The Night We Got Engaged...

Not to be all horn tooty but as proposal stories go this one is pretty good. 

See...

Billy and I were best friends before we were romantically entangled. And I know lots of people say that but I really mean it. We spent vast amounts of time alone together just hanging out as buddies. So, once we pulled the trigger on the whole dating thing we got super close super quick. 

In fact, after our first date I walked in the door and my best friend said: "So, are you going to marry him?"

And my answer was "I think so."

We started talking about getting married really early in the courtship. Stupid early. As in, like a month in. Ridiculous, I know. 

What can I say? I was young and in love. 

I was imagining the curtains I would hang in our cute little kitchen in our house on East Thach Street in Auburn.

I'm not sure whose money was paying for those cute little curtains since we were both in school but there ya go. 

Anyway, 

He...well...he...

 He pretty much freaked out and got very cold feet and after several months of dating we broke up. And we repeated that scenario twice in the course of a year and a half.

I've blogged about it. 

It was rough!

I was trying to hold steady to cutting off all contact with him and he was holding steady to missing me but not being willing to start dating again. 

We had promised one another we would 'do the millenium' together. We were the only ones in our group of friends who thought it was a big deal.

He called round about December 1st and said:

"I know we aren't dating but we'd said we do New Year's Eve together whether we were dating or not. Let's go to Atlanta for the Millineum." I agreed. 

People thought we were crazy. "If y'all are broken up why are you going out on New Year's Eve? Why are you even seeing him? Didn't you go out on a date with another guy last week?

And mostly: Girl, you better guard your heart. 

When the day came I hopped into his pick up and hit the road with him, just like old times. 

'Cept...round about Mentone he started acting weird. Off. Kinda quiet and nervous like. It got worse the closer to the city we got. I assumed he was regretting asking me to come with him. 

Finally, when we got to our destination, The Ritz Carlton in Buckhead, I said:

"I don't understand why you even wanted me to come! You asked me and now you are acting so strange!"

He dropped down on his knee, held out the ring and said:

"It's just that...I...I...I love you. I want you to be my wife. Will you marry me?"

I burst into tears and said yes. 

He then practically passed out on to the floor. Want proof? I had my camera handy. 

Moments afterwards...

...both of us beaming. 

It was quite a night. If you're going to get engaged I highly recommend New Year's Eve of the Millineum. So you only have a little under a thousand years to wait.

A few weeks ago we went to a party for my cousin Mark and his fiancee Keller.

Who, by the way, both have blogs but refuse to give me their blog addresses. It's a travesty.

We were all asked to write down our best marriage advice for them.

Sounds easy, right?

Not so much. 

'Cuz the thing about marriage, and life too I guess, is that you kinda have to make your own mistakes. 

It's what makes us grow, right?

I mean, I look at this ecstatically hopeful couple and I think:

"If only someone would have told us to have a weekly date night, to take our relationship with God seriously, to have been kinder to each other" and on and on. 

But I just don't think that's the way it works. 

We just would have made other mistakes. 

Having said that...

Seriously, people two words: date night. We should have done it from the start. 

So, twelve years in and still going strong. 

And I still have dreams about that house on East Thach. Except now they are retirement dreams.