Engaged!

I hereby interrupt the regularly scheduled Monday outfit post programming with a special (and very sentimental) announcement. As you can probably tell, the boy and I got engaged over the weekend! So, um, I guess this is the part where I subject you to photos of the ring and the proposal story.

Unlike most other brides-to-be, I found out a while ago that the boy (I guess he's the fiancé now, isn't he?) had the ring and had had it since before we left for Boston. After that, the proposal became a source of constant joking. I'd go to work and IM him, "Oh, by the way, I found the ring today and tried it on. It's beautiful!! A little loose though." He'd psyche me out by pretending to have something behind his back while we were brushing our teeth before bed.

Friday rolled around and seemed like any other day. It was the boy's birthday and his day off, and he IM'd me at work out of the blue to ask if I had any handkerchiefs. I said no, briefly wondering if he needed a pocket square before returning to my work. We went to the media event for Chambar's new space and decided spur-of-the-moment to have dinner at Nicli Pizzeria, followed by a long walk through Gastown and downtown. Typical Friday. Halfway between Crab Park and Canada Place though, I knew something was up.

For one thing, he kept insisting on walking to places even though his foot hurt and he was limping slightly. "Let's cross this bridge!" "Let's go see the Olympic cauldron!" "Let's go to Bella Gelateria and get ice cream!" Who was this man who kept saying "Let's go!" when all I wanted to do was go home? All the walking was giving me a blister. At one point, I even whined and suggested we go to Earnest Ice Cream closer to home, which he vetoed right away.

So it was onto Bella Gelateria we went, where he got salted hazelnut and I got the mother of all cones. The softball-sized serving of organic Thai coconut milk gelato dripped all over my hands and my skirt as we slowly wandered over to the Olympic cauldron. "Let's go up there!" he said, pointing to the green walkway that zigzagged above the plaza. We climbed and sat down again. Unbeknownst to me, he was mentally spazzing at that moment about the three people nearby and his sticky ice cream hands and fervently thinking "Dammit, woman, finish your ice cream!"

But as soon as I was close to finishing my cone, it started to rain! Normally not a big deal, but I didn't want to ruin my suede sandals and he knew it. At the first sign of raindrops, he was so eager to shoo me into a cab and go home, I started to think maybe I'd gotten it all wrong. He wasn't planning to propose after all, but no matter. Friday had been a nice evening.

Once we were in our building's elevator, I smirked at him and joked, "You were going to do it tonight, weren't you?"

He smiled. "Do what?"

"Propose."

"No I wasn't."

"Yeah, probably not. You had to give me your keys to put in my purse, it's not like you could hide a ring in there," I said, gesturing to his dress-shirt-and-trousers ensemble.

Famous last words.

As we entered the condo and I was taking off my sandals, I heard him say behind me, "You were wrong."

"Wrong about what?" I whipped around.

There he was on one knee, unfurling a handkerchief to reveal a surprisingly delicate-looking ring. "Wrong about me being able to hide a ring in my pocket."

And even though I had known this moment was coming and we'd been joking about it for a month and a half, I still burst into tears. The next few minutes were a blur: I vaguely remember him prompting me to say yes and having to wash the gelato off my hands before he slipped the ring on.

That's our engagement story. There were no grand romantic gestures, but in retrospect it was very us: a little awkward, but filled with warmth and humour and earnestness and ice cream, and above all, love. If this is how it's going to start, I'm already looking forward to the next chapter.