I recently was lucky enough to get a 20% off coupon for 6pm.com, so I started doing some browsing, which led to browsing on other shoe sites. My friends and I like to share and ask each others’ opinions on clothes and shoes, so I sent links to two different pairs of shoes (one very dressy and formal, another more trendy and more for casual outings) to two of my friends on the same e-mail chain. I just ask in the e-mail what their thoughts are on these shoes, and my first friend responds that one pair is really cute, but the other pair, she cannot imagine would go with any wedding dress, and she asks what type of dress I’d consider wearing with it. I literally laughed out loud when I saw her response because no where in my e-mail did I mention that these were shoes I’d consider for my future wedding. My second friend responds and says that she thought I was looking at these as potential wedding shoes.

It’s funny that this happened because it’s almost like my friends are thinking about my wedding planning more than I actually am; I wasn’t thinking about wedding anything at all when I sent these links, but they just assumed I was and were replying with a wedding mindset. I guess this is how you know when your friends are completely roped into your wedding thinking and planning.

I haven’t dreamt of Ed in a long while, but last night, he came back to me in my dreams. Maybe he missed me and decided it was time to pay me a visit. Maybe his visit was influenced by the fact that I spoke to my friend over dinner about him last night.

It’s not a happy dream like it was the last time I can remember. I am sobbing again and trying to convince him not to jump off the bridge. This seems to be an old reoccurring theme in dreams that has come back again. He is in the living room of our house and announces to our mother and me that he is planning to jump on Tuesday at 4pm. Nothing we do will stop him; it’s been scheduled and has to go according to plan. I try to tell him that I love him, but he ignores me and walks away. He probably said Tuesday because last year, he jumped on Monday, July 22. This year, July 22 falls on a Tuesday.

Suddenly, a moment in the dream comes where I think, What? He’s still alive? He hasn’t jumped off the bridge yet. I can still save him. I will save him! I will make sure he doesn’t jump! I’m so excited because I think my brother is still living and can have a chance at life.

And then I wake up and realize that he is dead and that dream was just a dream. He really did die almost a year ago. I can’t believe it’s been almost a year. How did time go by so quickly without my Ed in my life?

I’ve had a variety of reactions when sharing the news of our engagement, but I think that the saddest ones are the complete lack of reactions from two of my cousins that I grew up with. It’s sad when you assume your family would care about happy news, or any significant news, in your life, and then you find out that it’s too difficult for them to even just say the words “congratulations” in any form – over the phone, text, e-mail – anything.

The responses from Chris’s side have by far been more positive, happy, and ecstatic than mine. Even his friends overall seem more excited than my own friends do. One of my best friends was tearing up when I told her about the engagement and said she anticipated crying her eyes out at our future wedding. That was probably the happiest reaction I have gotten. Two other friends were very logistical about it and mainly just asked about time frames and potential locations. His friends and family have done everything from scream and yell when they found out to actually personally call me and get the full proposal story at the wee hours of their nights. It’s been an interesting last week of seeing and experiencing reactions of people across both of our lives. In one way, it’s made me happy that there are so many people happy for us. But in another way, I’m a little bit disappointed that the reaction overall from my side hasn’t been as excited. It’s almost like a reflection of how dysfunctional my relationships are relative to Chris’s with his family and friends.

I know we agreed not to discuss wedding planning until the end of the year, but I can’t help but think about where the heck it’s actually going to be. My family is mostly in the Bay Area (and New York), and his family is mostly in Australia, Singapore, and India. I have a number of friends who are on tight budgets or just plain broke, so asking them to fly all the way to Australia or some exotic location in the middle of the Pacific Ocean seems like a big request. He has not-so-mobile grandmothers in Melbourne and Chennai. We both have family and/or friends with babies. How are we going to get as many of our loved ones together as possible for our wedding day? I hope that the fact I am thinking about this now is not an indicator of how obsessive I may be as a bride. 🙂

The proposal happened last Tuesday in Rio. We told our parents that evening via the phone. My mother did not initially hear me, and then that transitioned into her hearing me (it was a bad phone connection given our sub-par Wi-Fi), but not believing it really happened. She said, “Are you sure? This is real? Did he actually say the words, ‘Will you marry me,’ or did he just give you a ring? You are sure?'” Leave it to my mother to make the happiest moments in my life seem like the worst and most ambiguous.

Since we arrived back in New York on Monday, she has made sure to ask me those same questions yet again, and then end the conversation by saying, “I’m happy for you… for now.” My response: “What is that supposed to mean – ‘for now’?!” She says, “Well, you haven’t even set a date yet. Sometimes there is a proposal or engagement, but the wedding never happens.”

It’s always comforting to know how predictable people in your life can be. And then when you think about it a little bit more, you realize the negativity that surrounds their psyche is something you will just never be able to penetrate. We can’t change other people as much as we may want, especially our own parents.