Finally Engaged

Jon and I met in September of our sophomore year at Virginia Tech.  When people ask me how we met I wish I had a nice story to tell, but I don't - we met at a frat party.  We dated for about 3 and a half years before we got engaged in May 2010.   Even though we had only been out of school for about a year when we got engaged, it felt like I was waiting for-e-v-e-r for the ring.  Patience has never been something I was good at, I wish I was, but I am just not a patient person - I partially blame it on my red hair.  Jon on the other hand has the patience of a Saint - which is lucky for me.  

Like I mentioned, I am not patient.  In addition to being impatient, I am a bit OCD about planning things. I like to know when and where something is happening and what I am going to wear.  Because of this planning gene that I have, I tried to plan when and where we were going to get engaged and of course what I would be wearing.....

Everyone kept asking me "when do you think you are getting engaged?!"  and I had a couple answers in mind.  My first thought was "January when we are in NYC".  Jon had surprised me at Christmas with a trip to NYC that we would take in January.  One of the events that we had planned for our trip was dinner at the restaurant where the first episode of the Sopranos was filmed.  I planned to wear a new outfit - I thought maybe we would get engaged at dinner, I had sort of always pictured it at a nice candle-lit dinner.  No dice, which was fine - I just thought he was "saving up" for the perfect ring.   It still was a bit early. 

My next thought was "My birthday"  - again Jon had planned a really nice dinner for the two of us and I planned to wear a new outfit.  I even talked with a co-worker of mine about these great new shoes that I got and how they were perfect shoes to get engaged in. (Yes, I was serious....) This night didn't end well, I had gotten myself so excited about getting engaged that I disappointed myself when it didn't happen.... bad idea.  Anyone reading this waiting to get engaged, let it be a lesson to not try and predict when its going to happen.  If its supposed to, it will.

After it didn't happen on my Birthday I sorta gave up trying to predict when it was going to happen (sorta....) but the only other thing I could think of was that it would happen when we were on vacation in Las Vegas that summer.  The only problem with that was that we were going to Vegas to celebrate one of Jon's best friend's wedding....and I sort of hoped that it wouldn't happen then because I didn't want to take away any of the spot light from the soon-to-be newly weds. 

The day we got engaged never popped onto my planning radar as a possibility and that's why it was so great.  Jon had come into town on a Thursday night to help me move out of my town house the following day.  We worked our butts off all day to move all of my things out of the house and into a storage unit in 85 degree temps.  Needless to say, we were exhausted at the end of the day and all I wanted to do was put on the most comfortable t-shirt I owned and some shorts and drink a bottle of wine.  Before we could get to the wine, we had one more thing to do and that was drive about an hour and a half to Conneaut Lake, my family's summer home.  It was the start of memorial day weekend as soon as we got there.  Jon and I relaxed on the porch, had a pasta dinner with my parents and then took a sunset "booze cruise".  None of this was really out of the ordinary, because having cocktails on the porch and booze cruises are what make the lake so great, the only thing weird was that Jon changed his clothes before we went on the boat.  He put on a nice collared shirt, one that he knew was one of my favorites.  As we were watching the sunset on the boat, Jon started giving me a little speech about how he wanted to spend forever with me.  I started to put the pieces to gether that the reason why he changed his shirt was because he was about to propose!  I think my response to the start of his speech was "are you serious?!" he responded "Im dead serious, Jamie, will you marry me?"  and he got on one knee.  I of course said "YES!" (I think like 10 times) and we went on to celebrate the rest of the weekend.  

In retro spec, I shouldn't have planned when, where and what I was going to be wearing when I got engaged because Jon was taking care of that for me.  I didnt get to pick out my outfit for the engagement but lucky for me that was just the begining of pre-wedding and wedding celebrations and now I have plenty of shopping to do :)

Jon in his nice shirt and me in a stupid t-shirt. 

One of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen at the lake was on the night we got engaged.  I can only hope for the same the night of the wedding!

Some pics of the ring requested by AViv :)