>Engaged to be engaged… to be engaged.

>From the start of our relationship, Aaron and I always said that if we weren’t moving in the direction of marriage, then the relationship should end. Hence the title of this post.

The story of our engagement is pretty funny. He was in Master’s Commission in Urbana for the first three years I was at Bradley. The third year, 2007, in April, he came home on a surprise visit for my birthday (with flowers in hand, too!). Because I like to see how much I can get someone to reveal about the surprise, I half expected it.

During that weekend we talked about a date for our wedding, because we had been dating for almost four years at this point (at the time it was my goal to finish school first, and Aaron needed gainful employment). We talked about various dates, the soonest one being that coming winter.

We were on the phone after he had gone back to Champaign, and I got kind of antsy. (Ladies, don’t try this at home.) Like any girl would think, right?, I kind of assumed we were engaged since we were talking about a physical date on the calendar. Silly assumptions…

I don’t remember the exact conversation, but I do remember me telling him something to the effect of “I am not getting off this phone unless I know if we’re engaged or not.” And he asked me to marry him. I still cried, haha. No ring, no big build up of events.

Six weeks later I went to go pick him up from Urbana at the end of May. We bought my ring at a department store, on sale, with my credit card. When we got in the car, he still asked me again to marry him and put the ring on my finger.

Looking back, I shake my head in mere amusement at my impatience. Ladies, it is so important to let your man take the lead! It still makes for a funny story, just like how I dated his younger brother two years before we even got together… maybe another post for another day on that one.

Here’s a picture. Forgive my total lack of photography skills.

It’s a sapphire in the middle. I did not want a diamond, and honestly we couldn’t afford a ring at all, let alone a diamond. But I love it and I will never “upgrade”.

I just had my wedding ring sized this week. I was lucky and was able to wear it out of the store since I used to be a size 7. Now it’s a 5.75. We got the wedding band at Helzberg for about $90. Helzberg soldered them together for us. My ring came back to my today looking like new! It’d been dipped (white gold rubs off eventually) and the dents buffed out. Now I don’t have to worry about losing it this winter when my hands are freezing 100% of the time!

In studying the jeweler’s work, I was reminded of our funny engagement story. And technically, we just paid for my ring with paying off that last credit card. Interesting how things come full circle. So, two lessons come from this series of events. One, never charge a piece of jewelry. Dumb dumb dumb. Two, let your man lead!