Our Engagement Story

This was taken right before he proposed. Ring was in his hoodie pocket. See his sneaky little look on his face?

Betty has such fun ideas to blog about! Now she is asking us to share our engagement stories… I LOVE hearing about other’s romantic tales of how they got engaged. Here is mine!

Ryan and I started dating in October of 2006. We had met earlier that year in our speech class and had become very close friends. When we started dating we immediately talked about getting married and how many kids we wanted. It’s just something we knew would eventually happen. It was like we’d known our whole lives.

We wanted to wait until we had dated at least a year before we got engaged. We looked at rings a few times and talked about when we’d get married. My grandfather passed away during our one year anniversary so engagement was far from my mind.

In November I mentioned to Ryan how I wanted to lose weight before we got married and he snapped at me saying that he didn’t want to feel pressured into proposing. This was NOT like Ryan at all. I was shocked at his demeanor, but understood where he was coming from.

That episode started off a week of pure hell. I was in the middle of taking 20 credit hours and was taking an education class where I had to basically student teach for a week. I had to make a religion class Jeopardy game geared towards 4th graders and build a volcano. I had a couple tests to study for and I was behind on homework due to taking time off for my grandfather’s funeral. I was beyond stressed! To make matters worse, Ryan was acting very distant and not himself. I felt like I was losing him.

On Friday November 9, we decided to go to a movie after he got done working an afternoon shift at the bar. As we were driving out of town he asked me if I wanted to go to State Lake. He had driven by there when he was doing an internship with the sheriff’s office and thought I’d like to see the pretty fall colors. It made me happy that he thought of me like that, so I knew our relationship would be fine.

We got out there and I happened to have my camera so I started shooting pictures of the beautiful fall foliage. Ryan pointed out some fisherman across the lake and I noticed it was a pretty shot, so I snapped the picture. I turned around to see Ryan on one knee with a box in his hand with a ring in it. He was shaking and asked me to be his wife. I was in such shock that all I could say was, “OhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGodOhmyGod!” He had to ask me again before I finally got on my knees, looked him in his eyes and said, “Yes!”

He later told me that he was acting all weird that week because he didn’t want me to suspect anything. Everyone and their dog knew that Ryan was going to propose that night. I was completely and totally surprised- he did a good job! Sigh…. I just love my husband!

The shot I snapped as Ryan was behind me going down on one knee!

After I said YES!

My beautiful ring. It doesn't fit anymore... one of the reasons I'm losing weight!

Our favorite engagement photo!