I'm engaged!!!!! I'm getting married!!!!!!
I don't think I could possibly put enough exclamation marks to properly convey my level of excitement and joy about this turn of events. Truthfully, this is probably not big news to most of you who read this since I know you are either my Facebook friend or I told you in person, but it's the biggest thing that has happened to me, well, ever, so I need to write about it here. The proposal happened almost two weeks ago, on Saturday November 21st. Penn had arrived in London the morning before, and we'd spent the day exploring together. I showed him the path I'd been walking along the Thames to work every day and all of the sites I would pass, and we walked across the Millennium Bridge to St. Paul's Cathedral and then climbed to the top together and took dozens of pictures as the sun was setting. We went to a show at the Globe and then went to an outdoor (heated, thank goodness) pub at a market decorated beautifully for Christmas. We went to all of these lovely places, and the whole time I was wondering, "Does he have a ring? Is he going to ask me now?"
Because here's the thing: I was pretty sure he was planning a proposal. Back at the end of October, just after my trip to visit my roommate, I was doing laundry and I found two of my rings in the dryer when I was done. I was really baffled by the fact that my rings were in the laundry, especially because one of them was a birthstone ring that I haven't worn in ages because it has a chip in the stone. I puzzled over it for a bit and then forgot all about it until three days later when it suddenly hit me as I was riding the bus to campus: my rings ended up in the wash because they'd been in Penn's pocket! He must have been out getting a ring sized for me while I was out of town! (Incidentally, yes, I'm slow for not realizing that right away.) So from that point on I was wondering what he was planning. My birthday was coming up, as was our trip to Europe, as was our trip to my hometown for Christmas. All perfectly good times to propose. My birthday came and went with no proposal, so I started thinking maybe he'd do it in Europe. I thought it would be perfectly "us" because we both love traveling and going on adventures and doing new things together. Basically, I psyched myself up so much imagining how nice a proposal in Europe would be that I knew in my heart that I was going to be slightly disappointed in my trip if I didn't come home engaged. And I knew that was stupid because, hello, I was on a pretty-much-all-expenses-paid trip to Europe, I had done lots of valuable research, I was going to get to travel with my boyfriend for a whole week...basically, it would have been a fabulous trip no matter what. But the whole week and a half that I was in London by myself I would wonder at least once a day if Penn would be popping the question when he arrived. I was really, really, REALLY hoping he would.
But then we spent that first day and night in London and...nothing. Well, not nothing. We had a great time catching up after being apart for ten days and exploring London, but there was no proposal. When we went to bed that night I thought, "Well, that's that. Maybe he doesn't have a ring after all. He's definitely not planning to propose on this trip." The thing you need to know about Penn is that he can be extremely impatient. Once he decides he wants to do something, he usually wants to do it immediately. I figured if he did have a ring the wait the whole ten days we were apart in Europe would have been driving him crazy, and the ring would be burning a hole in his pocket by the time he finally got to London. So when he didn't propose at one of the many places he could have proposed in London, I figured while a proposal was going to happen eventually, it wasn't going to happen on this trip.
On Saturday morning Penn and I picked up our rented car at Stansted Airport and got on the road to Edinburgh. In retrospect, there are many things that should have clued me in to the fact that Penn was planning to propose in Scotland, and one of them was the fact that he'd been adamant about renting a car instead of taking a train or going up on one of the bus tours. He'd sold the idea to me by saying that renting our own car would be less expensive and would be a fun adventure, but the truth was he wanted to be able to propose in a scenic spot, and he didn't know how he'd manage that on a train and he really didn't want to propose to me and then have to get back onto a tour bus with a bunch of strangers. So we rented a car and had our first experience with "wrong" side of the road driving. It was fun, actually, once we got the GPS working. For the record, if you're ever planning to try this yourselves, it helps to have two people in the car, one to drive on the wrong side of the car and the other to sit in the passenger seat and helpfully shriek things like, "Stay to the left! The left!" Oh, and almost all of the cars are stick-shift and you'll have to shift left-handed. It helps to have another person for that, too, because some of the time Penn would have me do the shifting just because I could do it right-handed and it was easier.
Anyway, the drive up was going really well once we got the hang of things. It took about six hours to get to Scotland, and we talked the whole time. We spent a lot of time making fun of British radio because a) apparently British citizens are really into bad pop/dance music for some reason and b) the weather report comes on every fifteen minutes and you know what? It's always still raining! As we started approaching Scotland, Penn began speeding. I told him to relax and slow down, but he insisted that he wanted to get to Scotland before it got dark so we could see the countryside. I didn't understand what the big deal was; we were planning to be in Scotland for two days and to spend one of those days driving up into the highlands, so I figured we had plenty of time to see the scenery. Little did I know that the speeding was Penn's impatience finally coming out. Apparently he had decided a couple of months ago that Scotland was where he wanted to propose. He knew he wanted to do it in Europe and he thought it would be cool to do it somewhere neither of us had ever been, so he was determined to do it somewhere in Scotland. He didn't know where in Scotland, though (since, like I said, neither of us had ever been there) so his plan was to just carry the ring with him until he found the perfect spot. But he was fairly determined to find that perfect spot on Saturday because once we got to Scotland he just couldn't wait to propose anymore.
The picture doesn't even begin to do it justice, but the view was amazing. I remember thinking how interesting the lighting was, with the combination of the water and the storm clouds and the setting sun. It was the most perfect deep blue. There was a stairwell leading down the side of the cliffs to the beach, so I asked Penn if we could park the car and walk down to the ocean. He said sure, so we parked on the side of the road and walked down the steps and hiked out onto some of the rocks that jutted out into the water. In retrospect, I think it's a really cool fact that Penn and I collaborated on the site of our engagement. He was the one that suggested the coastal highway, I was the one that picked the spot, although of course I had no idea that that's what I was doing at the time.
We were standing out on rocks jutting out into the water and I was staring out at the ocean and listening to the waves when all of a sudden Penn pulled me to him and started kissing me. That wasn't unusual, really. We're not big on public displays of affection, but Penn has made a habit of pulling me in for a kiss whenever we suddenly find ourselves somewhere secluded. We were the only people around and it was really beautiful so I figured he was just caught up in the moment, as was I. But then when he stepped back from me he unzipped his top coat pocket and said, "There's something I've been meaning to ask you..." and before he even finished uttering the sentence I knew what he was about to do. I said, "You didn't!" as he pulled the black box from his pocket and knelt down on one knee. To be honest, I can't remember if he was saying anything as he knelt down. My mind was buzzing with a million thoughts at once, most of them some version of "This is really it!" although some of them completely mundane. For instance, I distinctly remember fleetingly thinking that it must have hurt him to kneel on the jagged, wet rock. But he did, and he had opened the box and he held it up to me and I could see the diamond nestled in the black velvet and he said "So...." and then he paused for a long moment, and I wasn't sure if he was really going to ask the question or if "So?" WAS the question, and I was just so excited that I completely jumped the gun and said, "Yes, yes, yes!" And only then did he say, "Will you marry me?" So I continued to say "Yes, of course," a dozen more times. He told me later that he was purposely taking a pause before saying, "Will you marry me?" because he knew it was going to be one of the most important things, if not the most important thing, he ever said in his whole life. I feel a teeny bit bad for stepping on his big moment, but it felt perfect just as it was.
But then we spent that first day and night in London and...nothing. Well, not nothing. We had a great time catching up after being apart for ten days and exploring London, but there was no proposal. When we went to bed that night I thought, "Well, that's that. Maybe he doesn't have a ring after all. He's definitely not planning to propose on this trip." The thing you need to know about Penn is that he can be extremely impatient. Once he decides he wants to do something, he usually wants to do it immediately. I figured if he did have a ring the wait the whole ten days we were apart in Europe would have been driving him crazy, and the ring would be burning a hole in his pocket by the time he finally got to London. So when he didn't propose at one of the many places he could have proposed in London, I figured while a proposal was going to happen eventually, it wasn't going to happen on this trip.
On Saturday morning Penn and I picked up our rented car at Stansted Airport and got on the road to Edinburgh. In retrospect, there are many things that should have clued me in to the fact that Penn was planning to propose in Scotland, and one of them was the fact that he'd been adamant about renting a car instead of taking a train or going up on one of the bus tours. He'd sold the idea to me by saying that renting our own car would be less expensive and would be a fun adventure, but the truth was he wanted to be able to propose in a scenic spot, and he didn't know how he'd manage that on a train and he really didn't want to propose to me and then have to get back onto a tour bus with a bunch of strangers. So we rented a car and had our first experience with "wrong" side of the road driving. It was fun, actually, once we got the GPS working. For the record, if you're ever planning to try this yourselves, it helps to have two people in the car, one to drive on the wrong side of the car and the other to sit in the passenger seat and helpfully shriek things like, "Stay to the left! The left!" Oh, and almost all of the cars are stick-shift and you'll have to shift left-handed. It helps to have another person for that, too, because some of the time Penn would have me do the shifting just because I could do it right-handed and it was easier.
Anyway, the drive up was going really well once we got the hang of things. It took about six hours to get to Scotland, and we talked the whole time. We spent a lot of time making fun of British radio because a) apparently British citizens are really into bad pop/dance music for some reason and b) the weather report comes on every fifteen minutes and you know what? It's always still raining! As we started approaching Scotland, Penn began speeding. I told him to relax and slow down, but he insisted that he wanted to get to Scotland before it got dark so we could see the countryside. I didn't understand what the big deal was; we were planning to be in Scotland for two days and to spend one of those days driving up into the highlands, so I figured we had plenty of time to see the scenery. Little did I know that the speeding was Penn's impatience finally coming out. Apparently he had decided a couple of months ago that Scotland was where he wanted to propose. He knew he wanted to do it in Europe and he thought it would be cool to do it somewhere neither of us had ever been, so he was determined to do it somewhere in Scotland. He didn't know where in Scotland, though (since, like I said, neither of us had ever been there) so his plan was to just carry the ring with him until he found the perfect spot. But he was fairly determined to find that perfect spot on Saturday because once we got to Scotland he just couldn't wait to propose anymore.
So he was speeding along and I was completely clueless and the sun was going down and since it was already cloudy and rainy it was rapidly getting dark. The instant we crossed the border into Scotland--I mean, within the very first mile--the landscape changed entirely and instead of basically flat land with some slightly rolling hills there were towering hills to our left and the ocean to our right. Not far over the border we saw a sign that said "East Lothian Coastal Highway." Penn suggested that we take it, and I said sure, and I started trying to set the GPS up to direct us toward a gas station since we were almost out of gas. About that time it finally stopped raining, and I looked to our right and saw that we were right beside this beautiful view. I'd try to describe it, but, here, how about a picture?
The picture doesn't even begin to do it justice, but the view was amazing. I remember thinking how interesting the lighting was, with the combination of the water and the storm clouds and the setting sun. It was the most perfect deep blue. There was a stairwell leading down the side of the cliffs to the beach, so I asked Penn if we could park the car and walk down to the ocean. He said sure, so we parked on the side of the road and walked down the steps and hiked out onto some of the rocks that jutted out into the water. In retrospect, I think it's a really cool fact that Penn and I collaborated on the site of our engagement. He was the one that suggested the coastal highway, I was the one that picked the spot, although of course I had no idea that that's what I was doing at the time.
We were standing out on rocks jutting out into the water and I was staring out at the ocean and listening to the waves when all of a sudden Penn pulled me to him and started kissing me. That wasn't unusual, really. We're not big on public displays of affection, but Penn has made a habit of pulling me in for a kiss whenever we suddenly find ourselves somewhere secluded. We were the only people around and it was really beautiful so I figured he was just caught up in the moment, as was I. But then when he stepped back from me he unzipped his top coat pocket and said, "There's something I've been meaning to ask you..." and before he even finished uttering the sentence I knew what he was about to do. I said, "You didn't!" as he pulled the black box from his pocket and knelt down on one knee. To be honest, I can't remember if he was saying anything as he knelt down. My mind was buzzing with a million thoughts at once, most of them some version of "This is really it!" although some of them completely mundane. For instance, I distinctly remember fleetingly thinking that it must have hurt him to kneel on the jagged, wet rock. But he did, and he had opened the box and he held it up to me and I could see the diamond nestled in the black velvet and he said "So...." and then he paused for a long moment, and I wasn't sure if he was really going to ask the question or if "So?" WAS the question, and I was just so excited that I completely jumped the gun and said, "Yes, yes, yes!" And only then did he say, "Will you marry me?" So I continued to say "Yes, of course," a dozen more times. He told me later that he was purposely taking a pause before saying, "Will you marry me?" because he knew it was going to be one of the most important things, if not the most important thing, he ever said in his whole life. I feel a teeny bit bad for stepping on his big moment, but it felt perfect just as it was.
After that everything is a bit of a blur. I remember kissing again, and I remember him insisting that I put the ring on right then to see if it fit, even though I was petrified to take it out of the box because I was afraid I was going to fumble it into the North Sea. He also gave me something he had written for me on the train the day before, and that's when I really started to cry. I was already tearing up a bit, but I had to start wiping tears away at that point. I said, "I thought I wasn't going to cry when you did this!" and he laughed and said, "I knew you would." [Nope, not going to share what he wrote for me. Sorry to be a tease! I have several things he has written for and/or about me now and I have never shared them with anyone and don't think I ever will. I love them and love having them just for me.]
It started getting really dark after that, so we made our way back up the steps to our car. I was bubbling over with questions about who already knew and when he had gotten the ring and how long he'd been planning to propose and, oh yeah, where on earth were we, anyway? We drove around the little town closest to the beach until we found enough signs to figure out where we were: Dunbar. Dunbar, Scotland. Which, I found out through research several days later, is where James Earl of Bothwell had a castle that he took his lover Mary Queen of Scots to on the night that he "kidnapped" her and ravished her all night so he would then be forced to marry her. Supposedly they both really wanted to be married, but the rest of the nobility wouldn't approve the match so they staged a kidnap and rape so that he could have her as his wife. It's not the most chaste and proper story, I'll give you that, but I read this one book about Mary Queen of Scots so many times in high school that the cover fell off of it, and I was always so enchanted by the rogue Bothwell and I loved the scene when he kidnapped his queen. I couldn't believe that Penn coincidentally proposed at the ruins of the castle! You can see them in the background of the picture. (I'm ignoring the fact that their's ended up being a very ill-fated love and that they never really got to spend much time together before he was killed and she was imprisoned. Instead, I'm focusing on the romantic fact that Bothwell was her one true love and I like to assume that the nights she spent at Dunbar with him were some of her best.) I never in a million years would have imagined that I'd get engaged in Scotland, of all places, but my life has taken so many interesting and ultimately happy twists and turns in the past couple of years that this was just the icing on the cake (or, actually, I guess it's just the beginning, isn't it?).
Anyway, we finally found that gas station we needed, and I stood outside the car as he filled it up staring at my ring under the fluorescent gas station lights. It sparkles. It literally makes rainbows! Once we got settled into our hotel in Edinburgh we went out for a nice dinner and a bottle of wine (oh, and also a brief bit of a Scottish rugby match watched on TV in a pub) and then we both called our families to tell them the news. Everyone seems really happy for us, and we're both thrilled.
I can't believe I get to plan a wedding for real. I met Penn in March and knew by June that I wanted to marry him. I'm not sure if he was convinced about me quite that early on, but he did say to me when we moved in together last October that he wanted to marry me eventually and wasn't asking me to move in with him just out of convenience. In the past few months I occasionally started doing things like looking at wedding dresses and venues online, but I was too superstitious to make lists or save favorites or start profiles on planning websites or anything like that. But now I can!
More than being excited about planning a wedding, though, I'm incredibly excited about planning our entire life together. To talk about what kind of home we'd like to have in the future and to think about when we'd like to start trying to have our first baby and to know that, short of horrendous bad luck (knock on wood) these things will actually happen?
It started getting really dark after that, so we made our way back up the steps to our car. I was bubbling over with questions about who already knew and when he had gotten the ring and how long he'd been planning to propose and, oh yeah, where on earth were we, anyway? We drove around the little town closest to the beach until we found enough signs to figure out where we were: Dunbar. Dunbar, Scotland. Which, I found out through research several days later, is where James Earl of Bothwell had a castle that he took his lover Mary Queen of Scots to on the night that he "kidnapped" her and ravished her all night so he would then be forced to marry her. Supposedly they both really wanted to be married, but the rest of the nobility wouldn't approve the match so they staged a kidnap and rape so that he could have her as his wife. It's not the most chaste and proper story, I'll give you that, but I read this one book about Mary Queen of Scots so many times in high school that the cover fell off of it, and I was always so enchanted by the rogue Bothwell and I loved the scene when he kidnapped his queen. I couldn't believe that Penn coincidentally proposed at the ruins of the castle! You can see them in the background of the picture. (I'm ignoring the fact that their's ended up being a very ill-fated love and that they never really got to spend much time together before he was killed and she was imprisoned. Instead, I'm focusing on the romantic fact that Bothwell was her one true love and I like to assume that the nights she spent at Dunbar with him were some of her best.) I never in a million years would have imagined that I'd get engaged in Scotland, of all places, but my life has taken so many interesting and ultimately happy twists and turns in the past couple of years that this was just the icing on the cake (or, actually, I guess it's just the beginning, isn't it?).
Anyway, we finally found that gas station we needed, and I stood outside the car as he filled it up staring at my ring under the fluorescent gas station lights. It sparkles. It literally makes rainbows! Once we got settled into our hotel in Edinburgh we went out for a nice dinner and a bottle of wine (oh, and also a brief bit of a Scottish rugby match watched on TV in a pub) and then we both called our families to tell them the news. Everyone seems really happy for us, and we're both thrilled.
I can't believe I get to plan a wedding for real. I met Penn in March and knew by June that I wanted to marry him. I'm not sure if he was convinced about me quite that early on, but he did say to me when we moved in together last October that he wanted to marry me eventually and wasn't asking me to move in with him just out of convenience. In the past few months I occasionally started doing things like looking at wedding dresses and venues online, but I was too superstitious to make lists or save favorites or start profiles on planning websites or anything like that. But now I can!
More than being excited about planning a wedding, though, I'm incredibly excited about planning our entire life together. To talk about what kind of home we'd like to have in the future and to think about when we'd like to start trying to have our first baby and to know that, short of horrendous bad luck (knock on wood) these things will actually happen?
It's the best feeling I've ever had in my life.
Incidentally, the ring fit perfectly:
1 comment:
Congrats on the engagement!! I got engaged in Oct 2008 and got married last June. Planning a wedding is super fun and can be stressful. You'll hear this a thousand times, but don't stress over the small details, because when it's all said and done you won't remember anything at all (except how you cried during the vows like I did). Oh and take pictures of yourself in the dresses that you like and look at them on the computer to help see which one looks best on you. And your ring looks similar to mine...apparently we have good taste. :)
(P.S. I'm just a random stalker who enjoys reading your blog)
-Rachel
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