I was absolutely thrilled when I was proposed to on December 16th of last year, and was looking forward to the fun of planning a wedding. However, little did I know that I would run into more than the expected wedding glitches.

My fiancé, is in the military and I am in Manchester attending college. Now I knew that Planning a wedding around the military and the fact that we live so far apart would be a little harder but I figured oh well I can handle this. We looked at the scheduled deployments and realized that if we wanted a summer wedding anytime soon it would have to be this year because he was supposed to be sent overseas the following summer. I started calling Reception Halls, finding prices and open dates like any normal bride to be. I kept checking in with my fiancé during the entire process to see if any changes were being made. I was reassured that everything would be fine and to go ahead and pick a date.

August 12th was one of the only dates open at the Reception Halls in our home town, so by default that was the date we picked. I sent the deposit check in on a Friday and continued making other plans. I started calling and booking the other normal wedding requirements, a DJ, Photographer, the church. Everything seemed to be falling into place. I thought, WOW this is going better than I could have hoped.

Less than a week later I found out that I had spoke too soon, and all our wedding plans were going to fall apart. The Thursday after reserving the hall, sending in that deposit, and sending deposits other things I got the fateful call from my fiancé. "I'm getting deployed for a year and I'm leaving this May." Great, I thought. We're gonna lose a ton of money and who knows when we'll be able to get married. The next day after crying for what seemed like forever the night before, I started making the calls. I cancelled the Halls, and everything else, and luckily we got all our deposits back, since most of the cheques hadn't even been cashed yet.

A few more weeks passed and we continued talking about our wedding. I still hadn't come to terms with our already cancelled plans. I was so mad at the army. Then after a few more weeks I got another call, "Guess what, I don't qualify for the deployment, so I'm not going" Needless to say this did not make me any happier. Now I realised that we had cancelled everything for no reason. Not to mention the army had known for a long time that he couldn't go, they just hadn't bothered to tell him. There was no way to start planning for this summer again because it was too late. Everything was already booked. So now we started talking about when we could have our wedding.

Since his scheduled deployment had been set for the beginning of 2007, and it also was to be for a year we knew that if we wanted to get married before he left it would now have to be a late fall, early winter wedding. We started talking dates AGAIN, and when I went down for a military formal in April we talked to the Major he worked under. We mentioned the dates we had been looking into and I was told ONCE AGAIN, by both my fiancé and his major, go ahead and pick a date we don't for see any problems. New date December 16th 2006, exactly one year after we had gotten engaged. I thought it was fitting and rather cute. I start planning again. Reserve a Hall, DJ & Photographer. We send in our first payment to the hall on June 16th, a rather large sum to say the least.

Then I get another call. "I'm really sorry but I'm getting deployed, mid July." I was in disbelief. I kept saying, stop joking this isn't even close to being funny. But it was no joke. He was getting deployed and this time it was for sure. My first questions, How long? and Do I need to cancel the wedding again?

Luckily the deployment was only to be a short one, 4 months. Meaning if everything went the way it was supposed to, he'd be home in time (about a week before the wedding). This made me happy but at the same time very nervous. So with him overseas I have been Planning and making just about all of the decisions for our wedding which is still scheduled for December 16, 2006. I still worry that something is gonna happen that he won't make it home, although we have been promised by many higher ranking officers that they will make sure to get him home. I still get nervous and have my doubts. Every night I pray that God keeps him safe and gets him home in time for us to get married. At this point we aren't even going on a Honeymoon because we didn't have time to plan one before he left. We'll get one set up for sometime after he gets home, but who knows when that may be.