I love hearing stories of how people met each other. If it wasn’t illegal, I would ask it in an interview.
Tell me, how did you meet your significant other?
It’s really a great icebreaker with people you’ve just met; something different from the norm. And people like to talk about where and how they met the loves of their lives. Shaun thinks it’s weird when I ask such a personal question to a complete stranger. I think it’s an easy way to make new friends.
I’ve told the story a million times, but I met Shaun in the fifth grade. We rode the same school bus. He was cute underneath his giant plastic glasses. We became life-long friends, but never officially dated until we were twenty-five-years old.
I also like to ask how people were proposed to.
Shaun proposed to me in the middle of our living room floor. It was a terrible proposal. He was very nervous. He didn’t even get down on one knee.
Meredith, will you…
Wait a minute. Are you proposing? You need to get down on one knee.
So he did.
But I knew the proposal was coming. My mom told me he’d asked my dad, months before, if he could marry me. He asked when I went to the bathroom, at an Outback Steakhouse. From that moment on, I showed him engagement rings, and I snooped around the condo (where we lived in at that time) until I found the ring.
I feel like girls cry tears of joy when a man pops the question, so I fake cried.
I know. I suck.
I find myself oddly jealous when I hear about women getting proposed to with grand gestures. I want a redo on that proposal. I ask for it all the time. Isn’t that weird?
So how did he pop the question? Was it well planned? Was it super romantic? Or do you also want a redo? Oh, and how did you meet?
{ 42 comments… read them below or add one }
I met a hot Air Force doctor who can fly planes on MySpace. True Story. Before MySpace was creepy and Facebook was The Thing. He was charming, sweet, kind, and treated me like a princess. I kept waiting to find something weird about him, like that he looked at midget porn or had mommy issues or whatever (he only SORTA has mommy issues). 10 months later, on my birthday, we went snowshoeing in the Colorado mountains. He had a cabin with a hot tub rented, and he built a fire (with only a few hours of failing at fire building, despite being a military hotshot who has taken survival courses out the wazoo). We had a great night, and he didn’t propose. I wasn’t really expecting him to, since we hadn’t even been together a year.
The next morning, he gave me another present of my breakfast cereal. We had once joked about how the best breakfast cereal would be nothing but Cap’n Crunch Oops! Berries (it’s the all crunch berries one that comes out for a few weeks a year), Lucky Charms marshmallows, and Fruity Pebbles. He brought out a box of Oops! Berries that had been edited to say “Cap’n Webber’s Oops! Awesome.” His last name is Webber.
Inside the box, there was a “prize” of a fake ring. I looked up like “what the fuck” and he was down on one knee with a beautiful platinum engagement ring and said “Will you? For reals?” When I accepted, he danced around the room and was all cute about it. We drove down the mountain toward Denver, and stopped at this adorable mountain inn for lunch. Inside, he had both of our families waiting, as well as my best friend. We had lunch together.
Turns out he’d taken days off of work to drive up and visit my brother (a Marine) to give him a book of Marine history and ask for my hand (my dad is dead). He also asked my mom and sister the night before we left, so they wouldn’t have time to spoil the surprise. And he sorted the cereal on his desk between patients, which is only kinda gross.
Anyway, he did a pretty damned good job.
That is an amazing story!
Well, we were supposed to go on a date in high school but his mom couldn’t drive us so he called a cab. My dad said no way to the cab thing & we never tried to go out again. Fast forward 20 years, we reconnect on Facebook in September & the following February we were planning on going on a weekend getaway to see the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, OH. I jokingly asked him if he was going to propose to me in a cab & his face fell. Not only did I ruin the surprise of a proposal, but HOW he was going to do it. I felt awful! So we went on our trip & had a fabulous time. I figured the proposal wasn’t happening that weekend since I ruined it, but after dinner & drinks at the Hard Rock Cafe, he got down on one knee & asked me to marry him! (PS, we finally took that long awaited cab ride from our hotel to the Hard Rock Cafe & the funny thing was, our hotel was attached to it & we could have walked, but no one bothered to tell us!)
We lived together and talked about marriage all the time. Finally he started to seriously look at rings and one day out of the blue called and said he bought one. Then he told me he picked it up. He showed it to all my friends and carried it on his person at all times because he knew I was looking for it. Anyway – two weeks later after stuffing ourselves on steak and lobster, I settled in to watch Spiderman II, he casually says “Hey can I ask you a question?” Without turning around I said “No”. Well after forcing me to turn around he started to tremble and quietly asked me what I was doing for the rest of my life. I could not believe it! WHen I saw the ring I was in shock. I made him ask again without the ring visible so I could really concentrate on saying yes instead of OMFG!!!!
Rob says if the ring sucks then you have to do a grand gesture, but when the diamond shines it does not matter where you ask the girl. He is right!
Mine asked my dad, and then took me for a walk. There is this place in Elora where I grew up, near the old mill (no, I’m serious, the Mill is now a hotel/restaurant) that overlooks these pretty waterfalls. In the middle of the waterfalls is a weird looking mini island called “the tooth of time” because it looks, you guessed it, like a big tooth sticking up. Google image it. Shawn walked me down there, we were holding hands and stuff and then we stopped to look at it. He got down on one knee and did the whole romantic proposal. I cried. Then, we got ice cream cones and went back to my house where he had sparkling wine and cheesecake waiting.
Yes, food and drink was a big part of my proposal…he knew me well, even back then.
Of course, the story of how we first, and then finally got together is way funnier. Now. Not so much back then.
Our engagement story is pretty typical. We went on a cruise, and he asked me on the deck after dinner on our first night on the ship. He did get down on one knee, and he asked my parents, which made me happy. Although, I found the receipt for the ring on our countertop. I guess he forgot that we lived together.
Our first date story is actually better.
We met on a blind date. My best girl friend from college was dating one of his best friends from high school. So, we went to a St. Louis Blues game over my Christmas break from college. I was HUNG OVER, because I went to one of those amazing underage welcome back from college parties the night before. I actually woke up at like 5:00 in the evening to get ready for our big date. While we were on our date, the people we were with, got in a huge fight. I think that is what forced us to talk to eachother.
After sexy times one time.
Yup.
Uh. Got you beat, mine was DURING sexy time. I had a rule to never take men seriously while getting it on so he had to stop my uhhhh…. performance…. so I would pay attention. Yeah. a redo would be nice.
I want a redo too Meredith. Could you please suggest it to my husband. Just tell him you have a great idea and then make him do it.
You’d be my BBBFFEAF!
I met my husband in high school when my best friend fell in love with him. Yeah. Awkward. I wrote about it on my blog: http://www.untypicallyjia.com/2010/02/how-we-met-first-sight.html – They ended up dating, and I ended up dating his best friend for a while until (when my bff broke it off with hubs) he stole me away.
Matt proposed when we were eighteen, in a park near our houses at midnight in a puddle of mud (he didn’t look down before kneeling) and moments before he proposed, I thought he was breaking up with me. Wrote about that one too: http://www.untypicallyjia.com/2012/02/untypically-in-love-one-little-puddle.html
My husband and I met working a summer camp program for inner city children. We met when I busted out an office and read him the riot act for letting his group walk over him, and disturbing me in the office. At the end of summer, when he moved to Columbus to go to OSU, we started talking on the phone weekly, then a few times a week, then daily, and gradually, we decided to start dating, long distance, and see what happened. After dating for 8 years, he tricked me into going back to the Catholic Club, where me met, and proposed with our old coworkers, in the room where we met. It was perfect.
I would really like a redo. I like you, knew it was coming. I didn’t know when but I knew it. I would like to be completely surprised which kinda happened this year on your 10 year anniversary when my husband ‘proposed’ again with an anniversary band.
I had a non-proposal. We’d been together for a couple years and he knew that I had been proposed to twice before and turned them down, so he was just a little leery about asking me. Instead, he had just gotten back from a fishing trip and was telling me about it. He does a “fishing, fishing, fishing, and then I told Mike it was about time to make an honest woman out of you, fishing, fishing, fishing” thing. I was in such shock and wasn’t sure that I’d heard what I’d heard that I didn’t respond and he just kept on going with his story! I didn’t know what to do so I didn’t do anything. About a week later he does a similar thing, but that time I stopped him and asked if he was serious, because I would love to marry him and he needed to stop bringing it up if he didn’t want to.
He did, and we did on the 3rd anniversary of our first kiss (we were friends for a couple years before we actually got together). I think it makes a great story and wouldn’t change it for anything.
Mine might top yours: he asked me to scratch his back and the ring box was there. Then he turned around and proposed. Hee hee. Funny now – not so much then.
Okay, maybe not very romantic, but I like it and it made me laugh!
Completely unromantic, but completely “us”. We had dated and lived together for a bajillion years, and we were in our pool 3 summers ago, no wait 4 summers ago now, and my proposal went something like:
Him: So, we should get married.
Me: Well I am sure we will eventually
Him: No, I mean like now, we should get married
Me: Seriously? So does this mean I can tell people we are engaged
Him: Yeah, I mean really, and yes you can tell people
Me: (squinting at him) Can I tell my Mom?
Him: (laughing at me) Yes you can tell your mom, and my mom, and maybe our dad’s too while you are at it.
Then I kissed him, and we spent the next several months finding a perfect ring that I loved and fit our budget, and then my parents spent too much money on a really amazing fun party! :0)
So – I wouldn’t ask for a do-over, because it was perfectly us; but it certainly wasn’t Brides magazine worthy
That being said, we are working on 11 years together total so I wouldn’t change much about us anyway!
He didn’t really, but I can’t blame him because we were so young. One night we were talking and I just said as natural as anything, “well one day when we’re married…” He stopped and looked at me and said, “yeah, let’s do that. We need to get married.” As soon as I was legal and out of school we did.
Am I the only guy who reads this blog? I feel like I’m the one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-others.
I too had a shitty half-assed proposal…. and I insisted on a re-do 5 years later! AND GOT IT! Hahaha.
I recommend getting a do-over. You deserve it.
No need for a redo, you said yes so it was a good enough presentation!
Chin up, Shaun. I ended up proposing in a parking lot. In the rain. In Cleveland.
The good news is we can see where we were engaged on Google Street View.
I want a redo, but we’ve been married for 30 years so I suppose it stuck. We were driving along and he turned and looked at me and said “how about September?” I had to ask what that meant and he said “get married in September”. I said no…I prefer May…and that’s what we did. We had known each other only 6 months and everyone we knew thought we were crazy and wouldn’t last. So far so good.
I totally want a redo. My hubs proposed in the living room too. On the couch. Naked. Yup. With no ring.
I got my ring about 6 weeks later on Valentine’s Day – in a bar. So romantic! (not)
Also, we met at work. Awesome. lol
Im not engaged, but I thought he was proposing. We were on the beach at midnight, being all mushy and sweet on his birthday. We started walking to our motel room and he grabbed my hand, turned me to face him and started digging in his pockets. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and I started breathing again.
We met at work. He was our security guard and after talking for months and knowing all the life goals we have in common I simply said, “If you want my number you can have it.” He said, “ok write it down.” And I asked him if we were back in 6th grade.
We met in college our sophmore year – he and a friend of his were prank calling my roommate and it caused a lot of drama (I had an ex that was stalking me at the time and we thought it was him). He was brought down by security and the police were called. Nice person I am, I told the police I didn’t want to press charges. He was put on probation for the rest of his time at college though. Every time I saw him he’d apologize. I finally told him I wouldn’t talk to him if he didn’t stop saying he was sorry. We became friends over the next year. Dated for our junior and senior year, moved out to CA and moved back after a year. He asked me to marry him and literally threw up. And then I broke up with him for 6 years (I obviously wasn’t ready). He moved back to CA and we stayed in touch. During the 6th year, he came back to town for a visit. We got together, he moved back officially and 2 months later he proposed. He proposed in his mother’s living room. I had no idea it was coming – he was babbling for an hour about stupid stuff, telling me some really odd story. Finally he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. Of course I said yes! We’ve been married for 9 years, have 3 daughters and are truly happy.
We met out of college, we lived next door to each other. Our mutual neighbor had to introduce us.
My husband took me on a wine tour. I got, wasted. Wasted, as in, “honey, I think the floor is moving” wasted. Then I really wanted a burger from a local bar. He made an excuse to go into this hotel across the street to use the mens room. I was peeved because you know, bars have bathrooms. Anyway, I waited for him and he comes out and says, “we should check in”. I started to realize that something was going to happen, so I started sobering up. We walked out to the pier before dinner, I knew it was going to happen. It was pitch black, nothing. We went inside and sat by the fire, I knew it was going to happen. A woman came into the hotel and was yelling about something, nothing. We went in and ate dinner. The waiter rushed us through dessert, nothing. By now, I was figuring I was wrong about the proposal. (my poor husband was beyond frustrated, but trying not to show it.) We went back to our room, I was sitting on the bed taking off my shoes and he got down on one knee and proposed. I was crying, took the ring and never said yes. After 7 years of marriage, he is still wondering what my answer is
The proposal was average, but the meeting was a bit more fun. It was my birthday and some girlfriends and I went “back home” to the bar where we spent our formative years. Much hilarity ensued and at one point I found myself dancing on a table. I looked down and this cute guy was there to help me down after my solo. I’ve kept him ever since.
His story: He was at a bar with a buddy. Buddy got tired and wanted to head home so they left. As he was leaving his buddy’s house something told him to go back to the bar even though it was way out of his way home. As he walked into the bar the “girl of his dreams” was standing on a table above everyone else. He walked up to pretty girl, helped her down and kept her ever since.
We are celebrating our third wedding anniversary tomorrow. Yay!!
My husbands proposal was also in the living room but he did get on one knee. The whole thing was lame and unplanned. I complain to this day. It’s our running joke though because when we see great proposals on TV we joke about it. I’m hoping he gets a clue and re-proposes someday.
Another living room proposal here….
I knew the proposal was coming, I just had no idea when. We had just been home to my parents’ for Thanksgiving and he’d asked my parents then.
We both knew from the beginning that this was something special, but I had no clue he was going to propose 2 1/2 months after our first date.
We spent Thursday with my family, then drove that evening to his parents’ house (5 hours from my parents’ house), spent Friday with his family, then drove 3 hours for a college football game. After the game, we drove 3 hours back to where we lived. By the time we arrived back in home were were exhausted. We spent Saturday night at his apartment.
All weekend he’d been asking if we could put up the Christmas tree when we got back to my apartment. In fact, he’d been talking about this for nearly two weeks. And for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why a man was so excited about Christmas decorations.
So Sunday morning we go back to my apartment early in the morning, still in our pjs. As soon as we get in the door he starts dragging out the tree. At this point, I was slightly annoyed. I wanted to unpack and relax for a few minutes before dragging out Christmas decorations.
After hurriedly unpacking we started putting up the tree, only to discover we really needed a couple of extra strands of lights. However, he convinced me the slightly under-lit tree would be fine. So we start putting on the oranments, and he disappears. At this point, I’m slightly confused, but I just continue decorating the tree.
He comes back out of the bedroom a few minutes later and stands in front of me. He starts to tell me how much he loves me, and I interrupt to say I love you too. At this point, he says he’s not finished and he pulls out an oranment (which has the ring on it), and gets down on one knee and asks me to marry him.
Funny thing is, about a week before this, I told one of my coworkers that “I’ve never seen anyone so excited about putting up a tree. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was going to propose then.” Didn’t think anything about it. A week before the proposal, I mentioned I’d told someone this to him. I didn’t know it at the time, but he freaked out thinking I’d guessed his secret plan and it wasn’t going to be a suprise.”
I thought it was crazy since we hadn’t been dating that long. Even though we knew we wanted to get married, I thought a proposal was a long way away. So yeah, when he proposed 10 weeks after our first date, I was still suprised.
We got married a year after our first date, and we just celebrated our 1st wedding anniversary.
I loved reading your story and these comments. The comments reminded me of that part of the movie, “When Harry Met Sally”.
My husband hired me as a waitress while I was a sophomore in college. We worked together for about a week and he invited me to join everyone for a bowling night out. When I met everyone at the restaurant he offered to drive me and I was clueless and told him that I knew where the bowling alley was and I could drive myself. While I was in the bathroom at the bowling alley another waitress said to me that he really liked me. I said, “no I think he’s just being nice because I don’t really know anyone else here”. She convinced me that he really did LIKE me and I told her I LIKED him too. (Felt like I was in grade school). Our first kiss was in a bowling alley, can’t get more romantic than that!
He asked me to marry him standing at the kitchen sink in my apartment a few months later. Then we shopped for the ring a few months after that. I would love a do-over! But it’s been 21 years so I’m not holding my breath.
I asked him. I texted him “Do you want to marry me on Feb. 24?” (it was like Feb. 1st) and he sent back a simple “yes.”
We didn’t even have rings at our courthouse wedding, we got $40 ring tattoos instead.
He did a beautiful “proposal” almost a year later with a ring and everything but I still like our real story.
We met walking through a field in our neighborhood the summer after 6th grade. We didn’t go to the same school, but I have no idea how we never met up until this point.
I didn’t like him, but he says that he knew, from that day on, that I was the girl he was going to marry.
We started dating at 17 and have been together ever since.
The proposal was a little forced. Some friends of ours were getting married and I was upset, to say the least. I told him that he had a year to decide if he was going to marry me and about 1-2 weeks later he told me to start planning a wedding.
We choose our rings together. When they came in, he did get down on one knee and ask me to marry him. So I had a small traditional moment. I still don’t think I want a do-over, though. I’m cool with how things went down.
duh – why was I upset? I kinda skimmed over that part – lol!
Because we had been together for 10 years at this point and had a 6 year old child. I couldn’t shake the ‘we should be the ones getting married’ feeling.
Soooo, we met at a funeral…. it’s a long story. I’ll tell you if we ever meet in person.
After 10 years of dating (yes we were old too) and not living together, I had decided he was never going to ask me to marry him. That was okay with me because we were still having fun and going on great vacations.
I had propsed to him and he had laughed it off years earlier. When I was feel fiesty I would pester him with “say yes, you know you want to”.
He asked if I wanted to spend New Year’s Eve in Boston. Of course I said yes, who wouldn’t First Night and all.
We drove into the city, had drinks in our hotel room, packed to go cups under the guise of “coffee”. We are sneeky that way, and walked the snowy streets of Boston. When we reached the Common, he picked a bench and asked if I wanted to sit and watch the fireworks. As the fireworks began I turned my back to him to get a better view. I heard him whisper “honey”. My response was “yeah” back still turned. He said “honey” again really softly. This time I turned to face him. He was in the snow down on one knee with the ring box open. Then he said “I’m saying yes, how about you?”
I remember thinking holy crap this is it, this is what I’ve been waiting for, but what came out was “stop it”.
We just celebrated our 1 year wedding anniversary, and life has never been sweeter.
This entry has been actual therapy for me. I’d like a refund from my therapist. Seriously, I thought I was the ONLY ONE who didn’t have a fabulous proposal! In fact, I didn’t even get proposed to. He was in the Navy and we’d been together for 4 years. He was being sent across the country and I basically told him I wasn’t going unless we were married. From then on we just kind of started planning our wedding. We picked a ring together and I didn’t get it until the week before the wedding. We ‘eloped’, meaning he didn’t want a big wedding and my parents were divorcing and couldn’t be in the same room. It sucked.
The marriage has been great, though, so there’s that! 10 years and counting. Thanks for the therapy!
So not a married human, but my first-boyfriend asking-out story is suitably epic and humorous.
He and my best friend and I went to a movie (my mother would’ve ruptured EVERYTHING if we’d gone to a movie alone together) and then went to the beach park across the street. My best friend veered off to talk to friends he could see in the skating rink, so me and the soon-to-be-boyfriend walked down to the water and sat on the rocks looking out to sea. We talked shyly as the sun started to set, and the tide began to some in, crashing at the rocks at our feet. Just as the stars began to punctuate the sunset’s glow, he asked me if he’d go out with me. It was a perfect girl’s-first-love scenario, very touching.
The humorous part? Apparently my gay best friend had choreographed and coached him through the whole thing. Thank you, GBF. Every young girl should be lucky enough to have a white-knight generator.
Slightly off topic…why is it illegal to ask someone in an interview how they met their significant other?
My poor husband planned a very sweet proposal, but it turned into a comedy of errors.
We went camping with his family near where he grew up. One day he asked if I would like to head into town for some ice cream. We hopped into his truck and got the ice cream, then he headed back to the woods, taking the scenic route around the lake. I really, really had to pee, but he was driving over bumpy roads for what seemed like forever, showing me all the scenic views of the lake. Several times I told him I needed to stop, but he drove by all the restrooms. Looking back, I know that he was nervous and looking for the perfect spot.
Finally, he pulled over in a meadow and I thought well, I’ll just go behind a tree. But as I headed off to the woods, I noticed a problem. We had our two dogs with us, and they had jumped out of the truck and were eating something… a hunter had butchered a deer and left its legs in the bushes. Each dog had an entire deer leg in its mouth. I yelled “No! Bad dogs!” while sprinting to the nearest tree. My boyfriend called out behind me “Don’t go in those woods, there are hunters over there and you don’t want them to mistake you for a deer.” The he asked me to come over so he could show me something. Seriously?
When I turned around he was on one knee, holding a ring. Next to a waterfall. I was stunned for a moment, and while I wanted to say yes, all I could hear was the waterfall. I meant to say yes, but I said nothing because I was trying so hard not to wet myself. Damned waterfall. After a minute, I said yes and let him put on the ring. Then ran back to the woods where I squatted and speed-peed, hunters or not. I was not peeing my pants in front of my fiance.
We met online. I paid $30 for one month of Yahoo Personals and met the love of my life. So that turned out well.
The proposal was highly orchestrated, fantastic, and totally him! He had just returned from a month-long teaching gig in China, and he said he wanted to throw a big party when he returned and show a slideshow of pictures from his trip. He’s hilarious, so I knew it would be entertaining, but I was still a little surprised when all of our close friends and our moms showed up (even people from out of town!). Still, I never suspected a thing, even though we were already living together and had been a couple for nearly two years. (Funnily, I actually thought he was going to propose on my birthday nearly a year earlier, even though we hadn’t been together for a year yet at that point and weren’t even living in the same city!) As the show was going on, he was slipping in references to “say yes.” For example, “I wasn’t sure I wanted to move to another country for an entire month, but I decided to say yes to new experiences.” Stuff like that. After about the third “say yes” moment, my heart started racing and I thought, “Oh my gosh, he’s going to propose!” At the end of the show, he said that he’d had such a great time in China, but he couldn’t wait to return home to me. Then the slideshow had all these pictures of me and he was listing all the reasons he loves me. I was bawling. Finally, he told everyone to open the pieces of paper we had been given before the show started and do what they said. Mine said, “Close your eyes.” When I opened them, he was down on one knee with flowers and the ring, and he asked me to marry him. And everyone else was holding up their papers, which all said, “Say yes!” It was so romantic and awesome and I was BLOWN AWAY by the fact that everyone was in on it and I had no clue. I love being surprised, so that was just icing on the cake.
A couple of funny things about that night were:
-One friend stopped the slideshow somewhere in the middle because she had to pee (even though she knew what was coming!), but I was so grateful because I had to pee to and didn’t want to say anything!
-One friend was given a blank piece of paper because another friend was worried that he would actually say the word yes when he opened it up, per the instructions.
-My mother-in-law’s paper said “Go get the flowers from the kitchen.” But then she just stood in the kitchen and had to be called back into the living room while I was sitting there with my eyes closed the whole time.
I also found out later that my husband had originally planned to put in a slide of him at the Great Wall holding up a sign that said “Will you marry me?” But he was all sweaty in the picture (as in, his entire shirt was soaked with sweat. Apparently the wall is quite steep in places.), so he decided to go another route.
Our engagement was perfect and completely unexpected!! On a random Thursday morning, I texted Todd basically begging him to take me on a hot date. He happily obliged and I was looking forward to it. Little did I know, he had just recently told his parents he was going to propose soon and had spoken with my dad. The next day was our date night. I was excited for our date and even more excited because that night after work I came home to find that my new iPhone had arrived in the mail! I was so pumped that I didn’t even think it was strange when he showed up to pick me up with flowers. I said “Wow, a date night and a new phone – this is the best day ever!!” How right I was!
I thought we were just going out for a burger and maybe a nice walk downtown. We drove downtown and I was just babbling about my new phone and school and he was unusually quiet. I could talk your ear off, so it didn’t phase me much. When we parked our car downtown, he handed me a little paper sack to put in my purse for a surprise after dinner. I looked at him funny and wondered what he was up to but shrugged it off. I’m really good at figuring out stuff and ruining surprises so I didn’t think it’d be anything too crazy. He kept asking me to go somewhere nice but I wanted Zombie Burger, so we went to the restaurant where there was a 45 minute wait. We put our names down and decided to take a walk. We walked around the riverwalk downtown Des Moines and sat down at my favorite spot, the amphitheatre (picture). He asked me to pull out the bag and I started thinking “OMG WHAT IS HE DOING?!” And he pulled out… two bags of Skittles. Skittles are my favorite candy. So much so that when I was a little kid, my family would call them “Katie Bait” because they could bribe me to do things for some Skittles. So I thought Todd was just being sweet. I opened by BRAND NEW BAG of Skittles and inside was my beautiful ring. He had carefully opened it earlier that day and put double sided tape in the bag so the Skittles would stick to it and only my ring would be loose. Then he heat sealed it. 
My heart was racing and the next thing I know, he was on his knee asking me to be his wife and of course I said “YES!!!!!” It was a very sweet moment and if it wasn’t before, Skittles will now always be my all time favorite candy.
He and I had been dating for aboput 4.5 years at this point. We met our first year of college at his fraternity house. I definitely would NOT want a redo
I love our story.
I’ve really enjoyed reading all of these stories! My engagement story is similar to that of a living room story. The Hubs and I met in college. He and his best friend were in three of my classes and we all started hanging out within the first few weeks of school. The Hubs and I started dating just before Christmas that first semester and we’ve been together ever since which will be 11 years this Fall.
Anyway so my parents were like really strict I mean REALLY strict when I was growing up and in High School. I had this High School boyfriend and we broke up pretty much as soon as I started college. My parents really liked him and so when I started dating the Husband they were very skeptical and really didn’t give him a chance. I knew we had something really early and between the suffocation of them in general and their complete dislike for the dude I left home. I realize now life could have turned out really differently but I knew that the dude was the real deal so I am not really surprised. So I went out into the world on my own-ish (well the boyfriend and I didn’t live together anyway). So fast forward almost exactly three years…
We go to the beach for the weekend (only my favorite place) shortly after we’d been heavily talking about rings and getting engaged and whether or not we cared if others thought we were too young (I was very newly 21 and he was 22). All weekend I thought he would and he didn’t. On the way home I cried. The poor guy he knew why and he was going to but apparently his Dad had talked him out of the ring he chose and he had just started looking again. So a few weeks later it comes up again…this is mid-October and we had originally been talking about getting married in January. I was still finsihing college and so we were focusing on school breaks. I didn’t want to get married in the Summer and Fall was a whole year away and we weren’t interested in waiting. So we settled on a date this one weekend before we were even engaged. That week I just went to look at dresses with a friend. I found one I loved and seeing as how I knew I couldn’t order I just went ahead and bought it off the rack. My Mom wasn’t even with me. I left the next day to go out of town for school to a conference in New York and I can home the following Saturday. Sunday we go to his family’s for a big family lunch thing for his Brother’s birthday. He mentioned that morning that he knew that I knew that he had the ring (it came while I was in NY and he mentioned having to go pick up something at FedEx) but that his Dad specifically told him not to mess with his Brother’s day. So all day he says nothing. He takes me home later that night and as we are watching TV he says oh hey did you get those postcards I left for you in my glove box? I responded no I forgot them (he’d been traveling a lot for work and knew I collected them). I knew in that moment what was happening. So we went outside and I got in the car and when I opened the glove compartment the ring box was there. I didn’t know what to say and I remember thinking oh babe right now? and I just shut the car door and stood up in like shock or I don’t know I was nervous. So he got the ring out got down and one knee told me he wanted to be with me forever and asked me to marry him. I said yes and I couldn’t even see the ring it was so dark out! We had to go inside so I could see him and then we made some calls.
We got married a little less than 10 weeks later and that I really want a do over for. We talked about going away to get married all the time but at this time (3 years later) my family still hadn’t come around and I felt like if we left then we were hiding it. So we stayed and had the traditional wedding and although I was happy that day I have so much stress looking back on it. None of my family pictures are good and I am just reminded of how much stress it all was. Would my real Dad have a fit about my Step-Dad and would my Mom tell me anything negative…do I need a bouncer?
The only thing I wouldn’t change is that I married my man. We’ve been married for almost 8 years now and around the 5 year mark we had our daughter and last year we had our Son. He is a great Husband and an even better Dad. Every now and then he comments that he “totally blew the proposal” and how someday he’ll ask me again but I won’t hold my breath; it just really isn’t like all that important with other stuff we have going on. We have talked a lot about renewing our vows though on our 10th anniversary. Eventually my parents saw all of the good things I always knew and now they are some of our biggest supporters and the people we spend most of our time with. I’d like to reflect on all of those promises again with a bunch of happy people in attendance; including our babies.
I am soooo glad that I’m not the only one who demands proposals. All of my friends think I’m crazy!
The first proposal was lame. I saw a ring I really liked at JCP of all places. I said, “oh look. There it is! My ring.” To which he replied, “so should I get it?” Voila, engaged.
Second time (about a year later Wedding had yet to happen), he proposed again in bed one morning with a ring he picked out and it was so much better.