Weddingbee Blog

This is a long story, so bear with me.

One thing to know about Mr. Wizard and me is that we don’t really do the mushy thing. We also don’t really skirt around the edges of an issue, dropping hints until the other figures it out. (Well, sometimes I do that when I’m really mad and feel like acting forlorn about how NOBODY UNDERSTANDS MEEEE, but that’s neither here nor there.) If something needs to be said, we lay it out on the table, end of story.

Before I get to the proposal part, I have to rewind a bit. Mr. Wizard and I met when we were 19 years old, both starting our second years of college at transfer schools. The schools were about 90 minutes apart.

Image via Task

So even though Mr. Wizard came to see me almost every weekend, I still consider us to have been long distance. We only saw each other for less than 48 hours on weekends, and once every few weeks there would be a weekend where he wasn’t able to come see me due to homework, advisor meetings, finals, or programming competitions he was in. (‘Cause yes, he’s that big of a nerd.)

We did the long-distance thing for three years. We’ve been together for under four years at this point, which means that the vast majority of our relationship was long distance. And, hive, let me tell you: it sucked. A lot. Even though we saw each other a lot more often than most long-distance couples, we still missed out on the luxury of a “normal” relationship. So when our college graduations were on the horizon (his in May and mine in June), we were both chomping at the bit for the next step in the relationship.

We had already decided months previously that he would move in with me when he graduated. But I was ready for the next next step, too. I was 100% sure I wanted to marry him. So, avoiding the whole beating-around-the-bush game, one Saturday night when he was visiting me I broached the subject. We both laid our cards out and mutually decided that we wanted to get married, soon, and that we would go ring shopping together the weekend after he graduated.

From that moment on I was a woman possessed. I spent the next five or so weeks drooling over rings online every chance I could get, until finally Mr. Wizard graduated and the day came to ring shop in real life. I was so excited to finally have all this wedding stuff out in the open with him. It was one of the most fun days I can ever remember. I tried on so, so many beautiful, amazing rings and went home with a clearer idea of what I liked. By this time my own graduation was looming on the horizon, and I had it in my head that I wanted to be engaged and have my ring by then. (The two went hand-in-hand—call us old-fashioned, but neither of us wanted to call it official without me having a ring.) All of my family live out of town, and they were all coming in for my graduation. I so badly wanted to share the news with them in person instead of over the phone, and the timing seemed perfect.

A couple weeks later I had chosen the ring I wanted, and Mr. Wizard had ordered it. By this time it was two weeks until my graduation, so we were cutting it close. I stalked that USPS tracking number like nobody’s business, and after a week with no updates, I got worried. I contacted the seller, and he confirmed my worst fear: all the other packages that had gone out with ours had been received, so our package was most likely lost in the mail. He refunded our money, and that was that.

This is getting long, so I’ll pause here—stay tuned for Part II.

Did you go ring shopping together before getting engaged?