When I Said Yes

Over at Kelly's Korner, girls are sharing stories of their engagement. I decided to play along because I love our story.

I mentioned here that one of my favorite things is playing games. I grew up loving Monopoly (though I've never played with the houses/hotels), LIFE, Mall Madness (it came with the credit card you could swipe--I really enjoyed that part way too much), Clue Jr. and pretty much any other game I could get someone to play with me. Of all the games, LIFE remained at the top of the list. It's fun and easy, and it just doesn't matter how well you play, you may or may not win. And I could usually rope someone into playing it.

Fast forward 20 years. (Yikes, that makes me sound a little old!)

Husby is still the BF. We'd talked about getting married and bought a book with questions to ask your potential mate. We started strong and excited about really getting to know each other through these 101 questions; then answered about six of them. (And never finished the book since we decided we had actually talked about so many things already.) Then, I went to JUST LOOK at rings and FELL IN LOVE with MY RING. I called to see if I should go ahead and purchase it. For some reason, he wanted to be there when he bought an engagement ring for his future wife. And I just couldn't convince him otherwise.

A week later, he was in the big city to look at said ring. I left all of my information with the jeweler, but they lost my ring size. So he had to call to ask my ring size. And then I knew he was BUYING ME AN ENGAGEMENT RING. Of course, I figured I'd get it within a reasonable amount of time. I mean, which guy wants to hold onto a ring for that long? I can tell you. My future husband. He waited almost two months.

He wanted our engagement to be perfect and memorable. I just wanted to know I was going to get to marry him. (And I wanted to wear my ring desperately.) His plan was to propose on a hot air balloon ride. How romantic! (The ride was actually my birthday present from the year before, but had been postponed multiple times because of weather.) It was scheduled twice for the ring-giving, including on my birthday, but it didn't happen because wind conditions weren't perfect. Since my birthday plans were cancelled, I had to choose something else. We met a group of friends to meet at a local restaurant for dinner. Afterwards, I wanted to play a game with just the two of us: LIFE. That was the plan. Since dinner ran late, though, we didn't play the game. Two days later, he mentioned that he still owed me a game of LIFE. I was more than happy to play.

We set up the game board and started to play: spinning the wheel, buying auto insurance, graduating from college. And then I got married first. I made some comment about wondering who I would marry. Ha! Then he arrived at the STOP: GET MARRIED spot. I turned to the box top to grab him a little pink peg of a woman and asked, "Do you want a wife?" When I turned back around, he was on one knee with the ring box out. EEEEK! I was totally getting a proposal for marriage. Of course, I said yes after he did the asking. And then we stopped playing the game so that we could call and text the 3204817234 people that I'd promised to tell immediately.

It WAS the perfect and memorable proposal he wanted. And the proposal I discovered that I was so happy to wait for. He was so creative. I appreciate that so much!

Here are a couple of pics of our night:

And we finally got that balloon ride a couple of weeks later. I happen to think my ring looks absolutely amazing with a view of the city in the background.

Six months later, Husby and I were married. This week we celebrated our eight monthiversary. And a wonderful eight months it's been with him as my husband.