Rob Reading decided to buy an engagement ring for $8.88 at Walmart while grocery shopping with his girlfriend, Emily Hardman, on New Year’s Eve. Later that day, while hiking in Sedona Verde Valley, Arizona, he proposed to the love of his life. Emily answered with a resounding “yes.”However, it is not what is causing this story to go viral. The good times were only beginning…
When Emily called a wedding planner and told her she had just been engaged and that the wedding was only five days away, she was met with a “choking cough” and the question, “Is this a joke?”But it wasn’t a joke, and after the wedding planner regained her composure (with the bride adding, “and no, I’m not pregnant”), Hardman had her wedding luncheon scheduled for five days later—in just about an hour on the phone.
What’s the rush? Hardman revealed in a New York Times piece that she and her now-husband, Rob, had known one other for four years and had been dating for one. Because of their hectic work and travel schedules, they had the option of “getting married in a week or in a year,” and because they “already knew [they] wanted to spend eternity together,” they chose the five-day plan.
And, for what it’s worth, I believe they nailed it. In a society when weddings are BIG, BIG business (I’m talking billions of dollars each year) and Pinterest boards are overflowing with the urge for PERFECTION down to the last detail, Hardman and Reading were focused on what REALLY mattered: the marriage, not the wedding. “I was convinced that modern weddings had become way too burdensome,” Hardman told ABC News.
“I started helping my friends and siblings plan their weddings when I was 17, and I simply saw this stress that was going into the napkin colors…I just assumed that no one would notice the napkin colors, that no one would walk out with their bag of peanuts and say, ‘Wow, I just feel so loved that you stayed up for three days putting a ribbon around these peanuts.'”Rob Reading decided to buy an engagement ring for $8.88 at Walmart while grocery shopping with his girlfriend, Emily Hardman, on New Year’s Eve.
Later that day, while hiking in Sedona Verde Valley, Arizona, he proposed to the love of his life.However, it is not what is causing this story to go viral. The good times were only beginning.. When Emily called a wedding planner and told her she had just been engaged and that the wedding was only five days away, she was met with a “choking cough” and the question, “Is this a joke?”
But it wasn’t a joke, and after the wedding planner regained her composure (with the bride adding, “and no, I’m not pregnant”), Hardman had her wedding luncheon scheduled for five days later—in just about an hour on the phone. What’s the rush? Hardman revealed in a New York Times piece that she and her now-husband, Rob, had known one other for four years and had been dating for one.
Because of their hectic work and travel schedules, they had the option of “getting married in a week or in a year,” and because they “already knew [they] wanted to spend eternity together,” they chose the five-day plan. And, for what it’s worth, I believe they nailed it. In a society when weddings are BIG, BIG business (I’m talking billions of dollars each year) and Pinterest boards are overflowing with the urge for PERFECTION down to the last detail, Hardman and Reading were focused on what REALLY mattered:
the marriage, not the wedding. “I was convinced that modern weddings had become way too burdensome,” Hardman told ABC News. “I started helping my friends and siblings plan their weddings when I was 17, and I simply saw this stress that was going into the napkin colors…I just assumed that no one would notice the napkin colors, that no one would walk out with their bag of peanuts and say, ‘Wow, I just feel so loved that you stayed up for three days putting a ribbon around these peanuts.'”