Weddingbee Blog

In order to properly tell our engagement story, I must start at the beginning. As I understand it, this is the best way to properly tell any story, except maybe a murder mystery, but this is nothing like that!

In February after our two first dates, we had been seeing each other pretty much every weekend since then. (Remember, we lived about an hour apart so weeknight visits after class/work were still rare at this point.) We were very much in like with each other, and I had a pretty strong feeling it might be something more than that.

Image via Dry Fly Photography / See? Cold.

Valentine’s Day was creeping up to us and, sadly, I think it fell in the middle of the week. I had class and then was off to my part-time job at the local bike shop. I believe we had plans for the weekend. When I arrived at the shop, their was a certain giddiness in the air. This seemed odd, as all the other employees were middle-aged men not prone to any giddiness and certainly not on Valentine’s Day. I was instructed to check out the counter. There was a large plastic bag with my name scrolled in marker on it. What could it be? I carefully removed several layers of bags (it gets VERY cold in South Dakota in February), and there at the core of this bag of bags was a potted gerbera daisy from Mr. Aardvark. It was the cutest thing ever! The pot was pretty cheesy. It had hearts and swirlies all over it. But that little daisy was so bright and sunny, and it put a perma-grin on my face for the rest of the day.

Now, this is the time to tell you that I am a plant killer. (Maybe it is like a murder mystery after all!) I had sent numerous “easy” and “hard to kill” plants to their brown, wilty graves. But this was the first time I had ever gotten a real flower from a boy (man), and I was bound and determined to keep that thing alive.

AND I DID! I took very careful care of it and there were a few close calls, but it survived four moves and almost two and a half years before the poor thing just couldn’t put out another leaf.

I could not bring myself to toss out the dead stalks and dried up dirt (overly sentimental, I know). Mr. A had assured me that a “miracle” may happen and it just might magically bloom again sometime very soon…

Around this same time, there had been lots of other hinting on his part (and perhaps some nagging on mine) about getting engaged. We were living together (more on that later) and had been talking pretty seriously about marriage for over a year. I was expecting a proposal. I was not expecting it on May 28th, 2011.

Mama Aardvark was in town (most of my immediate family lives in Michigan), and we were planning a mother-daughter spa day. As I mentioned before, Mr. A is quite shy, and I figured there was no way he was going to propose with my mom around.

Image via old.tranquilityny.com / Clearly not my mom and me, but we did do something like this.

The spa was amazing. We even got a little shopping in afterward. Real girl time at its best. Little did I know, Mr. Aardvark had taken the opportunity of us being out of the house all day to go pick up my ring. (He had ordered it two months ago not knowing it would take so long to come in!)

On our way home, Mr. A had asked me to call when we were almost there so he could “light the grill.” I rang him up and we chatted for a while. He said he was at the motorcycle dealership in town. (We had just gotten our licences awhile ago and currently only have one motorcycle.) He said he had some questions for my mom (who has had her old BMW for years and gone on many long trips with it). Fair enough! I handed her the phone. This is what I heard: “OH! Ummmm…yes. YES, WONDERFUL! OK…sure! All right. See you in a bit.” And then the phone was handed back to me. Unbeknownst to me, Salty had just asked my mother for her blessing. He had intended to wait and ask all of my parents in person, but with the ring in hand waiting was not an option.

His phone call to my father was a little less smooth. Between speakerphone, dying batteries, dropped calls, barking dogs, screaming kids (I have two half-siblings who are 9 and 11), and my dad having Mr. Aardvark programmed in his phone as me, it is amazing they were able to get in touch. But they did, and my dad now LOVES to tell the story of the sitcom-like ordeal Mr. Aardvark had to go through to get ahold of him and ask his blessing.

Stay tuned for the actual proposal!

Did your SO ask your parents for permission? A blessing? Both?