My engagement story

The lovely Betty Beguiles is hosting a roundup of engagement stories. Ah, love! I am in love with love and with love stories, so this just tickles me!

My husband, David, and I met when we were just 15. Little did I know that day when I started at a brand new school, the cute boy I was seated next to in second period health class would later become my husband. But the story of our journey from that spring day to the time when marriage was actually on our minds is one for another day. Needless to say, we dated for quite a long time before marriage was even a possibility, although we both agree that even when we were so very young, there was a permanence to our relationship that surpassed our tender age.

Years later we were both in college and the subject of marriage was on our minds. We'd had some differences that needed to be worked through before we both could move forward with the idea of getting married, but those had been largely reconciled. I'd essentially given him the green light to ask, and I thought maybe he would sometime later that year.

It was a hot summer day in August (the 14th, to be precise) and I had a calculus final in the morning. When I got home, he told me he'd talked to some friends and they wanted us to meet them out at a swimming spot along a nearby river. I changed my clothes, we grabbed towels and headed out. When we got there we hiked a short distance down a trail and that's when things got strange. He told me he was taking me to a place that only the locals (as in, not the out of town college students) knew about. His friend told him about it and only agreed to let anyone else come with him if David promised not to let me see where we were going - so I would need to be blindfolded.

Now, I didn't believe his story for a second - but the real reason for his secrecy didn't occur to me. I thought he was playing a joke, trying to see if he could get me to wear a blindfold. Perhaps our other friend had bet him he couldn't make me do it (which would have been believable!). At first, I refused. I told him we could just go to the spot we'd been to before and forget the rest of them, if they were going to be so weird about it. But he persisted, and I finally agreed.

He tied something around my head and led me down the side of the embankment toward the river. Looking back, I'm still surprised I didn't suspect what he was up to. It seems rather obvious now. But our prior conversation about marriage (the aforementioned "green light") was so recent, I didn't think he could have possibly gotten a ring or anything of that sort. How wrong I was!

When we stopped, he pulled off my blindfold and I found myself standing on a moss covered rock, the river at my right gently rippling by. There was a green checkered picnic blanket laid out in front of us, a picnic basket full of goodies and a bottle of champagne. A sword (yes, a real one) was stuck into the space between two large, moss covered rocks, giving the illusion that it was entombed in the rock itself, as if it were Excalibur (we are big fantasy geeks, so this was delightful).

He immediately dropped to one knee and I couldn't tell you for the life of me what he said. I wish I could remember. All I remember is clasping my hands over my mouth in shock and tears streaming down my face. I said yes and held out my hand, and he put the ring on my finger. We hugged and I cried and laughed and couldn't believe he'd caught me unawares, with such an elaborate set up.

He did good :).