The Engagement

The summer of 2003 Eric and I knew we were getting married. We had talked about the wedding and had started planning the reception. The engagement just wasn’t official.

On Saturday, July 29, we were going to tour a reception location. It was early in the morning and Eric started telling me all the things he loved about me. I thought we were having a conversation and kept interrupting him and changing the subject. As he kept going back to the ‘loving me’ bit of it I started to realize he might be going somewhere and shut up.

Then, from seemingly out of nowhere, he suddenly had a box in his hand. It was opened to show a gorgeous diamond ring. “Will you be my wife?” he said.

I said yes and put on the ring. “You can’t go look at a reception site without a ring,” he said. “Oh, and you don’t have to work on Monday.”

“What?” I said.

But he had gone to sleep. Eric is good at grand gestures but literally passes out after them. I wish I was kidding.

I called my mom and my sister, who were thrilled. I read Little House on the Prairie until Eric regained consciousness. We went to look at the reception location (we booked it) and then Eric suggested we go shopping. We shopped for ages and I kept asking to go back to his apartment. “What about shoes?” Eric said. “You need new running shoes.”

That’s when I finally picked up on the fact that he was keeping me away from his house for a reason. I started badgering him, asking what was going on, but he wouldn’t budge. Finally, at 3:00, we went back to his apartment.

We walked in – SURPRISE! – to a huge engagement party! Almost all of our family and friends were there. Jackie (the big liar had just feigned surprise earlier that morning) and Mike, Wally and Susan, Kourtney and Ally and Megan and Amy and Tom and Dan and Cathy and Bret and Colleen and Dusty…it felt like an episode of This Is Your Life.

Then the phone calls started. Everyone who lived too far away or couldn’t come called my phone to congratulate me. Absolutely everyone knew that this was happening except for me! The best phone call came from my friend Ben, who lives in North Dakota. He went through all of the same congratulations and then said, “Now push the damn buzzer so I can get in there and give you a hug.” He had driven most of the day to be there!

A few hours into the party Kourtney, Ally, and Megan left to get ice. There aren’t words to describe the shock I felt when they came back. They didn’t have ice – they had my best friend Jen, who Eric had flown in from Denver for the weekend. That’s when Eric explained that as Jen’s flight didn’t leave until late Monday night, he had already called my boss (!) and arranged for me to have Monday off to spend with her.

The rest of that night was legen – wait for it – dary. Perhaps when my children are over 21 I will tell them about it. I will say that Eric’s sister Amy kept us entertained for hours by doing The Worm (the next day, when we told her, she was horrified. “But I don’t know how to do The Worm!”) and that night Jackie, Mike, Josh, and Jen shared a blow-up mattress the size of a coffee table. We can still bring up that night and laugh until we cry.

The whole weekend couldn’t have been any more perfect. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt more loved than I did on July 29, 2003. And THAT, my friends, is why I said yes.