When my Fiancé, Dustin, first approached me about moving to Singapore I first thought no, we can‘t leave the life that we have built in Charles Town WV. I also know that Dustin does not like cities so I knew he couldn’t live in one. When I told my girlfriends about it, they too thought that it was a crazy idea because we had too much invested in our home and we couldn’t leave in the midst of all the projects that we had going on, not to mention that we were planning a wedding on top of everything.
After a couple of months we put the whole offer of Singapore behind us and moved on with the different projects that we wanted to accomplish around our house. I was not only excited of our house becoming a home but I was excited to plan a wedding that I knew was going to be wonderful. I have been thinking of this day since I was young, and really thinking about it since Dustin and I decided to live with each other.
Busy was an understatement for the end of Winter/beginning of spring. I was finishing up coaching gymnastics and starting to coach girls lacrosse. Between being a coach, working and planning a wedding I had forgotten all about Singapore. I had found my wedding dress, and we had booked the venue when Dustin’s yearly review came up at his job. His boss decided to bring up Singapore once more. Dustin handled it well and came home to tell me that Singapore was mentioned again. I looked at him and said, "I will follow you anywhere and if that is where you want to go, I am in." My only stipulation was that I didn’t want to be in Singapore for more than 2 years because I didn’t want to start a family in a country I knew nothing about, miles away from our family.
Once Dustin and I gave Singapore a green light, he told his boss. After that the ball started to roll, but for me it was rolling slowly. Knowing that we could move, I was excited but scared. I had all sorts of questions, what are we going to do with our house? Our dog? Our cars? When will we know that we are definitely going? What will I do over there if we move? Like I said, I had questions, millions of them. I also wondered what our family would say. Surprisingly they were all very supportive and told us that if we didn’t go, we’d be crazy.
Dustin put up with so much with me from the time that Singapore was on the table till the actual move. He handled my stresses and freak outs very well. Any other person would have strangled me. I was very excited but I was also very sad because I was leaving my friends and family behind and live in a country I have never been to before and starting fresh with only knowing Dustin. I was also concerned that we wouldn’t be able to afford to come back home to get married, I knew that the company was going to pay for us to go to Singapore but was not sure if they would pay for us to go back home for a couple of weeks for us to get married. (we worked it out)
As work went on and the summer neared we still didn’t know if we were moving to Singapore. This didn’t help because if we were going to move to Singapore we were going to be leaving at the end of August or beginning of September, and I didn’t want to plan a wedding that was supposed to be in Pennsylvania USA while I was living in Singapore, it would just be too much. So the big dilemma I was going though was if we don’t move, I need to get a summer job, but if we do move I can’t get a summer job because I would need to plan the wedding in three months, oh and did I mention we were estimating for a guest list of 200 people? Yes, stress has set in. Dustin could see that and every time I asked if he had heard anything he said no, it was frustrating for the both of us. So I did decide to take a summer job but it was for only three weeks, because that is really all I could spare, IF we were going to Singapore.
The three weeks had gone by from working summer school and we got some news, but it wasn’t want we were expecting. The company first came back with an 11 month contract but I could not go because apparently 11 months in the world of his company was not a long term assignment (insert laughs and a pshh). Apparently who ever made that rule is either single or hasn’t been in a long term relationship or has never been engaged. Once he told them that he would not go without me (aw so sweet) it was changed to 13 months. So we had the word that we were going, but we didn’t have a leave date and we didn’t sign a contract yet. This was about the end of June first week of July (2011).
Once we got that we had to get our affairs in order. About a week or two after we knew we were leaving, there were phone conversations about moving, what to expect and a list of things we had to submit to the Singapore government so we could get the right passes (or to Americans, Visas). After that was all said and done, we officially got our passes to live in Singapore for the year and signed a contract, again very excited but sad and scared. But we still did not get a leave date.
Not to worry, with the help of my friends/brides maids I had gotten most of our wedding plans set. I had so many meetings set up I wasn’t sure if it was all going to be done in time. The girls got their dress, I had cake appointments, florist appointments, photography appointments, everything. We also had a planned vacation to Hatteras for the first week in August, we couldn’t cancel because it was with our near and dear friends from Rhode Island, it had become a tradition and you can’t back out on tradition. Plus there were lots of new little ones who arrived into the world and we had to meet them. By some kind of miracle we had done it. We had booked everyone for our wedding, down to the florist. The one thing we had left to do was to meet with our photographer for an engagement photo session and that would have to wait till after our beach trip.
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