The Engagement Story

Steve rarely buys me flowers. By this point in the story, we had been together about 3 1/2 years and he had never once bought me flowers. He never saw the point in buying them because they just die a couple days later anyway. While I understood this, I still secretly hoped I would get flowers SOME day.

On April 20^th, Steve finally made his way back to Minnesota. It had been eight full months since the last time I had seen him in person. Unfortunately, I was still in school, and still working, which meant less time with him. However, he did come visit me down at school and stay for a few days.

What happened when he came down, I never expected.

I was in my Business Law class. I knew that Steve was planning on coming down and being there as soon as I got out of class. During class, he sent me a text message telling me that he had fallen back asleep (after a late night out with “the guys” the night before) and that he had just left on his way down—a 2 hour drive.

I was kind of bummed that I had to wait even longer to see him, but I knew I would survive. As I was walking back I was nearly back to my apartment when I saw his car pulling into the parking lot to my apartment building—he had lied so he could surprise me.

When I stepped foot in the parking lot, he got out of his car, showing a little struggle with what he had in his hand—a rose. The stem had gotten caught on the seat belt causing the head of the rose to be ripped off.

After a little look of disappointment on his face and big look of confusion on mine as I was still too far away to see what was really going on, he proceeded to walk over to me with the head of the rose.

When we were finally standing face to face, he got down on one knee, held out the rose to me and asked me to marry him. I looked into the rose to find a diamond ring placed within its petals. With tears in my eyes, I took the rose and said “yes”. While giving him a big hug and kiss.

We went inside to my apartment where I proceeded to take a ridiculous amount of pictures of it.

In many ways, I’m very glad that we were a ways away from most people we know. I called my mom—almost immediately after, and told her. My dad already knew he was going to ask, but kept it a secret from my mom. Steve’s parents both knew before he asked too. And those were the only people we told (right away). And it was wonderful. You usually can’t do that in a small town because someone sees a ring on your finger and it spreads like wildfire.

Before you know it, your grandma hears it in the grocery store from someone who knows someone else whose sister just happened to see the proposal taking place. Then you’re in trouble because all your family is hearing it from people they don’t even know. So, it was really nice to be away from everyone who would have someone else to tell.

We took our time telling everyone. I don’t think our siblings knew until at least two days later and grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins not until even later. We did tell my Marshall friends and coworkers—it would have been hard to keep it a secret from them! But for everyone else, we took our time, and just enjoyed finally being with each other and starting a new chapter together.

We spent the next few days together in Marshall before we headed back home to “face the masses” and let everyone know and let it spread like wildfire.

Over the next couple days, we spent as much time as possible together and with family, before we would have to face one more good-bye and he would once again be taken to the airport, and flown back to North Carolina. If I remember correctly, this good-bye was just a little bit easier because I already had plane tickets to go out and see him for June, so this time I actually knew that it would only be about 2 more months before I would see him again.