Proposal Story

The FI currently lives in Virginia and I live on Long Island. We've been long distance for most of our relationship but we make it work. Here's our proposal story.

I flew down to Virginia Friday night for the weekend. Jason picked me up and we had some dinner out but nothing special. Came home and Jason wanted to watch the Princess Bride. (Which in hindsight should have been a huge give away since he doesn't often volunteer to watch movies he'd rather play a game or go out and do something.) But I love the Princess Bride, in fact I can recite it word for word (I'm not proud), so it's not like I was going to say no to watching it.

He started the movie and said he needed to re-wrap his knee (he has a softball injury so this wasn't really odd). The copy of the movie he had though was awful, the sound was a good 3-seconds off and I was about to go find Jason and refuse to continue watching it but I figured I'd just wait for him to get back.

So cue to me, sitting in the living room watching the beginning of the movie well into the part where the kid is asking his grandpa if "This is a kissing book?", and somewhere along the scene this photo of us popped up (->). We took it in Canada when we were there on Spring Break junior year. It's probably one of the only photos we have of the two of us on the day we got together (3/11/06).

At first I thought that he had been streaming the movie from his computer and his screen saver had turned on but then the song "Say Hey" started playing and that's kind of our song I guess. The first time I came down to Virginia to visit after Jason moved here we were stuck in traffic from Norfolk to Newport News (big shocker!) and the song came on the radio and we started singing it to each other. This turned into us txting lyrics to each other every once in awhile and it just developed from there.

Anyway...this photo montage started up of us throughout the years and he popped out of the bedroom wearing a suit and singing along a little to the song and that's when I knew I was done for. After we finished watching the little photo show he took a knee and asked me to marry him.

It was adorable. I'm still laughing (giddily) about it.

So those of you who are wondering, no I didn't cry. I was too busy laughing. But for those of you who know me really really really well, you'll know that when I'm excited or terrified I laugh. (It's kind of amusing to sit next to me on a roller coaster, I spend the whole time giggling like a school girl.) 

The ring is perfect (ArtCarved Kayla) and has Nanny's diamond in it which Jason secretly got from Mom and Dad back in February! Apparently the weekend of his grandfather's funeral, after we drove to my house and we sent his three cousins off on the train, I had to get to work (gotta love that second job!) and Jason and I said goodbye so he could start back down to VA he didn't actually go anywhere!

The sneaky little devil drove off at the same time and then doubled back after I was on my way to the store so he could ask my parent's permission. According to Jason my Dad had Nanny's ring in his pocket because he "thought he might be asking for it". My Dad is almost as sneaky as Jason is!

A little additional backstory here: My grandmother's engagement ring was split between my mother and my aunt. My mom got the diamond and my aunt got the setting. My aunt has been proudly wearing the setting for years but my mother was waiting to reset the diamond until this year. In fact my mom has been really excited about getting that diamond into a new setting since her engagement ring has a chip in it and although I can't see the damage it bothers her and she doesn't wear it.

When my sister got engaged Mom thought I was so upset that Julibean (three years my younger) got engaged before I did. She knew that Jason and I were waiting till we were both financially stable enough which could be surmised as we were waiting for Jason to have a full time job instead of a contract position that could expire at any time.

So cue to my mother and my grandmother worried that I was so upset that Julibean and Chris got engaged first. In reality, I don't take much personally. I was super happy for my sister, and Chris makes her happy and to me that's all that's important. If she is happy I am happy and I don't care if she got engaged first. But since my mother is someone who takes a lot personally, she thought I was upset.

Mom and Nanny both agreed (at the same time allegedly) that I should get Nanny's diamond so it was one less thing we had to worry about. I knew exactly how much this diamond meant to my mother. She was literally waiting for years until she lost some weight and got healthy again with skinny little fingers to get the diamond set into a new ring, so I knew it was sort of a prize at the end for her. The fact that she still wanted me to have it just makes me want to cry. And the fact that Poppy bought this diamond for Nanny is also really important to me given how close we were. He spent his entire GI Bill on Nanny's ring after the War. So special.