My boyfriend proposed with Star Wars Legos and the wedding is after graduation

Most of us aren’t ready to commit to McAllister’s or Chick-fil-A for lunch until the last second, let alone commit to someone for the rest of our lives.

But some Penn State students are tying the knot while the rest of us sit back and ride the wave of waking up in some rando’s twin bed/being #foreveralone.

And of course, planning a wedding is hard work. No matter where you’re from, how many people you invite or how much support you have – it gets stressful. Now add in a full course load and extracurricular activities and your head might spin.

This is the life of senior Education major, Amanda Bogetti, as she finishes up the final touches of planning her June wedding. When she isn’t student-teaching local middle school children or gaining her certificate in ESL, Amanda is coordinating with her fiancé, Stephen, to have the perfect day.

The Tab reached out to Amanda about the planning process and how different what it’s like to be about to get married while still in school.

How did you and your fiancé meet?

We met online, actually. Neither of us took the online dating scene very seriously, but had created accounts more as a joke and to keep us from thinking about our most recent breakups. He was the only guy on the site whose message I replied to. Like something out of a movie, we were only a half hour away from each other at our respective colleges and out hometowns were also a half hour apart. After messaging constantly for about a week, we finally decided to meet.

I was one of those people who had always scoffed at the thought of love at first sight, but there is no other way to describe our connection. I truly knew he was “the one” from the moment I laid eyes on him. The rest is history. We’ve since planned most of our wedding, bought our first house and are now just counting down the days until the big day!

How did he propose?

He proposed in a nerdy Star Wars fashion only he could pull off. He had travelled to Penn State from his graduate school in Ohio to visit for a weekend. Just as I was about to slide into the passenger seat of his car, he told me he had a surprise in his trunk.

He pulled out a massive Lego Star Wars ship (which I thought was the surprise). It took me pathetically long to ​realize what was going on. He opened to top of the ship to reveal little Lego Star Wars characters inside, got down on one knee, and that’s when I finally noticed the most beautiful ring in the tiny little hands of Darth Vader.

He gave a fairy tale-level speech about how the ship represented our relationship, our love being the force field around it, protecting us from outside forces trying to break in and destroy us. That moment was a thousand time better than I ever could have imagined it. I was blown away by how much thought he had put into it. I fell in love with him all over again.

If you actually Google “Lego Star Wars proposal,” a bunch of news articles pop up about our engagement. We went viral on the internet for a good week and a half. It was awesome.
How far are you and your fiancé into the planning process?

We’ve been engaged for a little over a year now, so most of the major planning is out of the way. We are so overwhelmingly excited to get married, and the wait for us to both graduate so we can tie the knot has been a little daunting. All we really have left to do is to finalize some small things like the menu and decorations, even though we still have six months to go.

Have you received criticism for being young and engaged?

I have indeed received criticism for being young and engaged, however I’ve learned to not let it phase me. I’ve always been more mature than people my age, so it doesn’t surprise me that others have trouble imagining themselves where I am in life.

While a significant amount of the criticism does come from people my age trying to save me from throwing away my young, wild and free days, I also get it from people older than myself who have a hard time believing that at 22, I will be mature enough to promise my life to another person.

How do you juggle being a student and planning a wedding?

Juggling being a student and planning a wedding is really hard sometimes. There are days when I have a really intense case of wedding fever and want to do nothing except plan, but I have to set that aside and get my work done. It also helps that my fiancé is so involved in the planning process. It has really been a 50/50 effort, taking a lot of responsibility of the planning off of my shoulders.

Is there anything you would change now you’re engaged?

I would not change a single thing about this process were I given the chance to do it all over again. There have been times where I’ve been frustrated to the point of tears with having to wait months upon months to marry the love of my life, with having to drive three hours to visit my fiancé at his university, and with having to spend a huge chunk of my free time working so that we can continue to save enough money to take this next step.

It’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, but despite all of that, it’s also been the happiest time of my life.