Something very wonderful, exciting and beautiful is brewing in my life - I'm engaged! I'm sure there are lots of questions like "how did it happen?", "how did he propose?" "did you get a ring?", so I thought I'd just head those all off. Here's the engagement story: For me I knew he was "the one" very early on but I needed to pass some milestones together before making it official. I needed him to meet my aunt and uncle (who are like second parents to me), I needed to meet his parents, and I needed some time to pass together so I knew it wasn't just a new thing, but everyday love. Over the past few months we've passed all these important milestones and as the time keeps moving on we feel closer and closer together, we become more and more connected and I can't imagine spending my days without him. He's my everyday bread and butter.
We've done some very fancy things together like going to top notch restaurants and 5 star resorts, we've done some very basic things together like renovate my apartment and sort through his tax receipts(fun, I know), and we've taken long trips together and endured everyday hardships with work stress and other little life tensions. And through it all we were growing together, and I wouldn't have wanted it any other way.
I wasn't surprised when he proposed. He'd given me some hints that he was ready to get married. He had even asked me casually a few times if I wanted to get married...he would just slip it into conversations with things like "when do you think you'd like to get married?" and "where do you want to get married?". One time we were skipping rocks on the lake and he asked me point blank "will you marry me?" but I didn't take it that seriously. We had only been dating six months and I wasn't at that point yet so I answered "in the future, yes". In total he asked me three times before I accepted his proposal! It's a good thing he's persistent! The last time he asked me I knew there was something different. We had been together for ten months, and I'd met his family and he'd met some of mine. A good amount of time passed so I knew it wasn't just a fun new thing. We'd even traveled together and spent every minute together for ten days straight and not made each other crazy. Quite the opposite actually, we had a lovely time together and became the very best of friends. So after all these events I realized this was my man. He is sweet, kind, caring, responsible, hardworking, funny and is all around lovely. After asking me two times to get married I couldn't resist his third proposal. We were at Langdon Hall having a very romantic last minute getaway. We had spent a wonderful day and evening together and just relaxed and did romantic things, like sitting in front of the pond watching the fish swim by while holding hands, or napping on the grass together underneath a tree with a light breeze blowing on us. It was just perfect. We woke up the next day and were chatting in bed. After a few minutes of chatting away he looked over at me and asked "Will you marry me?", and without a blink I said "Yes!" It was a wonderful moment. Even though it was 9am we opened some celebration wine.
Since it wasn't a planned event he didn't have a ring or anything. But he'd done his research. He'd read online that it's very important to get a ring that you know your lady wants, instead of what you THINK she wants. So he'd been collecting information along the way to figure out what I'd like. But he wasn't totally confident. So, instead of proposing with a ring, he decided that he'd let me pick out my own ring after we were engaged. And that's exactly what we did. We went to the jewelery store and had a custom ring made based on an earring that I liked. It took about 6 weeks to get the ring, and I didn't want to tell anyone I was engaged until I had my ring. I knew the first question that every girl was going to ask me would be "What does your ring look like?" I wanted to have a ring to show them. So last Tuesday my ring was finally ready. We went out to celebrate at a fancy restaurant we'd had our third date at. The anticipation was killing me. I was so excited to see it, but also didn't want to open it right away...I wanted to enjoy the excitement! So we had a glass of champagne and the lovely package from the jeweler made its way over to my side of the table. And then we had our appetizer and the package was right next to me. When we had our main course I'd opened the lovely letter my fiance had written to me. After our tea I finally opened the package. It's beautiful. My ring is exactly what I wanted. But an engagement ring isn't something that carries no weight. It's a huge deal! So instead of focusing on the ring I kept on telling my fiance how much I loved him and how excited I was about this step in our lives. He thought I wasn't that excited about the ring because I wasn't focusing on it, I was focusing on him and us.
Of course I'm super excited about the ring! It's gorgeous! But even now when I look at it I'm excited about the idea of sharing our lives together.