Before I got engaged, I knew exactly the type of ring to buy. No I wasn't psychic, nor an ego-maniacal pushy boyfriend. Uh uh. Simple ring, pear shaped diamond in a size 7. That had been ingraned in my head for weeks, months, almost years I'd say, by my college girlfriend. Yeah we had talked about marriage on and off, sometimes seriously, sometimes not. I knew I wanted to marry her, it was just a timing thing. I wanted to wait until we both graduated and had jobs lined up. Call me sensible. Then of course just when I was gearing up to do it, her older sister went and got engaged. So out of respect I figured I'd wait till after the wedding and then pop the question. And of course 3 months later, her middle sister got engaged. Sigh. So being the baby in the family, it only seemed right that she'd be the last one to get hitched. And yes, I eventually did ask her, and she did say yes. But after dating for over 7 years (yes, you read that right), I was STILL shaking in my boots. It was easily one of the toughest things I ever had to do and all I had to do was say 4 simple words.

I wanted to do something romantic and different. At the time, I was living in a pretty cool house with 4 other guys (it was a big house). My best bud was one of them, and he was in on it. So I made sure he got everyone out of the house one evening. Which he did. Then I cooked up a nice romantic dinner of champagne risotto (though I had no champagne, so I substituted with beer). But before I could serve dinner, the unexpected happened. For some reason we were outside, probably chasing after one of the cats that liked to roam the yard. All of a sudden in the woods on the side of the house my girlfriend noticed a bird hobbling about. She didnt' want the cats to get it, so she was chasing after it to save it. Now she was a vegetarian at the time and a big animal rights person. I may've been a vegetarian then too, honestly I don't remember. I was definitely into animals too, though at that moment I would've paid the cat a cool million just to make that bird disappear. No, that's not true. That would've set a bad tone. But I was trying like mad to get her inside the house for dinner without looking like a total insensitive boob. Somehow the bird got away, the cats ran off and we finally went inside.

After dinner came the first big surprise. Dessert. She's always been a big fan of frosting (as I've mentioned previously in some cake decorating posts), and especially the Double Doozie cookies you can get at the Great American Cookie Company. Basically, you take 2 big chocolate chip cookies and slap way too much frosting in between to make a giant sugar sandwich. Well, I went to the Cookie Company earlier and ordered up a small cookie cake, but had it made as a double doozie. That's a big cookie and an illegal amount of frosting. I had them write "Happy 1/2 Anniversary" on it. The timing was actually perfect as it was exactly halfway through our anniversary to the day (plus 7 years...). So I played the whole romantic dinner thing off as a half anniversary thing. Which should've tipped her off but didn't.

After dinner, as I sat there sweating like mad (despite it being kind of cold out)... I gave her a present. It was a big wrapped box that she opened and inside was a very small ring box. She looked up at me with tears welling in her eyes and practically mouthed the words "yes" before I could even say "Will you marry me?" I did get the words out (I'll admit I was choked up so I probably sounded like Peter Brady hitting puberty when I said them...). And the funny thing is she screamed yes and raced around the table to embrace me... without even opening the damn box. Now I paid a lot of money and went through a lot of trouble to get that ring, so she better look at it before she starts celebrating! Which is what I told her, though in slightly nicer terms. And yes, even after seeing the ring, she said yes. And the rest is history.

You can "awwww" now. And this would've been a lot sappier if I was more awake. My apologies, but it's 12:45, just got home from the movies (Superbad is super funny) and realized I hadn't posted yet today! So no bed for me until this is up. That's how much you guys mean to me too. Sniff. Anyways, yep, you guessed it, here's an awesome mega coupon for diamonds and jewelry:

$100 off online orders over $500 at Bailey Banks & Biddle
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