The news hasn't come as a shocker to a lot of people (mainly my family and close friends), because we started talking about getting married a while ago, and we've been de facto engaged for quite some time now. We set a date several weeks ago, and we went to the jeweler's together to order our rings (my engagement ring and our wedding bands) last month. But it wasn't until last Saturday that we made it official.
Though the proposal wasn't at all unexpected - we'd picked up the rings, even trying them on, earlier in the day - G managed to surprise me with the how. When we met three summers ago, we drank (a lot of) sangria and listened to (a little) jazz at the Smithsonian's weekly summer series, Jazz in the Garden. In a sentimental nod to that evening, G recreated the scene by making sangria and acquiring an album of the same musician who had performed the night we met (Joshua Bayer). To the sangria and jazz, G added a dozen of my favorite red velvet cupcakes, special-ordered from our favorite local cupcakery, Red Velvet.
Then, with the song "Matchmaker Matchmaker" playing in the background, G proposed, right there in his/soon-to-be-our apartment dining nook, on bended knee. I said "absolutely," he slipped the beautiful ring on my finger, and we drank the rose champagne that had been Christmas-gifted to us by G's brother while we called our families.
The rest of the weekend was just as wonderful: we had dinner with my family the next evening. I loved sitting down at the dinner table with my parents, my sister, and my fiance on Valentine's Day. What made the evening especially sentimental were my dad's sheer joy and ebullience - not (entirely) induced by the scotch! Not long after my parents got married, my dad and his new father-in-law drank scotch together - Chivas Regal, to be precise - and my father really wanted to share the tradition with his new son-in-law-to-be. So at his request, G arrived at the family home with a bottle of Chivas in hand - and I with a sparkly ring on mine :o)
I have hours of built-in entertainment conveniently located on the ring finger of my left hand. Who knew I'd be so easily distracted by sparkly things?
