January means a lot of exciting things: we’ve all welcomed a new year, we’re all shiny and bright from recent holiday extravaganzas, and—if I know the wedding world the way I think I do—a whole bunch of people probably just got engaged. If the latter rings true (ha: see what I did there?), then you’re probably also getting a whole lot of mostly well-meaning advice (that you can probably ignore) and a few flat-out assumptions that completely miss the mark. We’re not talking about that today (but oh, we could)… today we’re keeping it fun.
As a photographer, engagement stories are some of my favorites—whether or not they include the traditional, down-on-one-knee-will-you-marry-me? scenario, if the two of you went ring shopping together weeks before one of you asked, whether it was a total surprise or something you saw coming, or if you’re both wearing rings because hey, you’re both engaged now. So since it’s that time of the year, we thought it would be fun for the recently engaged (and the not-so-recently, because why not?) to dish their tales—and I’ll go first.
There was no ring when my husband and I got engaged. In fact, there was little pomp and circumstance, though since we had only been dating for about three months, the element of surprise was most definitely present. It was January 2007, and we had flown out to Las Vegas to celebrate my husband’s twenty-first birthday with his ailing grandmother. She flew in from Hawaii with her daughters, and we met up with this wild and perfect group of women after they had been there a day or two. This was the first time I had met any of his Hawaiian family, and would prove to be the first and last time I would meet his much-loved grandmother.
The day my husband proposed was kind of tense, but the reason wasn’t discernible. He seemed distracted, focused on something that I couldn’t figure out. We’re not gamblers, but he was really hung up on the penny slots (I mean…) and seemed intent on winning. We were quietly nestled together when he started to spill.
It turns out he’d been trying to win money all day so he could get a ring, because you have to have a ring when you get engaged, right? (No: you don’t.) He went into great detail how concerned he was that I would want one, how he knew that even talking about getting married after three months was nuts, but that after seeing me with his grandmother he knew that this was it, it was real. He asked if I wanted to marry him, and I said yes.
And that was it, and for us, it’s the perfect story.
tell us all about how you got engaged—we want details! was it a total surprise or did you see it coming (and does it really matter either way)?
