The Proposal

David Anderson’s Fourth of July weekend proposal was supposed to go off with a bang. Along with his girlfriend Maggie and their families, they were spending the weekend at his family home in Jonesboro, Indiana, where he planned to have Maggie light a firework and then run away from it to find him on one knee…but she insisted on buying a lantern instead of a firework, throwing a wrench into things.

Completely unaware of his plan, Maggie decided they should write something on the lantern before releasing it.

“He wasn’t into it at all,” she recalls. “I was like, let’s write ‘let’s get married’ and he was like OK, do whatever you want. And I had no idea.”

Maggie tried to cuddle up next to him as the lantern floated away, but he resisted—he was, in fact, trying to back away so he could propose, which he finally managed to do. She, of course, said yes.

Although they weren’t quite in sync when it came to the proposal, the couple was on the same page about wanting an outdoor wedding. Organized Maggie set to work.

“David tells people I had the wedding planned within three months of getting engaged, but that’s not completely true,” she laughs.

Perfect Timing

Still, her timetable would make most brides jealous. She was scrolling through Facebook right after getting engaged when she noticed Savvy Bridal was having a sample sale in mid-July. She figured she might as well try her luck and walked into the shop with her mom and sister—and no expectations. So she was pleasantly surprised when she fell in love with the first dress she tried on, a form-fitting Mon Cheri lace gown with a simplicity that matched her personal style and the barn wedding she was envisioning.

“I didn’t want to try on more wedding dresses just for the heck of it,” Maggie explains. “I was like, ‘I like this one, this is the one I want to get married in.’ I had never tried on one before, I didn’t know what size I was going to be, and it just worked out that the one I picked fit really well and worked.”

Maggie married David on May 19th, 2018, just half a mile away from where he proposed. Their first look was one of her most memorable moments of the day.

“It was just nice to have that time with him when the day can get so crazy and so hectic so quickly,” she says.

They held the ceremony outside of a barn, then guests walked through it to get food and enjoyed a reception in a tent set up under the Indiana summer sky where their lantern had been released the previous summer.

Now a few months removed from the wedding hubbub, Maggie encourages brides to recognize that their guests are there to have a good time and likely aren’t as concerned with every little detail the way they may be. She also shared some practical words of wisdom from her new husband: “David likes to tell people his favorite advice is to know the ceremony schedule, know what to expect. We had obviously done the rehearsal but that day and everything leading up to it was so busy, it was like you were there but you weren’t.”

Vendors

Photographer: TKL Photography

Videographer: Michael Babbitt, owner of Advertising KC

DJ: Dan Lanman

Donuts: Dan’s Variety Bakery