Weddingbee Blog

So, I had planned to propose to Fancee in the woods on Solstice. Every year on Solstice, we go for a walk (sans dog) through the woods near her old apartment; it’s a beautiful place, and one that has been really important in our relationship. I hadn’t gotten as far as what I would say or what grand gesture I would make, but I did know that we would go for our typical walk, I would ask her to marry me in this very important, very special place of *ours*, and then we would go home, where I was going to have some sort of fabulous dinner and special playlist playing.

us in our favorite woods

Doesn’t that sound lovely?

And then afterwards, we would, of course, leap for joy!

Yeah, that’s not how it happened.

To bring you up to speed: at this point she had bought my ring and had it in some top secret place in the apartment. She was waiting to ask me to marry her until some unspecified time, but definitely after we had gotten her ring as well. So, it was October, the weekend of Head of the Charles (big fancy rowing thing in Boston), and there was an antique show coming up in a town nearby, so we shelled out for tickets and planned to find her perfect ring there. Besides ring shopping, and going to HOCR where some friends were rowing and watching, we also had two parties to go to, one with Fancee’s group of friends and the other with a group of my friends. This is important later, of course.

For some reason, I really thought that we would find The Ring right away – it was there, we were there, it couldn’t be that hard. I think we bought a beautiful antique photograph of a bathing woman an hour and a half into our time there before we even found anything she liked. For the record, this picture is one of my favorite pieces of art in our apartment. (At the time, I was thinking something along the lines of, “We’re getting married! We’re real grownups! We need real art!”)

She tried on a couple of rings, even some that she kind of liked. We found one that she really liked, but it was only $400. I’m not saying that a $400 ring isn’t beautiful or meaningful or that you need to attach a dollar amount to your jewelry, but I was trying to make a grand gesture by spending a certain amount of money, and frankly, that was not enough (side note: I never thought I’d say something like that – but it was totally true. Thoughts? Similar experiences?).

And then she tried one on just for fun. It was very pretty, but it was definitely out of my price range (which we had discussed before either of us bought anything). So she tried it on and admired it and said that she wanted to find something similar; then she took it off and handed it back to the woman at the booth. We took two steps and then she giggled and jumped up and down.

That’s when I knew I had to buy it. And what’s an extra $x00 over the course of a lifetime, really? It’s negligible. Did I mentioned she had jumped up and down? So I bought it. Oh my god I bought my girlfriend an engagement ring. And art! Real art! OMG we’re real grownups.

We paid for our gorgeous photograph/piece of art and walked to the car. “So,” she said, “when are you planning to propose?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Today?” I laughed, because that was ridiculous. “Um, when were you planning to propose?” She shrugged, and then it hit me. “Were you going to propose in a couple of months? In the woods? Maybe right around Christmas, but a few days before?”

Yeah, it turns out we had exactly the same proposal plan. Are we made for each other, or what?

Tomorrow, the proposal itself! For now, a teaser/picture of us being adorable:

Us, after one of us (me, duh) asked the other one of us to marry her, and she said yes. We look pretty happy, no?