Best Day of My Life!

December 18, 1996 Bing asked and I said YES!

On this day, we usually try to celebrate, but given that today is a Monday, we will probably celebrate the day with a La Croix and some Christmas music with 2/4 kids.

If you want to hear the story, then read along 🙂

We first met at Butch McGuires, May 18, 1996, exactly six months before our engagement. I had just been at a black tie event with a group of gals and we decided to have one last drink at Butch’s.

An hour into our drink, Bing turned up at Butch’s with a bunch of friends who were all attending a bachelor party for his cousin, Michael. Since Bing was the best man, he was arranging all the adventures and luckily enough, Butch’s was in his plan.

We chatted that night and it turned out that girls in MY group knew guys in HIS group, so we weren’t TOTAL strangers, but close enough.

At the end of that night, I told Bing my number was “in the book”, which it was! He ended up calling me at 8:00 on that Sunday and asked me to go out for dessert. I was laying in bed watching TV with a mask on my face BUT that didn’t stop me from throwing on clothes and walking down the block to meet him. He had changed his flight, so I think he knew there might be something.

During that “first date”, we shared a giant piece of chocolate cake and chatted for about an hour. During that time, I thought he said his name was Bing Hollingsworth…Hollingsworth – yes. I thought that was just about the cutest name I had ever heard. Come to find out from someone else that his last name was Howenstein. That was kinda funny and we still laugh about it to this day. 🙂

I think he came back to Chicago the next two weekends to see “his friends” – and I guess me :). That did get me an invitation to the Michael’s wedding which was taking place in Harbor Springs, MI.

That would mean I’d be staying at his parent’s home, which was kinda scary because I barely knew Bing! I took a chance….boy did I take a chance! He has four sisters….LOL….

Bing arranged for me to drive the six hour journey with his cousin, Will in his Chrysler Sirrus LXI. Will is a man of few words, so I figured I better do the talking or it would be a LOOOOONG ride. Bing loves to tell the story that I probably learned more about Will in those six hours than Bing had ever learned in his 26 (at the time) years of life. Ha. I remember it like it was yesterday.

The weekend was AMAZING. Bing’s family was SO welcoming and this….I gotta say….was a first for them. Bing had never brought a date for a weekend up north. I’m sure we were all kinda nervous.

Needless to say, we hit it off and spent lots of time traveling between Chicago and Los Angeles where Bing was living trying to “make it” in Hollywood. I have such VIVID memories of those weekend dates in LA going to dinner, hiking under the ONLY cloud in Southern California (inside joke) and listening to Grace Jones sing, “La Vie en Rose” as loud as we could play it.

I would say that having a long-distance relationship with NO cellphones and NO social media was kinda cool. You really get to know the person without all the noise. However, we had both just gotten email, so that was a whole new world. I think we just spent a lot of time talking on the phone, honestly.

SO, WHY AM I TELLING YOU ALL OF THIS??

Because the outfit I wore on that night we met in May 1996 STILL SITS IN MY CLOSET!……and this is a fashion blog, after all 🙂

I was working at Lifetime Television in Chicago and they had just given our team a Nicole Miller silk scarf that was really large. I wondered how or when I would ever wear it. Since it was so hot that May evening, I decided to make it into a halter top. The mistake was pairing it with long, black palazzo pants – fashion hot-weather faux pas. 🙂

But, I did manage a cool way to tie it and I actually re-created the look last week for my INSTAGRAM ACCOUNT! All these years I kept it because there was no way I was getting rid of it when I wore it on the night we met – no way 🙂

Check out how I did it…..it’s kinda cool!Play

I wish I had dug through the basement to share photos of when we were just youngsters. They’re all in a box because of course, there were no digital photos available.

Six months to the day of our meeting, we were engaged. Unlike how young people do it today, we were alone, in my apartment, making dinner and listening to music (how Meghan Markle/Prince Harry of us 🙂 ).

Bing had asked permission from my dad in the baggage claim at the Palm Springs airport. (coat and tie, of course). My parents had flown in to Palm Springs and Bing called the airline pretending to be my dad so he could find out their flight information.

He then jumped on a plane to see me for the weekend and the rest is history!

I ended up getting a transfer request from Lifetime to move the LA the week before, but we weren’t engaged, so my parents said I couldn’t go. Heaven forbid I should move out of the state to be with someone I didn’t know I was going to marry -ha!

Nine months and a day later, on September 19, 1997, we married at Sts. Faith, Hope and Charity – the church I grew up attending in Winnetka, IL.

We had a HUGE wedding because we both come from very large families. (Fun fact, Bing has a really large extended family. My sister married a guy who is first cousins with a family that is second cousins with Bing’s family. No, we are not related…ha!) I was also the last girl in the family and my parents had not paid for a wedding in ten years. (Another fun fact, in 1987 ALL THREE of my sisters got married. My poor dad – LOL)

I headed for LA and we moved into our first house with the red door. Since then, all of our homes (except our Colorado house) have had a red door -it’s kinda our thing 🙂

We spent 15 years there together with my two brothers and their families close by. The day that Bing told me we were moving to Boulder, I cried because I couldn’t imagine picking up with four kids and moving away. Turns out, it was the best thing we could have done for our family.

We’re celebrating this special day today and also remembering the day we met in the backless scarf look! Maybe I should put it on 🙂

One last note….

We are the only couple in the family to carry on the Howenstein name. If you look at this picture, you’ll see Bing’s parents in a photo from Town & Country. They were GORGEOUS and Bing’s mom still is.

As Bing said in his dad’s euology, “I’ve (we’ve) got BIG SHOES TO FILL.” You have no idea 🙂