Holy Crap, Is This Week Real?

I got a nice little surprise on Tuesday!

No, Bear did not propose simply because of our BFP, although we are hurrying up the wedding because I'm currently uninsured.  He had ordered the ring a little bit ago, and we had expected it to be delivered anytime between September 11 and 20.  The timing sure works out, though!

Apparently the ring came in Monday, but he led me to believe that it hadn't come in Monday or Tuesday.  Tuesday afternoon, we were getting ready to go downtown to look at a couple possible wedding venues, and Bear asked me if I was ready to go and if I had everything I needed.  I said I did, and he said, "no, you don't," pulled out the box, and got down on one knee.  Apparently, I looked shocked!

Bear told the kids on Wednesday, and they asked to be ring bearer and flower girl!  The 6 year old also asked me if she could help me pick out a dress.  :-)

However, between the insurance issues and not trying to send the message of "we're getting married because I'm knocked up," especially to my Mormon stepfamily and to the people that are friends with both us and our exes, figuring out the timing of the wedding is tricky.  If we get married in the courthouse, we get married in a group with whoever else is doing it that day, like a bunch of Moonies.  NOT appealing.  But it would get the job done quickly, and we can get me on his insurance within a day or two of the ceremony.  If we wait, I can't make a prenatal appointment without going to a pregnancy crisis center or whatever, because it's just too expensive out of pocket.  If we do the courthouse Moonie thing and then have a real ceremony and reception later, which we may be looking at, there's the risk of me showing by then and it also then looks more like a shotgun wedding.

Also making it fun is that we can't have a church wedding without it being a random church.  Bear is Catholic, and his marriage, while not originally a Catholic marriage, later became one.  I've been confirmed Catholic, but I identify much more as Methodist.  However, I haven't really become involved in a Methodist church here because I've been going to Mass with him.  So even the one I've visited a couple of times would feel random.  At this point, our best bet seems to be a judge that's in the Knights of Columbus with Bear.

But I'm fretting and stressing about all this.  It's easy to say "screw em," but these are people whose opinions I care about.  And I already took flak from some of the Mormon cousins for getting divorced in the first place.  I don't want to be the cousin they look down on, like some of them do our other cousin who had a shotgun wedding.  And I don't want people thinking we only got married because we were stupid enough to get knocked up, when we have wanted to be married to each other for months and desperately want what we're now calling our little penguin.