Engageaversary!

Tomorrow we will have been engaged for one year. Wow! Time flies and all that!

Tomorrow I have a haircut and dance rehearsal, plus I desperately need to do laundry (very romantic!), and Mr. T is just looking forward to sleeping in after working about 60 hours this week, but we are planning on Chinese food from our favorite local place (it features all local/organic ingredients and sustainable meats...I LOVE this place) and what seems to be a tradition for us, champagne and cupcakes. mmmmcupcakes. That reminds me...according to the Knot's checklist, we have cake tasting in our near future! mmmmcupcaketasting!

Happy Engageaversary, honey!

Love is in the Air

Since Mr. T and I got engaged, 3 couples who are friends/acquaintances have also gotten engaged. I guess it's the whole Valentine's Day thing--love is indeed in the air! Also, we know two couples who got engaged before we did.

It's good to have so many affianced folks around, because I don't feel as guilty discussing wedding ideas with other engaged people--they are probably the only ones as interested as we are in all of the minutiae it takes to plan a wedding. I mentioned honeyfund.com to one of the folks yesterday, and he was really happy to find out about it (he was having the whole wedding budget versus honeymoon budget issue too).

I left a message inquiring about touring our first venue today. Yes, we theoretically have LOTS of time, but I'd really love to lock in our date, for one, and second, once we have the venue, everything else will flow from there--food, budget, decor, invitations, etc. It seems like a lot of places will not let you attach anything to the walls, which I understand, but is a little disappointing. I will have to channel the decorations into other areas, I suppose. Question #1 for the venue: Do you have black or orange table linens?

I got my yearly work bonus on Friday. Although of course I wanted it to be higher, it was really exciting to move the money into our wedding savings account and realize we have saved 30% of our budget already. I wouldn't mind saving more than our budget, though. At work I have to do budgets for projects and I always add some "padding" for the unexpected--and rule number one is that something unexpected will come up. So I'd like our wedding fund to have some padding too.

Happy St. Patty's Day everyone! It seems odd to have St. Patty's Day and Easter in the same week, just like it was odd to have Daylight Savings Time early this year. I got my niece an adorable Easter card (letterpress, of course) from Hello! Lucky:


So cute! I love pink and brown together.

The Proposal

Mr. T and I have been dating since Halloween 1997. Friends and family have been pointedly asking about our marital status for about the past 5 years or so now, but Mr. T (my dad's nickname for my fiancee) is a slow mover, and he waited until he was ready, and until I was ready to pull my hair out. I thought for sure he'd propose on our 10-year anniversary, after my obvious hints ("You know, we have a big anniversary coming up...I'm just saying..."), but nope. So I was stunned when he asked me on Valentine's Day. It was quite sneaky, really, as we both turn up our noses at the holiday and I wasn't expecting anything special at all, but we met at a Valentine's Day party in 1993, so it was the 15-year anniversary of the day we met.
Well, 2/13 was the actual 15-year anniversary--but a group of us spent the night at the party and all hung out on 2/14 as well, so I'll give that one to him.
I thought Mr. T might have forgotten the anniversary, so as a fun surprise I brought champagne (Veuve Clicquot) and cupcakes (Andronico's--they kicked ass) home on 2/13, and Mr. T got a look on his face and said, "Oh, I always thought of that anniversary as tomorrow," which I didn't think anything of until after the fact, of course. He said he almost moved up his timetable but that I wouldn't leave the room long enough. I guess I have a bladder of steel.
On Valentine's Day we just got dinner in the neighborhood, hung out and watched TV, and he kept nagging at me to get ready for bed, which is not that unusual for him--I'm likely to put everything off so that I'm getting into bed for the night with hair dripping wet from the shower. So I finally showered, brushed my teeth, etc., and then I came out and sat down on our bed, and he jumped up from the bed and said, "I have to get something," and then ran out of the room. I heard him open his bag, and then he came back in with a ring box and a goofy grin and got down on one knee and proposed. I almost said yes before he got the sentence out! I graciously allowed him to finish, however.
The ring is a "placeholder," as he put it, because he knows I want to pick out my own. I have my heart set on an antique, and not a diamond, but a colored stone; I think it will be one of those "I'll know it when I see it" things. Mr. T knows I like garnets, so with our friends' help, he got a sterling silver and garnet ring until we get the "real" one. It's very sweet and he did a great job on his own.
It's so exciting. I keep looking at my hand, even though it's been over 3 weeks since he asked me.
You wouldn't think things would feel any different after 10 years (and we probably qualified for "common law" marriage at this point, if they do that in our state), but I do feel different. I guess I'm more of an old-fashioned girl than I thought.