I'm fun sized!: WE'RE ENGAGED!!!!!!!!!! {the prelude}

WAH! WAH! WAHHH!!!!!!!!! WE'RE ENGAGED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's so crazy and exciting, I wanted to write down every detail (mainly for my own goldfish memory) so I never ever forget how much time, effort, thought, and love went into this incredible proposal.

So we'll go in chronological order, shall we?

John and I had been dating for 6.75 years (very scientific, I know). I hadn't really been feeling the wedding/marriage fever since none of my bestest friends had gotten married, and I haven't been attending weddings like crazy. It was all something in a far off land... UNTIL. Until I spent a month in Washington, with incredible, talented, but extremely YOUNG married people. They were allllll younger than me, with their partners for less time than John and I, and all wayyy more married than I. Jealousy, more than anything took hold. I love John, he loves me... What's left? For a while, we had used the whole "we need careers, we need a place of our own, we need...... other essentials" reason to postpone marriage. But we had just moved into our own studio apartment, we had both started to get our careers on the road. Everything seemed to fall into place except for one essential thing. The guy being on board.

I tried to prepare him for the marriage talk that was about to come raining down on him.... During phone conversations, I would not-so-subtly drop hints that I was thinking more and more of marriage. More of the "what are we waiting for?!" thoughts were a daily occurrence, especially during late night shifts that last until sunrise. Marriage fever was hitting. Hard.

Little did I know, Mr. Awesome was already on board and had begun planning, scheming, and working very hard to concoct the perfect proposal. He'd brush off my comments with things like "well..... we JUST got our own place" , "you've spent less than a week at our new apartment" "I still have to think about PA school" (All valid and true points). This would satisfy me forrrr about 48 hours until I was back to bringing it back up again.

Finally, I returned home to San Diego. We sat down to have the marriage talk. Deep breaths, pounding chest. It boiled down to this:

"I need more time... I'm just so in debt, and I'd like to get my head above water before we start to think about that stuff. Can we re-visit this two months? Is that fair?"

Two months it is. We both jotted "September 13th" into calendars to remind us (pfft, as if I needed reminding) of the "big marriage talk". Well, alrighty then.

The next MONTH is not something I'm proud of. I made multiple tactless jabs at him, finding a way to insert "I'm-never-getting-married, WOE IS MEEEEEE" comments into everyday conversation. Most of them were to his face and outright, but others were to friends, and pretty much anyone who would listen. I NOW KNOW that most of these friends were already IN on the plan.... and I'm pretty much the biggest jerk on the planet.

John did an excellent EXCELLENT job at throwing me off the trail. There was a fleeting moment were I thought maybe MAYBE he would propose on my birthday. He asked "what do you think you're getting for your birthday?" I giddily and shyly told him "I think..... maybe you're going to propose??". His reaction should have gotten him an Emmy

"Woah woah woahhh. Ok, we need to seriously sit down and talk about this because if that's what you think you are getting, you are going to be reallllllly disappointed"

(Like any good actor, he took my hands, looked me in the eyes and fed me one of many many lies to get through the next month)