Hi ladies! I decided to venture out of lurkdom and introduce myself. My name is Stephanie. I'm 21 and from Appleton. My story is a bit complicated, so bear with me as I try to explain it!
My (future) fiancé, Aboud, and I met during my freshman year of college at UW Green Bay. Aboud was a senior foreign exchange student from Amman, Jordan. We had only been dating a semester before he graduated and had to go home. I was heartbroken, but we decided to try to make it work long distance. It's been over two years, and we're still hanging in there!
Because of our religious differences (I'm Christian and he's Muslim), our relationship has always been kind of...serious. We had the marriage and babies talk reeeeally early on. I wanted to make sure, before our relationship got anywhere, that we were on the same page as far as what we expected out of each other and of our future.
We're both waiting for him to be in the country before we make any announcements but we're technically engaged. He hasn't proposed and I don't have a real engagement ring yet (the standard of living there is pretty low and you never know if jewelry is on the up and up), but I submitted paperwork to the USCIS for his fiance visa so he can stay in the US. We have to be married within 90 days of him arriving, which is probably when we'll tell my family and everyone that we're 'engaged' and start figuring out the legitimate plans for our wedding (date, venues, etc). But until then, I'm going to plan all of the things that don't really matter to him. Which is basically everything except the food.
I'll probably be on here a lot asking questions! I'm so indecisive and it's really nice having advice and opinions from people who are going through the same thing.
I look forward to getting to know you all!
-Stephanie