Did You Know Beth Was Getting Married On Valentine's Day?

Yeah, we didn't either.

Beth came out to the kitchen the other day and told me there were only a few more days until Valentine's Day! I asked her why she was so excited and she said she was getting married!

Her and Nick have been talking about this for a long time and we always tell them there's too much to do before they choose a date so I told Beth again that getting married next month is too soon.  There's just way too much to do before they can get married.

Then I went into a little more detail.

I got out a piece of paper and we started making a list. I told her that before her and Nick get married, he needs to ask Dad if he can marry her. That was the first thing that needs to happen. 

Then, maybe even more important than that, he has to ask her. (He's never asked her, he's just told her they're getting married.)

After he asks her and she says yes, then they can start planning the wedding.

Are they getting married in a church?

"I dunno."

She has to buy a dress.

I asked her if she wanted a bouquet. "Uh, yeah!"
So they'll need to buy flowers.

They have to order a cake.

She has to find bridesmaids.

She said she wanted Allie to be her flower girl and I told her she'd have to ask her.

Nick has to find groomsmen.
Do they want someone to take pictures of their wedding?

And I told her that each of these things can cost a lot of money. Your dress might be $200 or $300. 

The flowers could cost $400.

The cake will cost money...
We put all this on the list.

(Now between you and me, I know they don't HAVE to have all these things in order to get married but there is so much to do and think through, Loren and I are trying to figure out how this marriage would even work. We both know our kids would need a lot of supervision and assistance if they get married; would it be us? Is there a group home they could live in? Is it run by people we trust? They are adults so do we just let this go on, even though neither one of them know what they're getting into?) 

Then I asked her if she knew what it would be like to be married.

"No."

Course, no one really knows until after they've been married a while but I told her that her and Nick might live by themselves and if they do there's a lot of things that they'll have to learn to do before they get married.

We talked about how she would fill her prescriptions and get to the grocery store. I asked her who was going to pay the electric bill, she or Nick? She kind of frowned so I explained (again) about how every time we turn on the lights or the TV or we use the microwave or she plugs in her phone, that we get a bill in the mail, a piece of paper telling us that we have to pay money for all the electricity we use...

By the time we were done she was pretty reflective. I could tell she really was considering everything. So she took the list we'd made and took a picture of it and sent it to Nick.

Then she decided that her and Nick would live with us, where she lives now, downstairs in her apartment.

Let's just say we haven't sent out the invitations yet.