How the Engagement Became My Trump Card

(#16) Reconnect with an old friend
(#18) Take a risk I never thought I'd take
(#23) Learn a new skill

Done!

Obviously nothing on my list can compete with getting engaged. And obviously wedding planning has already started to take up time that I would otherwise spend doing other exciting things. But in a lot of ways this new development helped me achieve many of my goals this year.

Reconnecting with an old friend: As soon as we got engaged old friends came out of the woodwork to congratulate us, and I was happy to hear from them all. And of course at our engagement party I got to see some old friends and some family members that I had not seen in over a year. Since big life events tend to make people extra-sentimental, I reveled in these reconnections and hope to keep them all going through the wedding and beyond.

Take a risk: I know what you're thinking. Referring to getting married as taking a risk seems a little cynical for me. While that is true when you think about it I am actually talking about something much more petty.

Booking a venue.

If you know me well you know that I can be paralyzed by indecisiveness over the smallest choice. I just have so many ideas and visualize so many different outcomes that I can't possibly limit myself to one. So to put me in a position where I have to make important decisions 18 MONTHS in advance is absolutely taking a risk. I'm risking my down payment and my saved date and my sanity that I won't second-guess myself and try to change my mind.

We just signed the contract for our venue today. It's a risk, but we are very happy to take it.

Learn a new skill: For the record I have learned a ton of new skills this year. Most of them involve cooking and/or baking. But I did make the effort to learn this one new skill which I plan to put to use for the wedding:

Origami. Or more specifically, paper flowers.

It won't come as a huge surprise that we have already decided to incorporate books into our wedding. I saw the idea of using paper flowers, and possibly making them out of old book pages, on Pinterest (where else). Finding myself with a lot of free time on my hands at work, I decided to give it a try.

I actually learned how to make these particular flowers, called kusudama, from a bridal show we attended at our venue.

Here are the instructions more eloquently than I can put them. But here is my first attempt at it:

Not bad, right? After some more practice I think I can do something like this:

Also my boss is apparently a closet origami artist so we are going to further hone my skill in the coming weeks. I am excited to see how this can play into the wedding!