Engagement Story, Part 1

We’re engaged! Hooray! (Or, as everyone we know put it, it’s about time!) I’ve decided to take a minute to write down the whole story while the details are relatively fresh in my mind.  This is pretty much just for myself (and Jess, of course). :) But, I’m sure it will be fun to go back and read this later…especially on days when I want to strangle him. Kidding…sort of.  Some of these details I’ve learned post-engagement, but I’m going to attempt to keep things in chronological order.

Will actually took his first trip to a jewelry store to look at rings way back in February.  He didn’t really intend to buy one then, but it’s nice to know it’s been on his mind for awhile.  Coincidentally (or perhaps hilariously is the better descriptor here) his first trip to look at rings fell on none other than Valentine’s Day.  He didn’t realize that it was the 14^th until he was already walking into the store.  He later told me he felt pretty stupid, but he braved the V-Day sales rush anyway to get an idea of what he was looking for.

My baby nephew was born in May.  We drove back to Decatur in June to meet Liam, and following that trip, I had a full-blown meltdown on Will…in bed…in the dark…after waking him up to “talk”.  (I’m sure every male has had that happen to them by their lovely lady at least once.)  I loved holding a brand new baby and really felt for the first time in my life that I was totally ready to start a family.  I was freaking out worrying that Will wasn’t in the same place as me and wondering when and if we would ever get married, let alone have kids.  It wasn’t like we were newly dating- we had been together for nearly 5 years!  (Will was probably just rolling his eyes at me in the dark as he already knew he had plans in the works to ask me to marry him.  I can be a drama queen. But I felt pretty justified in my ranting at the time.)

Fast forward a few more months to our most recent Europe trip.  Will had warned me before we left that he was not going to propose, so I shouldn’t get my hopes up for an engagement.  So of course, I got my hopes up for an engagement.  I was pretty convinced that he was trying to reverse-psychology me into thinking he wasn’t going to propose so that he when he did, I would be extra surprised.  Well, the joke was on me. I distinctly remember the moment we walked into the hotel with the a-ma-zing view of the Matterhorn and our own private balcony. I thought to myself, “this is where he’s going to ask me! How romantic!” Well, afternoon turned to evening, which turned to night, which turned to the next morning and I did not become the future Mrs. Mason.  I even said to Will as we left that fantastic hotel, “you know, that would have been a great spot to get engaged.”

Sometime shortly after we returned home from Switzerland Will actually picked up the ring.  He had it hidden in plain sight at our place- in his sweater drawer under the bed.  I never once suspected, nor saw anything. That goes to show how often Will wears sweaters, or how often I put away his clothes- I'll let y'all be the judges on that one.

We had a trip to Vegas planned for 2 weeks after we got back from Europe to go to a Jimmy Buffett concert (Will’s birthday present to me from back in May).  Prior to leaving for Europe though, we failed to buy our flights out there.  So after lots of hemming and hawing, I told Will that we needed to cancel the trip. It was just far too expensive/pointless since we had just gotten back from a big trip, and the flights were ridiculously expensive that close to the trip.  Will grudgingly agreed to cancel the trip…and then I felt really bad because he wasn’t able to sell the concert tickets. So basically he wasted a lot of money on a present that I never got to use.  And here’s the real kicker- I later found out that he had planned to propose in Vegas on the bridge of the Venetian (which happens to be the precise place where he realized how much he cared about me 5+ years ago) (Queue “ahhhhs”- I’ll wait.) So basically, I thwarted my own engagement by being financially conservative.

In early November, we met my family for a long weekend in Savannah.  Will tried several times to get Dad alone so that he could ask him for permission to marry me.  That apparently proved to be a difficult task.  They never did get any time alone, so Will had to call him the following week and ask him over the phone. Dad was really excited to know that he knew something before anyone else in the family did, including Mom.  Will didn’t tell Dad when he was planning on proposing, though- Dad assumed it would be around Christmas.

Anywho, Will kept going on and on about how he needed to get out of town and how much he wanted to go back to Chicago.  We try to go to Chicago every year for a Bears game so I didn’t think that was too weird.  And even though I didn’t think we needed to take another weekend trip away, I felt guilty saying no since I had forced him to cancel the Vegas weekend. I tried to convince him to at least let us stay with friends in Chicago to keep costs down, but he insisted that we stay at the Four Seasons (where he used to work- he still gets hooked up with sweet deals there).  He used the excuse that staying there was an integral part of his Chicago experience because he spent so much timing working there and he still knows so many of the employees.  And he had already made reservations that were not cancellable.  So, he won.  I took the Friday before Thanksgiving off and off to Chicago we went. 

We spent the whole day on Friday wandering around our old neighborhood, eating at one of our favorite lunch spots- Cozy Noodles, having a couple drinks at our old stomping grounds, window shopping on Southport, stopping in to pick up a couple items at Strange Cargo, and walking by our old apartments.  It was so nice. Chicago, how I love you.  We were meeting up with some friends for dinner and drinks downtown that evening so we headed back to the hotel to get ready.  Just as we were getting ready to walk out the door, Will asked if I had seen his wallet… to which I replied no.  Then he asked me to look for his wallet in his inside jacket pocket (which, admittedly, I was annoyed by.  He often asks me to do stuff like that (grab his shoes, his coat, look for his keys or wallet on the counter, etc… as if I am sitting around twiddling my thumbs. I am trying to get ready, too, buddy!))  I bit my tongue, though, and reached into his pocket expecting to find a wallet there. Instead I half pulled out a ring box. And then I quickly tried to shove it back in his pocket, thinking I wasn’t supposed to find it. (He had often joked around that he was going to propose on a jumbotron at a sporting event…and we were going to the Bears game on Sunday) When he asked me if I found something in his pocket, I told him no! Then he asked if I was sure, and as I turned around to look at him, he was on his knee. :)

And then I started jumping up and down and doing that weird half-laughing/half-crying thing. And I kept asking if he was being for real and if he was serious, and then proceeded to repeatedly ask him, “Are you going to ask me? Are you going to ask me? Are you going to ask me?” until he had to tell me to be quiet because he had something important to ask me. And in typical Will fashion, while on one knee, instead of asking me to marry him, he asked, “Are you ready to leave?” Then I think I hit him.  Thankfully, he then popped the real question, and of course I said yes.  It was a wonderful, surreal moment.  I couldn’t stop crying/laughing/smiling/kissing Will.   I love that he surprised me in the way that he did and that he kept it very true to our relationship- we were joking the whole time.

The only kicker is that the ring didn’t fit! Will had sized the ring by putting it on his pinky finger.  I keep an old ring in my car that he always plays with on his pinky, so he assumed that was the proper ring size for me.  Unfortunately, the ring was a size too small, so I didn’t get to wear it that weekend. Talk about torture!! Finally engaged and not even able to wear the ring for proof.

Stay tuned for part 2: how we told our families….