We were both college students in Oklahoma and we had gone home to Houston for the summer. Kyle had been promising to take me out on a picnic for months and a few days after my birthday he finally did. He packed up a picnic basket and took me to a Japanese garden that he knew of. As we walked along a path through the garden, he kept complaining about how heavy the basket was. Finally, just as we were walking past a bench, next to the top of a waterfall, he asked if we could stop and rest a minute.

As I sat down to pick some rocks out of my shoes, he pulled a little blue box out of the "heavy" picnic basket. Then he dropped down on one knee right in front of me and asked, "Lauren Rechelle Frye, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?" I barely looked at the ring; instead I grabbed him and gave him a huge hug. For the first time in my life, I (the chatterbox) was unable to speak. Finally I was able to say yes, and we went to a nearby gazebo to celebrate with our picnic lunch that he made all on his own! After we finished our picnic we called our families and everyone came to meet us at a restaurant for a wonderful engagement party.

We planned everything for our wedding very quickly, and it was amazing to see how the details all fell perfectly into place. During the last 3 days before my wedding I was so busy that altogether I didn't sleep more than 12 hours. By the time I got to the rehearsal dinner, my family and my bridal party assumed I was going to be a very cranky bride. I surprised them all though when on the morning of my wedding I woke up early full of energy. I grabbed my maid of honor, did some last minute shopping, helped my mom with the wedding cake, and even made and decorated a birthday cake for one of my flower girls. Throughout all of the preparations I was extremely calm and wasn't nervous at all. The groom was actually the one running around the church getting anxious about the little things. As the hour of the wedding grew near, I was busy curling the youngest flower girls hair so I almost wasn't dressed in time. I did end up making it to the wedding in time though it was a wonderfully happy and exciting day.

To personalize our wedding, we incorporated some very special colors, which were chosen carefully for the following reasons.

Red - to remind us of unconditional love from our families and for each other
Fuchsia - to remind us of friendship
Orange - to remind us of joy and excitement
Yellow - to remind us of peace in the midst of chaos

These four colors combine to represent a sunset which symbolized how, as the sun set on one part of our lives, it rose on another. As we said goodbye to our single lives, we looked forward to our new life together as husband and wife.