Engage-iversary Day

2006 - Just engaged!

Now that I've been blogging for a whole year, I have to be careful about repeating posts, especially on important days.  Today marks 6 years since John asked me to marry him.  I was thinking I should write our engagement story, but I already did that last year!  Since I had approximately 7 followers then, maybe it's okay to repeat a little bit.  Or perhaps I should tell "the rest of the story."

• I think it was in September when John first asked me to marry him.  It was a very casual conversation and I was not really surprised that he asked.  I was kind of surprised at the timing, since we had only been dating for a couple months. I think we both knew this was the real deal before we started dating, so I agreed right away.  I really wish I knew the exact date, because then I would have another excuse to celebrate each year. 
• Once we decided to get married, we starting thinking about when we should get married.  Summer of 2008 seemed like the responsible choice, since he would be done with school in May08.  Of course, we decided summer 2007 would be better, but late in the summer, to give us time to plan.  But early enough that we could go on our honeymoon before school started in August.  Looking at the calendar, our 1-year dating anniversary was a Saturday in late July.  Decision made.
• Working back from our decided wedding date, we figured we would need about 6 months to plan, so we should get engaged around Christmas.  
• I wanted John to talk to my dad before we got engaged, so we decided it would be good for him to come with me for Thanksgiving, meet my whole family, and have "the talk."  My dad is a pastor, so he is super busy around holidays all the time, so I let him know that he needed to carve out some time to talk to John.  I imagined them sitting at a coffee shop and chatting.  My dad took him on hospital visits, and they talked as they drove from hospital to hospital.  Welcome to the family!
• Since the whole proposal wasn't going to be a surprise, John asked me if I wanted him to pick out my ring by himself, or if I wanted to help.  I thought it would be fun to go together, so when we got back from Thanksgiving break, we started ring shopping.  The ring was going to be ready for pick up on Dec 8th, which was a Friday.  I worked until 5 or 6 that day, so we made a date for Saturday evening.  When John picked up the ring, he couldn't wait, so we moved our date to that night. 
• Legend says that some friends from John's dorm were trying to convince him to play video games that night, which he declined.  Allegedly, he had breakfast with those same friends the next morning and didn't mention anything about being engaged, but discussed video games in great detail.  They still make fun of him for this.  

Sometimes, I hear other proposal stories and think it would have been fun to be surprised with some huge romantic gesture, but I don't think I'm really the "huge romantic gesture" type of girl.  I mean, sometimes I hear other proposal stories and think "wow, that is so cheesy!"

I think our story is just perfect for us.