MAID OF HONOR – Krisztina Pap

Krisztina is the bride’s closest friend outside of family. Crystal met Krisztina while working at RadioShack in Northgate Mall in Edmonton. Crystal worked with Krisztina’s fiancee Doug and Krisztina worked next door at Future Shop. Crystal lived with Doug and Krisztina for a year while taking Photography at NAIT, and the two have been friends ever since. Krisztina still lives in Edmonton with Doug and their daughter Zoey.

BEST MAN: Dustin Bugera

Dustin is Rickie’s best friend or as they like to say “heterosexual life partner”. Rickie and Dustin met while working Slickline at Lonkar services and although Rickie thought Dustin was a bit weird at first, now they are inseparable and Rickie KNOWS just how weird Dustin is. Dustin lives in Sylvan Lake with his wife Kayleigh and daughter Mackynlee.

BRIDESMAID: Melina Robinson and GROOMSMAN: Garry Robinson

Melina is Rickie’s sister and she and Garry met Crystal about a week after Crystal and Rickie’s first date. When the bride and groom are not holed up gaming, they can most often be found hanging out with the Robinsons. Melina and Garry live south of Red Deer with their kids Katelyn, Ashley and William.

BRIDESMAID: Carolyn Chalmers

Carolyn is Crystal’s younger sister. These two fought a lot when they were younger, but as always happens after siblings are grown up, they are pretty good friends now! Carolyn also lived with Rickie and Crystal for two and a half years in their house in Blackfalds and stayed till a couple of months after Zane joined the family (she hosted the baby shower). Carolyn now lives in Edmonton with their brother Carl.

BRIDESMAID: Leanne Harris

Leanne is a younger cousin of Crystal’s on her mother’s side of the family. For the early years Leanne lived just down the road within walking distance of Crystal, until the Chalmers family moved out to Gull Lake. They used to enjoy activities like horseback riding in the summer and riding sleds behind the snowmobile in the winter. Leanne now lives in Rimbey with her husband Dave and daughters Abigail and Emilia.

GROOMSMAN: Allan Ask

Allan is Rickie’s cousin on his mother’s side of the family. Allan and Rickie are very close to the same age and were inseparable growing up. Although they live very close together they now hardly see each other anymore… something that will hopefully change in the near future! Allan lives in Blackfalds with his wife Jolene and kids Braden and Kaylee.

GROOMSMAN: Reuben Calliou

Reuben is Rickie’s older brother. The two shared a room for a lot of years growing up, and are close friends now. Reuben lives in Lacombe with his wife Monique and kids Noah and Jaiden.

FLOWER GIRL: Ashley Robinson and RING BEARER: Zane Calliou 

(ring bearer was assisted by Katelyn Robinson)

Ashley and Katelyn are Melina and Garry’s kids, Rickie’s nieces and soon-to-be Crystal’s nieces too! Zane is Rickie and Crystal’s son and Katelyn helped him out with his ring-bearer “duties” since he was too small to do it alone.

• All four of our parents, for their loving support and for putting up with us!
• Barb and Greg Chalmers for help setting up the hall and tearing down the next day. Barb also hemmed an insane number of table runners and helped Crystal with many other things in preparation for the wedding day, and Greg took over and handled the entire bar, including liquor license and finding bartenders!
• Jim and Jan Calliou for hosting a great breakfast the morning after the wedding, and Jan for contributing a lot of baking for the midnight lunch.
• Vi Steiger and Margaret Steiger (grandmother and aunt of the bride) for handling the entire midnight lunch including coffee, juice, meat, cheese and buns, and snacks as a wedding gift to us.
• Jolene Ask for taking over where she saw a void. She became known by all of our family and vendors for taking care of all the little details that needed overseeing on the wedding day. I will never forget walking out of the ceremony and Jolene handing us each a glass of water that we didn’t even know we needed! So much of the stress of our day simply evaporated because of her and we didn’t even ask for her help.
• Carolyn Chalmers (sister of the bride) for planning my stagette, helping with invitations and other wedding tasks, and assisting with set up and tear down of the hall.
• Carl Chalmers (brother of the bride) for paying for a limousine for the stagette!
• Doug Kirchhof for pitching in last minute and helping find some important missing items, even though he was already busy taking care of his daughter!
• Reuben Calliou for doing an incredible job as our Master of Ceremonies and for his steady supply of humor while performing that duty.
• The wedding party for their supportiveness and attentiveness all day, and for their patience with the bride as photography wore on all afternoon! Especially Katelyn and Ashley Robinson for performing their parts in the ceremony flawlessly and for their incredible patience.
• The participants in our ceremony: Jan Calliou and Barb Chalmers as candle lighters, Jolene Ask and Penny Crozman as readers, Jessica Bryan as our soloist, and our minister Paul Vallee for performing a beautiful ceremony.
• Our DJ, Chris Lamontagne, for doing our ceremony music and for pitching in where he didn’t have to and helping set up for the reception.
• Our caterer Linda Hagermann for cooking an amazing meal, providing excellent head table service, and for not charging us for all the guests who replied yes and didn’t show!
• Our bartenders for their efficiency and skill behind the bar, their friendliness to every guest, and their vigilance in making sure we had no liquor-related issues.
• Our photographers for near-perfect video coverage (which we have seen) and for the photos (which we haven’t seen yet), for their creativity and great attitude, and for putting up with my pickiness as the photography was the most important part of the day for me.
• Kevin and Cyndie See for the beautiful tiered cake which was created as a gift to us.

By the time we’d been together two years, I’d made a complete turnaround. I knew I wanted to marry him and we were already discussing marriage and children on a regular basis. I was in a HUGE rush to get married and have kids, but he still hadn’t proposed!

Over the end of our second year and the first part of our third, I began to push and pester about getting engaged. Rickie always said that of course, he wanted to marry me… but no proposal seemed to be forthcoming. My over-analytical personality kicked in and I constantly worried about why we weren’t engaged yet. Was it me? Were there things we didn’t agree upon that he was waiting to resolve? Why hadn’t he asked?

Finally one night, I broke down and asked him what was holding him back from proposing. I was newly pregnant by then so the conversation was laden with tears and hormones and I’m sure all he wanted to do was run for his life! But we talked and it turned out that he hadn’t proposed because he had been worrying about how to find money for a ring. I promptly told him that I wanted a proposal, an engagement, and a marriage… but I did NOT need an expensive ring.

With the concerns about the diamond put aside, I began to push for a proposal with renewed hope. I realize now that I should have just waited patiently and that it wouldn’t take him long… but I think he enjoyed baiting me and listening to me trying to figure out why, with financial concerns removed from the picture, he STILL hadn’t proposed.

Around the beginning of December 2010, one of my best friends called me from Edmonton asking if we could come and visit her on the 8th. Her brother was in the province, she said, and had to fly home the next day. I wasn’t sure I’d ever even met him, but she insisted that I had and that she wanted us to come up and spend some time with them while he was visiting. I agreed and went to “convince” Rickie, who put up his usual fuss about going anywhere far from home, especially during a vacation where we had planned to stay home (we took that vacation to play the new World of Warcraft expansion pack). Finally he grudgingly agreed to go.

On December 8th, we prepared for our evening in Edmonton. I packed a small bag with a change of clothes for each of us, just in case the weather changed and we had to stay the night. Krisz asked us to meet them at West Edmonton Mall in the afternoon and so we headed off to Edmonton after lunch.

On reaching the south end of Edmonton, I called Krisz and left a voicemail asking where exactly we should meet them so that I’d know where to park. As we waited for her to call us back, we got talking and Rickie somehow steered the conversation around to the Fantasyland Hotel. To this day I cannot imagine how he did that without me suspecting something, especially when he wanted to know whether there was an outside entrance or the Hotel was inside the mall. Apparently he was just curious… about something that I should know he wouldn’t care a lick about normally!

When we got close to the Mall he asked where the entrance was. I had been describing it to him – the tall glass and fancy chandelier and valet parking, and he played curious and said since Krisz hadn’t called us back, we had time to drive by it so he could “see what it looks like”. Still suspecting nothing, I gave him directions right to the front door of the hotel, only to be horrified and embarrassed as he drove right up to the sidewalk. I quickly told him that “we can’t drive up here, they’ll think we’re staying here!” and he calmly replied “Well that’s okay, since we are”. He actually had to go so far as to tell me that we were NOT meeting Doug and Krisztina before I finally clued in that the entire thing was a masterfully orchestrated set-up. He had even packed a suitcase with my makeup, hair straightener, and extra clothes and somehow gotten it into the car without me knowing.

We checked in and went up to the Roman Theme Room where I’ve always wanted to stay. Once in the room, we set down the bag (and the unexpected suitcase Rickie had packed) and Rickie went to the window and threw open all the curtains, commenting on the “decent view”.

When I was standing at the window completely distracted by the view of the mall and city, he got out a tiny box and got down on one knee beside me. I didn’t even see him in my peripheral vision and he had to say my name to get me to turn and give him my attention. When I did, he opened the box and asked “Will you do me the honor of being my wife?” Needless to say, the answer was a positive one… although I was so surprised that I could barely spit out a “yes”! I hadn’t even gotten over the surprise theme room stay, and he was springing this on me!

Without giving me a chance to recover, Rickie went on to say “Well, you better get ready!” I couldn’t imagine what for… but he had booked us tickets at Jubilations Dinner Theater and brought along everything I needed to get dressed up for a fancy night out. We had a fantastic time… wonderful show, beautiful room, and (thank goodness) there were no more surprises after that!

A shot from our engagement session at Shady Lane Acres.

Our story begins back in 2005 when I first began working at Lonkar Services in Red Deer. I started out as an administrative assistant to the manager of the IT Department. I never thought I would stay in that department for as long as I did; during my time there, I applied for various internal openings (executive assistant positions, accounting positions, etc). I was never hired for any of the promotions I applied for, and stayed in my original position in IT through the next few years.

I now know that staying in the IT department was the best thing that could have happened to me. One day a guy from the downstairs shop came up to talk to my boss. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him before; honestly, I didn’t really know the names or faces of any of our shop or field staff. But this guy kept showing up; he would hang around our office and talk games with Jeff. Eventually a position opened up in our department and he applied for it. By this point, I knew him well enough that I wanted him to work upstairs with us. We had become friends and through him, I had also made a few friends outside the IT lab.

Rickie started his new IT Tech position in November of 2007, around the time I had just separated from my first marriage and was trying to save enough money to file for divorce. We became good friends and he was a daily lunch companion and a listening ear for everything I was going through. He never showed a drop of interest in me beyond friendship and someone to game with… now, I know that he was attracted to me then but refused to show that interest because it would not have been the proper timing. Months later, in March 2008, I was moved out and single and Rickie finally asked me out. I certainly wasn’t expecting it, but March 12 we had our first date and things began to take shape quickly from there!

By summer of 2008, the friends that had given me a place to stay during my separation told me I had to either start paying rent, or leave. Because my house had not yet sold, I was still paying half of all the bills there, so I had no money to pay for my own living expenses. Rickie offered me a place to stay and, although I was apprehensive about moving in with a new boyfriend within just months of our first date, I had no choice. I could not lose my share of my house, and moving back in with the ex was not an option. Rickie kept a roof over my head and food in my tummy right from the first months of our relationship and accepted the situation as if it was meant to be (which I guess it was).

Later in 2008, when my house had not yet sold, Rickie helped me to buy it so that I could move back home. Again I was terrified at the speed at which our relationship was moving (I was still waiting for my divorce judgement to be passed) but I had no choice; I needed to free up my own income to help out with bills and groceries. I didn’t like the idea of buying a house with someone I’d been with for less than a year, but Rickie moved ahead with the idea with nothing but confidence, and we moved into our new house at the end of November 2008, just over a year after our first meeting.

Through the entire three years we have been together Rickie has been the same strong, steady person that I first got to know. He always believes that everything will work out and although I am sure he is as stressed as myself at times, he has been a solid foundation that I know I can always depend on. He never fails to show his love for me and to do anything and everything he can to keep all our needs met.

Since buying the house we have added a lawn, deck and fence to the backyard and built two more bedrooms, a bathroom and a second living room. We also added the newest member of our little family, Zane Gregory, in April of 2011. Things have been financially difficult at times, but I truly believe we have everything we need in each other, and if I had the chance to relive the last three years I wouldn’t change a thing!