Q & A with Mr. and Mrs. Chic
Over the past year, we’ve shared so many special moments with you – from our whirlwind Tuscany wedding to newlywed adventures and travels as Mr. and Mrs. Chic. In honor of our anniversary this week I put a question box up about all things wedding or relationship related! You guys sent in everything from wanting to know more about how we budgeted for our wedding day, to what really went wrong behind the scenes, to how Mr. Chic pulled off the proposal, and even what life looks like now that we’re married. We thought it would be fun to answer the Top 5 Questions we get asked most often, giving you a deeper peek into our love story, our lessons learned, and what’s next for us as a couple.
Q: What to splurge on vs what to save on?
A: This is so personal to each couple but something that was really helpful for us and something I highly recommend is writing down the 3 most important parts of the wedding day to you. My husband and I each did this separately before we even started the wedding planning process. We then came together and compared lists. We had some overlap and some not. This will ultimately help you start the conversation of where to allocate budget as your top priority items, especially where you overlap, will take up most of the budget and items that didn’t make your top list should have a much lower budget.
Ultimately because of my job and pictures being a very important non negotiable for me, photography and videography was my number one even before I knew how small our wedding would be. Once we decided to elope and only include a handful of people, pictures and video became even more important so we would have something to share with friends and family that weren’t able to be there with us. I’ll cherish our pictures and videos forever I love them so much. The wedding day goes by so quick that having photos that truly capture the joy in a style that reflects you is worth the money in my opinion. Not a single regret on how much we spent.
Other items that were important to us/willing to spend more on: spend multiple days with our guests, location/venue, live music, private vows.
Things that weren’t as important to us/we didn’t feel the need to spend a lot on: flowers, food, invitations, cake, and rentals.
Q: Things that went wrong?
A: Little things. Honestly things that didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things! My flowers were not what I had asked for. No biggie. They were still beautiful. I didn’t love my make up. No biggie. The girls helped me add a shitload of bronzer and I redid a couple of other things. It rained 2 out of the 3 days that we were there. Again, no biggie. We moved the welcome party to where it was covered. We just felt so thankful that we had beautiful weather the entire day for our wedding day even though it was forecasted to rain! Did I wear my Dior cloth wedding shoes? Nope. No biggie. Still photographed them of course but didn’t want to ruin them in the muddy grass so I ended up wearing a back up pair that I threw in last minute. My sister got sick which was a bummer. No biggie. She was out for a day but was thankfully able to rally after!
We didn’t lock the videographer in until literally 2 days before the wedding. It was STRESSFUL. But 100% worth it. Things will go wrong. Just expect it and prepare for it. You have to let these things roll off of your back or it will ruin your entire day. Just remember, these are all just very small things in the grand scheme of things and absolutely nobody else will ever know other than you so remember whose party it is and PARTY ON!!
Q: Was the proposal a complete surprise?
A: Yall let me preface this with I LOVE surprises and my husband has almost never pulled off a surprise without me figuring it out. I did not have a single clue until the day of. I was convinced if he was going to propose around that timeframe that it would have been the next weekend when we were going home for Easter.
It wasn’t until the Friday evening that everybody was in town for St. Patrick’s day and my husbands 35th birthday party (that I planned), that I started to think something was up. My girlfriend and sister were staying with me and we were supposed to be meeting up for happy hour after work with some friends. My girlfriend KEPT asking me what I was wearing that night, insisting I wear something a little dressier with her. That was my first indicator.
Then everybody who was staying with us left us! They all conveniently had other plans before happy hour which was my second indicator that something was up because I didn’t understand why we wouldn’t just all ride together. But I kept telling myself I was crazy because my husband was acting completely normal and I had green nails for heavens sake. No way he was going to propose on his birthday weekend when I had green nails. WRONG.
My last indicator was on the uber ride to the happy hour. He had the uber driver drop us off a block away and I was like “um why? I’m in heels and it’s cold outside!!”. To which he responded “I thought we could enjoy the view”. After that point my heart was pounding out of my chest and I feel like I floated the rest of the way.
He got down on one knee in front of our favorite spot on the Chicago river while a bunch of our friends and family watched and cheered. Even suspecting it right before I still was SO surprised that he pulled it off without me knowing and flew my best friend in to surprise me too. It was perfect. Honestly gentleman take notes. The best way to surprise your partner is to basically let them plan their own engagement or piggy back on a plan that is already in motion. Genius move, babe.
Q: Married date night ideas?
A: We try to do at least one planned date night a month and trade off who plans whether that be a night out or night in. I’ll share some planned date nights below but my favorite and our most common date nights are spontaneous ones.
We purposely only buy enough groceries or get meal delivery service for 3-4 dinners a week. This way we have 3-4 nights a week that we can work in a spontaneous date night (outside of travel, events, etc). Reservations are hard to come by without booking them a month in advance but we have a huge list of places that we continually add to that we want to try and if it lines up where we run out of groceries, don’t have work or events, then we choose a spot from the list and go try to find a bar spot. We love how close we are at the bar for conversation and it’s typically quicker to get food and the check!
As far as planned date nights we are a big activity couple. My husband’s ideal date night is a sports game or concert and my favorite date night is staying in, ordering take out and setting the movie projector up.
Q: Babies?
A: We’re working on it!! We started prepping our bodies at the beginning of the year (removing IUD, taking the right supplements, working out, drinking less alcohol, etc) and officially started trying in May. We wanted to be able to enjoy marriage and get a lot of travel in before adding to our family. Our trip to Spain in May was our last big trip for a while and we truly feel ready to start the next chapter.
Praying that 2025 brings us a little one! God willing we think we want 2 kids but we will see how things go! I am 33 (turning 34 this year) and my husband is 36 so we pray that our bodies know what to do and bless us with the little family we’ve been scheming up for years! And yes we already have baby names picked out and no we won’t find out the gender! I love surprises too much for that!!
We loved sharing a little more of us with you, and hopefully, this Q&A gave you a glimpse into our wedding and life together. From the surprises and splurges to date nights and dreams of growing our family, this season of life has been one we’ll never forget. Thank you for being here to celebrate and walk alongside us. If you have more questions, we’d love to hear them – who knows, maybe a part two is coming soon. Until then, here’s to love, laughter, and whatever the next chapter brings.
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