I know I told you all how Travis and I met (yup, the poop story), but I’ve never shared how we got engaged. Since tomorrow marks 7 years since he put my engagement ring on my finger, I figured now is a great time to share!
When Travis and I started dating, I pretty much knew he was it. You know, IT. Boom, I was done dating forever. A year and a half into our relationship, we went ring shopping. Yes, I insisted on being there because if the ring is going to be on my finger FOREVER, I’d better love it!
When we left the jewelry store, they said that my ring would be ready in a few weeks… so I waited patiently. Christmas came right at the end of four weeks of waiting, so I had a little extra flutter in my chest as I opened each box under the Christmas tree.
Nope, no ring.
I waited a couple more weeks.
Travis suggested we go on a fun trail ride with our mountain bikes. I put on some extra eyeliner and stopped breathing every time he dismounted his bike.
Nope, no ring.
I waited a couple more weeks.
We went out to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants and I almost peed myself when Travis got up to go to the bathroom.
Nope, no ring.
At this point I started getting kind of freaked out. I mean, what if he changed his mind and decided NOT to marry me?! The stress and doubts kept multiplying inside my brain until I finally burst out crying and sobbed/yelled something like “WHYYYY WON’T you MARRRRRRRY MEEEEEEE” at him one night.
His calm response was that I was being a crazy person and the ring still wasn’t ready to pick up yet.
Oh.
I waited a couple more weeks.
Still, no ring.
Suddenly, I had a premonition that the jewelry store lost the ring. Travis had put down a deposit… WHERE was the ring?! It had been FOREVER (aka around 8 weeks) and I was LOSING my MIND.
When I told Travis, he laughed at me and said that the jewelry store called and said it had arrived, but he hadn’t been able to go pick it up yet. He also mentioned that it was too bad they were closed for the weekend, so I should just stop worrying about it.
Oh.
Okay. That sounds reasonable.
The weekend went by like a normal old weekend, until Sunday. We were sitting on the couch, watching some TV and Travis kept staring at me.
It was weird.
Like, I’d be watching the television show and notice him staring and be like, “WHAT?!” and he’s say “um…nothing” and look away. This went on pretty much all day long. Other than me obviously looking so beautiful he couldn’t tear his eyes off me, everything was pretty normal.
At the end of the night, we went upstairs and I popped out my contacts, put on my pajamas and dove under the covers. Travis was moving a little slower, so I asked him to turn off the light… which he did.
But then, on his way into bed he tripped. “WHAT the…?” he said as he went down next to the bed. “Can you grab your flashlight, I think I stepped on something?!”
{Looking back, I have no idea why I had a flashlight next to my side of the bed}
I grabbed my flashlight and shined it at him.
He was kneeling on the floor beside the bed, with the ring in his hand.
He stumbled over his words as I gawked at him, “Will you… be Mrs. Dellinger?”
Oh my god!
It’s so sparkly!
Wait, did he ask that right….?
I don’t care. YES. YES. YES. YES!
I remember beaming at him while he smiled back at me. We literally could not stop smiling at each other. My heart was pumping SO hard. We snuggled together in the dark and stared at my sparkly ring by the light of the flashlight.
He confessed that he actually picked the ring up the previous week and was trying to figure out how to give it to me all day long. Which totally explains the weird staring. At one point the ring was hidden in a small ceramic cow in the kitchen. Then, he had it in his pocket and kept checking it over and over again.
He offered to re-propose at a restaurant if I wanted to do it out in public. I said there was no way in hell he was taking that ring back off my finger. Ever.
When I hear extravagant proposal stories, I do feel a little jealous sometimes. Especially the ones where there is singing and dancing, or a flash mob. I would LOVE to see Travis sing and dance around… But honestly, I wouldn’t change a thing about our proposal story. It was exactly “us” and well, it did the job!
Now it’s your turn, share your proposal story in the comments!
I love love! This is such a sweet story 🙂 Here is mine:
I went to Ben’s parents’ house after a boat day with friends and we cooked hot dogs and s’mores in a chiminea. I was in my pajamas. We were snuggled up outside and he started telling me how he never would have thought we’d end up together (we were friends for about 5 years before we started dating). Then, all of a sudden, he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. I remember saying “REALLY?? RIGHT NOW??? YES!!!” Aww, happy memory.
Dec 23, 2008 Jim asked me to marry him. Honestly, I thought he was going to pull out a plastic piece of junk from one of his DVD spools because he was rather fond of fake proposing for a while there. Then he told me that my ring was somewhere in the house and to go find it. It took longer than I care to admit… We aren’t great at romance, LOL. But we are good and married now. So there’s that :).
Awwww.
My ex proposed while we were watching tv at home (cheese but cute). He didn’t have a ring and said he wanted me to be able to pick something out with him. He had talked to my mom and asked what style she thought I would like before because he had asked my Dad’s permission and everything then one day came home with this ring that he couldn’t help but buy because he thought it was PERFECT. It was horrid and totally not my style and was this yellow gold/diamond/ruby combination (I’m actually allergic to yellow gold so shows how much he paid attention). Indication #1 that our relationship wasn’t going to work should have been that damn ring.
Oh! I love love stories! I love your proposal Jules!
Heres mine.
I was 19 (yes, young!) We had been together since the tender age of 16. It was Christmas eve and his dad had big parties every year. All day, it was the same old stuff, nothing out of the ordinary. Later at night, his older sister asked if he could take her to the ER because she had an awful abcess in her tooth and she was in a lot of pain. So out we trecked around 11pm. The whole while she kept saying how sorry she was for “ruining our night” I thought it was strange since Christmas was basically over, and of course we wouldn’t mind taking her to the ER.
After we got back, we decided it was time to exchange gifts. I gave him his and then I told him go get mine! He said he had to go get it because it was too big. I went to go pull him off his couch and he immedietly dropped to his knees and pulled out a ring from his pocket. Best Christmas ever! We were engaged for 5 1/2 years before we got married (bought a house the following summer after we got engaged) and I’m happy to say that this year we will be married for 8 years (and together for 16!)
Awe, your story is so cute!
We were relaxing on a weeknight, making dinner and getting ready to watch Survivor. Dave saw a squirrel and forgot the steak on the bbq so it was burned to a very tough briquette and I had made panzanella salad which came out wonderful of course. We ate our dinner sitting on the couch with the show on and started talking about our day when he paused it and pretty much said, “I’ve never wanted to do this before.” And then he got down on one knee and simply said, “Will you marry me?” No speech and no ring.
I often tell people that it is terribly romantic that he couldn’t wait to plan something grand but shortly after he popped the question, he told me that he had always thought he’d bury a cooler with champagne at the beach and do a big romantic surprise. I tried telling him he still could surprise me when the ring arrived but lucky for him it came in the day before we left town to spend Thanksgiving with his family.
So that’s our story, nothing big or fancy either but still totally “us.”
We had been dating about a year and had had a number of conversations about getting married and had even gone ring shopping together. We discussed getting officially engaged before we moved in together…which was a hard date as his lease was up. So I knew it was coming up, just not when. We had a beach vacation planned with his family, but he assured me he would not do it then in front of his family. BIG FAT LIAR. We were taking family photos on the beach…at sunset…they wanted to get photos of each of the couples walking away from the camera, so off he and I went. They said they got it and I turned around to go back and he grabbed me so I turned to look at him and he was on one knee. I was so shocked that I said “You said you weren’t going to do this on vacation!” He laughed, asked again and I said yes. Kind of cheesy, but its mine. Oh, and just to let you know its not all fairytale like, 5 minutes later he tried to throw me into the ocean. Ahh, love.
Sorry this is kind of long…
So Valentine’s Day is my favorite holiday and two years ago he was working from 3 PM to midnight, so we figured there was no way to get to do anything really special – we decided instead that we would just exchange gifts after he got home after work on the 13th (so technically it was the weeee hours of the 14th.
I’m pretty awesome at gifts – even though Keith is hard to shop for(if there’s something he wants, he’ll get it himself), but I had an awesome idea – I decided I was going to make a “booze bouquet” – a collection of mini liquor bottles made up to look like flowers. I even wrapped them in red cellophane and pink foil… It was awesome.
I figured “yes, I’m totally going to win at present-giving!” – I mean, how can you top a basket of alcohol….
So, when Keith got home from work, I was super excited to give him his gift. I had him close his eyes as I pulled it out of the closet where I’d hid it… He was totally psyched! I explained what it was and started to unwrap the bottles to show him how they were all different.
Instead, he told me to put it away, that he wanted to give me MY present. I tried to say that we could just do my present later, but he didn’t want to wait and made me sit down on the couch.
He got down on one knee, pulled out a ring and just simply said “will you marry me?”
My first response was “Shut up! Seriously?” followed by “YES!”
I was super surprised – he didn’t tell anyone that he was going to propose.