How We Spread the News (aka another wedding related blog)

So the night after I got engaged I knew I had to tell my friends and family.  I don't know if there's a proper protocal re: who tell first how, etc, but I knew I had close friends and relatives that still didn't know.  I really didn't want them to find out on Facebook.  I like Facebook and all, but I hate finding out "big news" from friends/family that way.  (Once that was how my mother found out a relative of ours had died, let's just say that didn't go over so well with some family members.)  I know it sounds cheesy, but I kind of wanted the "joy" of telling people.  So I called my closest relatives (my grandmother, an aunt, an uncle, my stepgrandmother, and my brother) over the next two days.  Most of my relatives' reaction was something along the lines of, "Really? Congratulations."  Or "Are you serious?  Congratulations."  I wanted to say, no, I'm lying, I just called you to lie about that. Actually, I think I did jokingly say that to someone.  My brother wasn't answering his phone (again) and I didn't want to leave a message so I just hung up when it went to voicemail.  He told me later he was surprised to have so many missed calls from me without a message (usually I just call to say hi and say something like that in the message). Not to sound cocky, but I have a lot of friends.  Honestly, if you asked most of my friends, my fiance, or my parents, they would agree completely.  My fiance jokes that I need to lose a few friends or our wedding numbers are going to be huge. A friend of mine was having a party the following night so I figured  could tell a bunch of people in person that night (so far Matt and his sister, etc were the only ones I'd told in person) and I've heard it's more fun to do it live than over the phone.  I told a couple of my closest friends who were not going to be at the party via calls and texts that day.  Still no luck with my brother.  My parents and my fiance's parents came over for dinner that night (this had been planned prior to the engagement) and it was cute.  His parents were so excited;  I hadn't seen them that excited since their grandson was born.  They brought me flowers and him cookies (he loves chocolate chip cookies) and they loved looking at the ring (even though they'd all ready seen it, they wanted to see what it looked like on me, too cute).  The following day I finally got ahold of my brother who had been wondering why I'd called so many times.  And that night was the party.  We were all going out to dinner before the party (well, except for my fiance, he had to work so he was coming later).  One of my closest friends who didn't know yet was going to be at the party and I knew I should tell her before everyone else.  I told her I had to go the bathroom and she did too, she didn't really want to come with me.  She kept saying, but I don't have to go the bathroom and I kept saying, yes, you to.  She finally agree to come with me (honestly, people can make it so hard to tell them good news lol); when she did and I told her, she was litereally jumping up and down with excitement (yep, I'm sure we looked really cool doing that in the middle of a nice restaurant, I'm surprised no one yelled at us), but promised not to say anything at dinner.  Let me back up for a second and say that since I wasn't telling anyone besides her until after dinner (when my fiance was there) I had my ring wrapped up carefully in a small ring box my purse, but I kept checking to make sure it was there (under the disguise of needing tissues and chapstick).  Talk about paranoid.  Anyway, when we finally told people (my friend who knew could hardly contain herself, she was so eager for us to spill the beans), they were happy for us, but quite puzzled as to where the ring was.  One of my friends knew a ring had been purchased and apparently did check out my hands at dinner to see if I was wearing a new ring.  They thought I was pretty sneaky for keeping it hidden.  Anyway, over the next few days I finished telling most of my friends and of course lots of people aksed if we had a date, location, etc, which we didn't.  We were just enjoying the moment before the planning began.  I've got one more semi funny blog story about how we told some people before I do any blogs about wedding plans.  And there are more new foods to blog about this week too.  :)