gone, she was going to leave the house I adored so much to me- but instead decided to leave it to my sister so she can make sure i don't lose the house due to financial reasons, but I am still welcome to live here as long as I want. FI was going to move here to be with me, but now he wants me to move there. And I am scared and sad I will have to leave my childhood home. It feels like the only thing I have left in my life that is stable. So-In the last 5 years I have had a failed engagement, failed marriage, moved 5 times, watched my father deteriorate and die, watched my mother deteriorate and die, and now I have to choose my future, save for a wedding, plan a wedding, and likely move 500 miles away, find a new job, and start a new life within the next year. Oh, and lose 90 lbs. I don't know how much more stress I can take. I've gained 20 lbs since may because all I want to do is stress eat. All of this eating out has cause a strain in my finances...and even more strain is coming as I take on the other household expenses I once shared with mom. I don't know what to do. I am the type that bottles everything up until I explode, and I have done a lot of bottling over the last 5 years. I don't want to have a meltdown. I can't afford to end up in the looney bin or lose my job because of it. thanks for letting me vent. Even just a would make me feel better. I need some renewed faith, bad!

FI and I met online, but not through a dating site or social networking. We met on YouTube while making weight loss videos! it was very neat to get to know someone by watching their videos and not just looking at pictures.

garlic: alfredo

Thank you so much, NaM! Looks like things are heading in the way of me moving to be with him. I found out my house will never really be my house, I only get to stay there rent-free til I die. Which means I can never really make it mine. It breaks my heart to leave, but I really don't have many friends here at all and I am not that close to my family. It is super-scary though!

Awesome deals! I hate they closed our Michaels (they couldn't compete with Hobby Lobby) but there is one in the next town I can go to.