The Proposal

After two and a half long years of dating Ben finally proposed. It's funny because we, meaning everyone, always hassle him because we all figured it would take a good 80 years of dating before he got the nerve to do it! He is so goal oriented and wants to get his doctorate and get a good job and had the belief that he had to achieve all of this before he could even consider getting married. This has obviously been very frustrating but I have waited patiently, only bringing up getting engaged...very rarely...or not so rarely, but whatever!

So Ben requested time off from work to come down to talk to my step dad and to spend time with my family since he never gets to see them. I had secretly hoped that he would propose while he was here but I didn't want to keep my hopes up because I knew that he had his own little plan of how it would happen. We had arranged a lot of things for the weekend, which I will post about, and I made sure to plan dates that had proposal potential, just to make it easier for him :) He had already talked to Brother Shoemaker and at my birthday carne asada with my family he spoke to my step dad and got his approval. He also already had the approval of my whole family, so really, there was no way anyone would oppose!

Pre-proposal (he made faces in all the post-proposal ones!)

We went on a date to Tempe Town Lake that night and rented a pedal boat so we could enjoy the lights and that gorgeous bridge! We talked our usual mushy talk and I saw him reach into his pocket and all I could think was 'Omg, is he going to propose? Stay cool, don't freak out!' But, he didn't pull anything out of his pocket so I figured he just needed to adjust his wallet (which he doesn't keep in his left pocket, so I didn't actually think that's what hew as adjusting.) After a few minutes he started his little mushy speech about why he loves me and why I am amazing. Normally this would tip me off but he does this frequently so there was the chance that this speech wasn't leading to anything. But then he asked me if I saw the train off in the distance, which I couldn't, so he told me to keep looking. I saw him reach into his pocket and I saw that he was struggling to get the ring out so I played along and kept my head turned. After about a minute he finally got the box out of his pocket (the box was huge so it got stuck!) and he asked me to be his wife. Of course I said yes! He tried to put the ring on my finger but my fingers were so swollen from the heat that I had to do it myself. I couldn't see the ring because it was dark on the lake so I had to wait til we got off the boat to actually look at it. It looked nothing like the rings I had picked out but it was gorgeous and I am in love with it. It has features that I didn't think I would like but I don't think he could have picked a more perfect ring! I am so excited to finally be engaged to the love of my life and to start planning our future together.

My new favorite piece of jewelery!