Since the middle of March, I have been keeping a massive secret. But that secret has now come to fruition, so it's time to reveal all!
Last February, my best friend since the 3rd grade, Shauna, told me that she was
engaged. While I was home in August, she asked me to be a part of her wedding. However, her wedding was set during the school year when I'm not allowed to use my vacation days. Also, she was having a destination wedding in Aruba. The trip from Korea to Minnesota can come close to 20 hours, so making it to Aruba was just out of the question. I was really sad when I had to tell her that I couldn't be a part of her wedding.
Throughout this year, Shauna had kept me in the loop with wedding details; sending me pictures of her dress, the bridesmaids dresses, etc. Each time I got a message, I would get really sad for a couple days and be upset about missing the wedding all over again. Over the months and all of the emails, the feeling of sadness never seemed to dull.
Over dinner with Andrew one night, I was telling him about the latest wedding update and how sad I was that I was missing the ceremony. After chatting for a little while about how I was feeling, Andrew asked me why I was making myself miserable if I didn't have to be. The least I could do would be to check with my school to see if I could possibly take my vacation days early. The thought was liberating. I hadn't occurred to me that my school would even say yes! The next day, I worked up my nerve and asked my principal and vice-principal if I could possibly use 4 vacation days during the school year. Shockingly, they both replied yes with no problems! I was amazed!
I alerted Shauna's fiancé, Tim, to the fact that I could make it to the wedding. We began to work out the details along with Shauna's mom, Susi. A couple weeks later, I had my plane tickets and the details were really coming together! Also, Susi was nice enough to take care of all of the arrangements for my bridesmaids dress! (I really couldn't have pulled the whole thing off without Tim and Susi- they were so amazing!)
After thinking about the wedding every day for about a month and a half, it was suddenly time to go. My trip was quite a long one:
1. Overnight bus from Ulsan to Incheon airport
2. Flight from Incheon, Korea to Tokyo, Japan
3. Flight from Tokyo, Japan to Minneapolis
4. Lunch with my parents in the Minneapolis airport (the first time I'd seen them in about 9 months!)
5. Flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta
6. 12 hour layover in Atlanta
7. Flight from Atlanta to Aruba!
(...and this isn't including getting back to Korea!)
When all was said and done, I traveled for over 50 hours one way!
The plan for surprising Shauna was that Susi would hide my bridesmaids dress in with Shauna's, then hide both of them in someone else's room at the hotel. Then, right before my plane was due to land, Shauna's mom would tell her that Shauna's wedding dress had been lost by the airline. She would then say that the airline had just found it, so Shauna and her parents had to go to the airport to pick it up. I landed, went through customs and positioned myself with my back to the arrivals door, and waited for a glimpse of Shauna and her parents.
Once I saw them walking up behind me out of the corner of my eye, I turned around and told Shauna, "I know where your dress is." She looked at me for almost a full five seconds, not really realizing what was happening! After a little while, it all seemed to click, and we shared a big hug! I think for a little while, we were both in shock at where I was! After we hugged, I told her,
"I have some more good news!"
"What? Is Andrew here?" (Hehe!)
"No, but my bridesmaids dress is back at the hotel with your wedding dress!"
"Oh my goodness!"
All in all, I'd say that the surprise went off without a hitch!
The next day was the wedding day, which went beautifully. Shauna and Tim had a civil ceremony at the court house and then that evening was the ceremony on the beach at sunset. All of the girls spent the afternoon getting ready in our suite, which was really fun. I had a bit of a dress mis-hap that had to do with the dress being too large for me, but it ended up working out! I was in the bathroom getting ready for quite a while and due to my dress mis-hap, I had missed Shauna getting ready. I was really sad about this, but when I finally left the bathroom where I was getting ready, the first thing I saw was Shauna completely ready, in her dress, posing by the window for the photographer. It was a beautiful moment seeing her there and I immediately got teary-eyed... something I think I'll always remember!
If you'd like to see pictures of the ceremony, you can go
here! Also, a couple days after the wedding, Shauna and Tim did a '
Trash the Dress' session with their amazing photographer where they went into the beautiful Aruban sea with their wedding clothes!
I'm so happy I could be there with Shauna on her wedding day- even with all of the hectic planning and long plane rides, I know that I'll look back on the whole thing and just remember the beauty of that day and the happiness of being able to be there for my oldest friend.
