Shelley Shepard Gray's Blog, page 3

Join Shelley in Battle Creek, Michigan

Laurie, here.  Shelley will be speaking and signing books tomorrow evening (April 23rd) at 6:30pm at the Helen Warner Branch of Willard Library in Battle Creek, Michigan.  If you are in the area, she would love to see you! 

Helen Warner Branch of Willard Library

36 Minges Creek Place

Battle Creek, MI 49015

Bride Blog: Say Yes to the Dress!

This is Laurie, Shelley’s assistant. For the April edition of Shelley’s Bride Blog, we are saying yes to the dress! We asked several authors to share wedding dress stories with us. But first, I have been invited to tell you about my wedding dress.  My husband and I dated for seven years before we got engaged. I should probably be embarrassed to admit that I bought bridal magazines months before he proposed…but I’m not. I found my wedding dress in one of those magazines, and I took the picture with me when my mom and I finally went dress shopping. Though it was the first dress I tried on and I knew it was THE ONE, we visited two more stores.  I guess I had waited so long for that moment, I didn’t want it to be over so quickly. 

Did you know an Amish bride wears a blue dress, and she is buried in her wedding dress and apron when she dies?  I want to know the secret to fitting back into that dress after all those years!

Mary Ellis

Ahh, our wedding dresses…a topic that makes me laugh. I’m probably one of Shelley’s few readers who ordered her complete wedding day ensemble from the J.C. Penney catalog, final clearance edition. My beloved and I got engaged during our sophomore year of college. We both worked our way through, and with help from our parents, graduated with almost no debt to repay. When I told my mom we wanted to marry 6 days after graduation, she advised me to wait since both families were too broke for a wedding. We forged ahead and had a sweet reception in the church basement and then went camping for our honeymoon. Our “budget” marriage has now lasted 42 years in June. 

Amy Lillard

Though my wedding wasn’t formal and didn’t have an extensive guest list, like every other bride, I wanted the perfect dress. Oh, I had a vision of what I wanted. All cream-colored lace, ankle length, handkerchief skirt. Heart shaped bodice and flowing sleeves. But somehow this year, the designers weren’t cooperating with me. My dream dress was nowhere to be found. As romantic as my wedding was going to be, I was so disappointed that my perfect dress seemed to not exist in 1990. And considering that we decided to set a date in December and that date was the following March…well, I didn’t have a great deal of time to find the prefect dress. In fact, I couldn’t find any dress that I liked. So I did the next best thing. I wore skorts. For those of you who aren’t familiar with skorts, they were shorts with wide legs. Wide enough that if you were wearing them and standing still, it appeared that you were wearing a skirt. I know that you find it extremely out of character for me to do something so bizarre on such an important day, but I did. Shocking, huh? So here’s a picture of me in my new skort suit with the blue silk shell underneath (something blue) and my granny’s pearls (something old). I don’t recall what my something borrowed was but I did have a penny in my shoe. Romantic and beautiful, huh?

Jennifer Beckstrand

I hope it’s okay that I share more about my daughters’ weddings than my own. My children are so much more exciting than I am.

I think shopping for a dress is one of the funnest parts of planning a wedding. When my first daughter got engaged, we heard that it would take weeks to find a dress. In the first store we visited, she found her dream dress. It was the second dress she tried on, and it was on sale. A match made in heaven!

My second daughter is a sporty, no-frills kind of person, so shopping for a dress for her was relatively easy. We also found her dress at the first bridal store we went to, and I don’t think it needed a single alteration. Hooray!

My third daughter is a very thoughtful, deliberate person, which was evident in our wedding dress shopping experience. It took us many hours and several stores to find the perfect dress at a store aptly named “The Perfect Dress.” This dress had beautiful little feather-like pieces of fabric all over the skirt–beautiful but unique at the same time. The dress was strapless, so we spent nearly as much for alterations as we did for my first daughter’s entire dress. Ouch! But in the end, my daughter was thrilled with her dress, and the experience was worth all the work.

Beth Shriver

 

It was not uncommon for people to not have big weddings, or even small ones, at the time my grandparents got married. They were married on August 8, 1933 and it was the beginning of the depression and there wasn’t money for things like that either. They went to a town in south central Nebraska, I think it was Hay Center, and Grandpa’s sister Verna Reier and Grandma’s brother Ab went with them as witnesses and maybe chaperones. I believe they went there and back home the same day and that was their honeymoon. Grandma was about 7-8 years younger than Grandpa, but I don’t know their ages. I think Grandma must have been under 20 years old. I don’t know how they met but I remember Grandma telling about an early date when they went to the Dawson County Fair and Grandpa and she want on an “aeroplane” ride (her spelling). Her dress was ankle length, light blue, of a soft net fabric. Not the stiff kind. She sewed many of our clothes and she made her wedding dress.

Shelley Shepard Gray

The best part about my wedding dress is that my father went with me to pick it out. He actually planned my wedding, with an Emily Post Etiquette book in hand. Now it all seems kind of silly, but back then he was determined to do everything ‘just right.’ Anyway, I remember thinking that I wanted a lace gown, and every time I came out of the dressing room to show Dad my choice, he said he didn’t think it was the right one. Finally, when I walked out in the fifth or sixth dress, he beamed. So, that was the one. I discovered months later that he had a definite opinion about the dress because he had bought a pearl necklace for me to wear on my wedding day years before. He wanted the dress to complement the necklace!

Now, looking back on that day, I realize that both he and I had a pretty easy time choosing that dress. I only went to one store, and we only spent about two hours at the bridal boutique. I know of girlfriends who looked for weeks and weeks for the perfect dress. I still have both the dress and the necklace. My daughter has no interest in wearing her mother’s wedding gown, but she fully intends to wear that necklace! I know my father would have been very pleased about that.

We hope you check back with us next month when stories of bridesmaid dresses are revealed!

April’s Bride Blog will be posted tomorrow!

Shelley posted this picture on her Facebook page earlier this week.  This photo was taken at a group signing in Texas in 2012.  This fine group of ladies has been contributing wedding stories each month in celebration of Shelley’s 2015 series Amish Brides of Pinecraft.  Please check back tomorrow when many of these authors share stories in the April edition of the Bride Blog, “Say Yes to the Dress!”

 

 

 

Bride Blog: Going to the Chapel

Hello there! This is Laurie, Shelley’s assistant. This month we’ve invited some of your favorite Amish authors to share where their wedding ceremonies and receptions were held. First I’ll share my story.

 When Travis and I were planning our wedding, my parents had recently started attending St. Paul United Methodist Church in Cincinnati.  One Sunday, they invited us to join them for the service. We were immediately impressed by the brilliant stained glass windows that lined both sides of the sanctuary. Their new minister agreed to allow our former pastor to join him in officiating our ceremony.  After the wedding ceremony, we invited our guests to head across the river to continue our celebration at The Madison Event Center in northern Kentucky.

Mary Ellis

What a fun question!

Since my wedding was rather plain and simple in the Methodist Church, I try to give my characters an interesting wedding venue. In my latest romance, The Last Heiress, my happy couple gets married on a blockade-runner at the close of the Civil War by the ship’s captain. This model from the Wilmington Historical Society gives you an idea what that kind of ship looked like.

Kelly Irvin

We had a small wedding in my husband’s parents’ house. When you only have three months to put a wedding together, your options narrow. It was sweet of them to offer. They chose to give us the gift of a reception at a nearby party house because my mother-in-law, like my husband, is extraordinarily neat and she couldn’t bear the idea of food and wedding cake on her carpet. Knowing my newspaper reporter friends and Tim’s TV news reporter friends, as I did, I heartily concurred with the decision. I think the most memorable thing about the ceremony for me was that my sister—my only family member to attend and my maid of honor—was late. Very late. The minister had another ceremony to get to after ours and he was literally pacing the floor, wearing holes in the carpet. I was dressed and ready to go, flowers in my hair, guests waiting in the dining room, and no sister. When dear sister arrived with her hubby and toddler in tow she informed me that some day when I had children I would understand. And 27 years later, I do.

Jennifer Beckstrand

My third daughter wanted a unique place for her wedding reception so we reserved a secluded city park surrounded by lots of trees. Unfortunately, it was a very dry spring, and the city’s irrigation efforts were woefully ineffective. There were dry patches of grass everywhere, and I was excessively annoyed. I kept calling the city, asking them to please fix their sprinklers so that the grass would be a lovely green color instead of dried-out brown for my daughter’s wedding reception. In desperation, my children, husband, and I went to the park almost every day and used buckets to bail water from a small stream nearby to water the dry lawn by hand. The whole thing was a little ridiculous, but the lawn was presentably green by the day of the reception.

Amy Lillard

Weddings…Once again, I’m certain, that I am the most romantic of the bunch. See, I got married in the very glamorous courthouse in Sebastian County, Arkansas. We had to wait almost two hours for the JOP to come back from somewhere (it’s been too long and I can’t remember where he had gone), but by the time he got back to the office, I was ready to give it all up. But they (the other seven adults we had taken with us) managed to convince me that since I was already there, I needed to go ahead and marry him.

Oh, it wasn’t that I didn’t love him. Or that I didn’t want to get married, it was just so stressful! It didn’t help that my groom’s brother and his (at the time) girlfriend kept saying, “Do you take this man for the rest of your life?”

But somehow we made it through the ceremony, even though my groom almost backed out when he had to “plight thee my troth.” I secretly think he thought it might have something to do with raising farm animals. And we managed to say our vows to each other while my nephew cried, “Mommy, daddy, mommy, daddy,” the entire time. He was three then, and we’ve had a while to forgive him for the interruption.

Last week we celebrated our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. So despite the lack of a formal reception (we ate at Pizza Hut on the way home, then had champagne and cake once we were back at my mother-in-law’s) and missing a fancy venue with a hundred plus guest list, I think we may have done something right.

Shelley Shepard Gray

My husband Tom and I were married in downtown Houston in July! We had a formal evening wedding~everyone attending wore tuxedos, suits, and long gowns. After the service at the church, our wedding reception was on the second floor of the Houston Museum of Fine Art. It was all very glamorous and beautiful~and So Very Hot and Humid! All these years later, that’s what everyone still remembers-having to be very dressed up in Houston in the middle of summer! Our groomsmen still jokingly remind Tom and me that they didn’t think they were going to survive all the photos taken in front of the church.

We hope you check back with us next month when your favorite Amish authors tell us what they wore for their big day!

Deception on Sable Hill

DECEPTION ON SABLE HILL, Book 2 in my Chicago World’s Fair Mystery Series, goes on sale on April 7!

It’s available for pre-order now through all e-retailers. The e-book version is also on sale for under $5.00.

To celebrate the book’s release, we’re going to be offering all kinds of fun things, beginning with a fun ‘extra’ to everyone who has signed up for my website’s newsletter. If you haven’t signed up yet, please do! In about 10 ten days, we’ll be sending out a newsletter with the fun promotion!

Blessings!

Shelley

WISHING EVERYONE A HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!

Bride Blog: Engagements

This is Laurie, Shelley’s assistant.  In January, we started a Bride Blog to celebrate Shelley’s new four-book series Amish Brides of Pinecraft.  She has invited her Amish author friends to answer a wedding-related question each month, and their responses will be featured in this blog.  January was devoted to proposals.  This month we’ll be talking all about engagements! 

Travis and I dated for seven years before we got engaged in October of 2000, and we were married on October 20, 2001.  It’s important to note that we don’t celebrate “Hallmark Holidays.”  During our engagement, I quickly confirmed vendors for our big day.  It wasn’t until I began to search for a florist that I ran into some problems.  I was told by florist after florist that they weren’t willing to book our event because they would be too busy filling Sweetest Day orders.  SAY WHAT?  To my disbelief, I learned we had accidentally chosen to get married on Sweetest Day!  You’ve GOT to be kidding me!  I eventually found a florist who was willing to work with us, but I’ll save that story for another day.  How long was your engagement?  In what month did you get married?  Here’s what some of your favorite authors had to say:

Beth Shriver

June! Of course! 

My husband proposed on Christmas, and we were married on 6/11/88.

This is an Amish picture made by my relative.

 


Jennifer Beckstrand

I got engaged in January and was married in August, thirty-one years ago. When we got engaged, my husband’s parents were living in Somalia working for USAID. We flew there and lived with them for three months before the wedding–in very separate rooms, of course! Somalia with its huge and plentiful bugs, horrible drivers, and poverty-stricken populace, was quite a culture shock to a twenty-year-old girl who hadn’t ever ventured far from home. Somalia is a Moslem country, and I grew to love the people and understand their faith much better. They were generous, highly intelligent, and extremely gracious to us bright-eyed ex-pats. It was quite an engagement. I fell deeper in love with my fiancé, and my poor mom did a lot of the wedding planning on her own while I was away.

Mary Ellis

I got engaged in August on my parents’ wedding anniversary. When my boyfriend and I went out to dinner to help Mom and Dad celebrate, Ken decided to get romantic and popped the question at the end of the evening. We were engaged around 10 months and married six days after our college graduation in June. Happy Valentines Day everyone!

Amy Lillard

Again I get to absolutely flabbergast you with just how romantic my life is. See, I actually got my engagement ring the December after my husband and I started dating. Nothing was ever officially said about getting married. We just knew that one day we would. So after he slammed into the apartment and asked me to marry him in such a sweet and romantic way, we sat down to choose our wedding date.

At the time we were living in Borger, Texas. For those of you who don’t know it’s about an hour north of Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle. We knew that we wanted to get back to Oklahoma to get married. Well, he did. All of my family had moved back to the Deep South by this time and I didn’t have any kin in Oklahoma. But he wanted his mother to at least be involved. So we planned out the time when we could take a vacation and ‘go home’ to get married. That time happened to be March. And the first Monday (yes, I got married on a Monday, but that’s another romantic story for another day.) happened to be the 5th. Can you get any sweeter than that?

Technically, our engagement was from December to March so three months, unless you want to count from the time he gave me my ring until the time we got married which was three years.

This year we are creeping up on our official twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. I’ve already gotten my present: a brand new French door, freezer in the bottom refrigerator. See? I told you that you would be flabbergasted! (Though in truth, I love it more than diamonds! So romantic!)

Amy Clipston

Joe and I were engaged on July 8, 1997, and we were married on June 20, 1998.  I wanted to be a cliché June bride. We didn’t have much money but managed to save $25 per week toward our wedding. I bought a wedding planning journal, and I enjoyed making lists and writing notes in it. It was such a fun time! 

Vannetta Chapman

I was engaged for three months, and we were married in July!

 Kelly Irvin

Since Tim and I had only known each other three months when we got married, I guess you could call our engagement short and sweet.  We went right from the proposal to wedding planning!

Shelley Shepard Gray

Our engagement was eleven months and we were married in July, much to my dad’s dismay.  My father planned my whole wedding and had wanted me to be a June bride.  I’m still not exactly sure why he thought that was so important!  We were married in downtown Houston on July 8th.  Everyone still talks about how hot and humid it was!

Did you have a short or long engagement?  Did you plan your wedding or did you delegate the job to someone else?  We would love to hear your engagement stories.  Check back with us next month to read about wedding locations and venues!

Join me for a FB Chat on Wednesday!

JOIN ME ON WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21 AT 5:00 PM, EST FOR A CHAT ON MY FACEBOOK PAGE!

Tomorrow, I’ll be hosting a chat with several ladies from Harper Collins! If you can, please join us! For those of you who have never participated, I hope you will, they are very fun! I ask four general questions, one every 15 minutes. Everyone who leaves a comment will be entered in a drawing. At the end of the chat, someone from my publisher will draw four names from the comments, and we’ll send those winners prizes. 

Yep, it’s that easy! 

During the chat, you can also ask me questions. I really enjoy the chance to connect with readers and say hello! All you have to do to get to my FB page is click on the FB icon on my website homepage. 

Below is a photo of the Amish doll and Amish cookbook that will be one of tomorrow’s prizes. 

Hope to see you there!

Blessings,

shelley 

Introducing the Bride Blog

This is Laurie. I’ve been working as Shelley’s assistant for a little over a year now. We’re excited for this month’s release of The Promise of Palm Grove, the first book in Shelley’s four-book series called Amish Brides of Pinecraft.  To celebrate this series, she has invited her Amish author friends to answer a wedding-related question each month.  Their responses will be posted here.  January is devoted to proposals.  Shelley asked me to share my story with you as well.

My husband and I started dating the summer before our senior year of high school. We dated for eight years before we got engaged because I was working on my master’s degree, and he wanted me to finish school before we got married. While his proposal was sweet, it was expected…by everyone.

What was not expected was my response when he asked me to be his girlfriend.

One late summer evening when we were seventeen, Travis and I went to a park and rented a rowboat. We found a quiet spot on the lake to listen to music and enjoy some snacks he had packed. We were out on the water for quite some time. I was just about to ask if he’d like to return to the dock when he reached in his pocket and pulled out his class ring. I had been waiting for this moment for the better part of the summer. As I accepted the ring, I heard myself say, “Thank you so much. Can we go back now? I really have to go to the bathroom.” Shameful. When I think back to that moment, I simply cringe.

Shelley, Kelly Irvin, Mary Ellis, Amy Clipston, Amy Lillard, Jennifer Beckstrand, and Vannetta Chapman will share proposal stories with you here tomorrow! 

 

Bride Blog: Perfect Proposals

This is Laurie, and I’ve been working as Shelley’s assistant for just over a year now. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, we’re excited for this month’s release of The Promise of Palm Grove, the first book in Shelley’s four-book series called Amish Brides of Pinecraft. To celebrate this series, she has invited her Amish author friends to answer a wedding-related question each month. Their responses will be featured in this blog. January is devoted to proposals.  How did he pop the question?  Here are some proposal stories from some of your favorite Amish authors:

Kelly Irvin

Tim and I had only known each other for a very short while on this momentous occasion. I wrote for one of the local daily newspapers. Tim was a photographer for the El Paso CBS affiliate. We met on a Chamber of Commerce sponsored van trip to Albuquerque, NM, for the Mexican Food Cook-off the World. I’m serious. Afterwards, we dated a number of times in quick succession, beginning with his station Christmas party. In January, Tim invited me to his apartment for dinner. He wanted to cook for me, he said. I’d never seen his apartment before. I have to admit to being a little intimidated by how clean it was. I told myself it was because he knew I would be coming for dinner. I learned later, no, he’s a neat freak. He grilled Orange Roughy on a little charcoal grill nestled on the walkway outside his second story apartment. January in El Paso is cold. I’m sure the neighbors thought he was a little nuts. I remember him apologizing because so much of the fish fell through the grill. It didn’t matter. Afterwards, we snuggled on the couch and to my utter amazement, he popped the question. I was truly stunned at the suddenness of it all, so I asked if I could think about it. He said, sure, then he brought me a calendar and asked, “How about Valentine’s Day, February 14?” I found I couldn’t say no. We married on Feb. 14, 1988, three months after having met on that van. This year we celebrate our twenty-seventh wedding anniversary. Sometimes, it’s just right!

Mary Ellis

I write historical romance. I think people make a bigger deal out of “popping the question” than they did in the past. Here’s my hero’s proposal in my February release, The Last Heiress:

“I planned to build us a cabin with a dock, and then buy a fishing trawler. If you get a hankering to be a fisherman’s wife, you could still travel to Wilmington to order cotton for Dunn Mills.”

“I love fresh fish,” she murmured.

“Then what better reason would you need to marry me?”

Short and sweet, but it got the job done!

Amy Clipston

I donated a kidney through a swap on June 14, 2011, at Johns Hopkins Hospital. My husband, Joe, and I matched another couple and swapped kidneys with them. I donated a kidney to a woman, and in exchange, her husband gave a kidney to Joe.

My memoir, A Gift of Love, details our journey with Joe’s kidney disease and his two kidney transplants. Below is an excerpt from my memoir, detailing how Joe proposed to me:

That summer was a whirlwind and I ran on the adrenaline of new love. I could steal two hours of sleep and still function at my internship working on the Features Desk at the Virginian-Pilot newspaper in Norfolk. Joe and I spent our weekends driving on the
beach at Oregon Inlet in the Outer Banks, North Carolina … The evenings during the week we talked in the driveway or cruised around town.

My mother and my best friend at the time, however, didn’t agree with my excitement over my budding relationship with Joe. They both cautioned me not to get involved with him because he was on the rebound from his previous long-term relationship. But I was caught up in the all-consuming warmth and excitement of new love, and I ignored their warnings. Looking back, I’m so glad I didn’t take their advice. I may have been his rebound relationship when he kissed me and asked me to be his girlfriend on July 8, 1994, but I was the center of his world when he asked me to marry him on July 8, 1997.

When he proposed, he first gave me an ID bracelet engraved with my name on the front and the date on the back. He then said, “I have something else for you, but it’s not wrapped. How do you wrap a last name?” I nearly melted to the floor!

Amy Lillard

I’m a romance author. I would love to tell you how utterly romantic my marriage proposal was. How we got all dressed up and went to the fanciest restaurant we could find. Wined and dined with roses and diamonds. Or maybe a cute and quirky story where he picked me up for a picnic and proposed during the soap cycle in the drive-thru carwash.

But alas…

It went a little something more like this. I was in the back bedroom of my apartment ironing when he came in the front door. I heard him, but didn’t stop what I was doing. Then he hollered back, “Hey, Aim. You wanna get married?”

So. Romantic.

I know, right?

But I can’t complain—and I won’t. That was twenty-five years ago, and I have loved every minute.

(Okay, that’s not really true either, but I felt like I needed to say something romantic! LOL)

Still I wouldn’t change a thing.

Jennifer Beckstrand

Most of my Amish love stories end with a kiss and a proposal. I hope that doesn’t spoil my books for anyone, because romances are supposed to have happy endings, aren’t they? No surprise there.

Three of my daughters are married and each of their husbands proposed to them in unique ways. One son-in-law gave my daughter a patent to his heart so that no one else would ever own it but her. Another son-in-law took my daughter to the park where they had first met. A blanket was spread out on the ground with a bouquet of roses sitting on it. They sat on the blanket, and he recited Shakespeare’s sonnet #116 by memory.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken…

I personally think this is one of the most romantic things ever written. My daughter did too.

My other son-in-law flew out to Washington D.C. where my daughter was teaching school to propose to her. They walked along the river looking at romantic national monuments while my son-in-law worked up the courage to pop the question. He was so nervous that he couldn’t do it, even on the romantic bridge overlooking the Potomac. They finally went back to her apartment where he proposed to her in the stairwell. He’ll never live that down.

Vannetta Chapman

My husband proposed to me with an Easter egg!

That’s right. He wrote, “Will you marry me” on a tiny piece of paper, stuck it into a plastic Easter egg, and then waited for me to open it.

Three months later we were wed. And yes, I do still have that plastic egg.

Shelley Shepard Gray

My husband popped the question on my 22nd birthday. It’s kind of funny; both of my parents knew he was flying to Arizona to surprise me so no one called me on the morning of my birthday. By eleven am, I was really sad, so I went to my apartment complex’s pool. When I got back to my apartment, I found Tom in a suit (in Phoenix! In August!) standing next to my door looking extremely hot (not in a good way!) and extremely irritated. I guess I was supposed to be home at a certain time! Anyway, when I showed up, all icky after laying out by the pool for a couple of hours, he glared and practically shoved a ring at me. Then he said the words I’ll always remember: ‘Do you want to get married or what?” LOL! It definitely wasn’t how I imagined the proposal but it does always make me smile.

We invite you to share your story with us. How did he pop the question? Join us next month to hear about engagements.