Our Engagement

We got engaged on February 13, 2010. Here's how it happened!

My parents came down to visit for the long weekend (Presidents Day). Marcus and I had gone ring shopping together back in January, so I knew he had the ring and that he was going to propose sometime soon. I actually thought he was going to do it the following weekend, because he was planning our monthly date night for our "monthiversary" then. Anyway, my parents came into town on Friday, February 12. I was still at work when they got in, but it was snowing, so Marcus was home because his office had closed for the day. They had brought down a new (FREE!) tv for us, so Marcus and my dad were lugging it up from the car to our apartment. For some reason, Marcus chose that moment to tell my parents that he was planning to propose to me that weekend and ask for their blessing (so to speak), and my dad almost dropped the huge tv! Luckily he recovered in time...crisis averted!

I got home from work, and we headed out to visit our friends Joel and Shosh so that my parents (especially my mom) could meet their son Eli, who was 5 months old at the time. We stayed there for a while and then went to P.F. Chang's for dinner. After dinner, we talked about going back to our apartment to play games, but we were all pretty tired, so we decided not to. Much to Marcus's chagrin, as he had apparently been planning to propose that night, but his plan was thwarted, so he had to wait one more day!

Saturday we had another fun day, and that night we ended up at Everybody's for dinner. Again we talked about going back to our apartment to play games, and I tried to get out of it because I was tired, but they talked me into it this time. We decided to play Cranium and chose teams: me and Marcus on one team, my parents on the other. After playing a few rounds, it was Marcus's turn. He picked a "charades" card, flashed me the "I love you" sign, then got down on his knee and pulled the ring out of his pocket! At first I wasn't sure if he was really proposing or if he was actually acting out what was on the card, so the first words out of my mouth were, "are you serious?" He assured me that he was, in fact, serious, and I quickly said "yes" and he put the ring on my finger and we hugged for about 2 minutes. Then I got hugs from my parents, and we broke out the camera.

After a few pictures, it was time to start the slew of phone calls! I tried to call my sister while Marcus tried to call his parents, but neither of us got through to any of them! We left messages for them to call us back, and then moved on to calling our grandparents. I called my one grandma first, but had to leave a message there too. Then I called my other grandparents and FINALLY got through to someone! Thus it was that the first people to find out we were engaged (aside from my parents, obviously) were my grandma and Marcus's grandfather. After we had talked to the grandparents, we decided that since it was so late at night, we would save the rest of the phone calls for the next day. My sister called me back later that night and I got to tell her the news (she FREAKED OUT and squealed in my ear!) and ask her officially to be my maid of honor. She was SO excited!

The next day, my parents came to pick us up to go to brunch with Marcus's aunt at the restaurant where Marcus and I were first officially introduced. On the way there and back, my mom made me call ALL of my aunts to tell them the news. I asked her why I had to call them all and she couldn't just tell them, and she said it was because when she got engaged, her mother made her call her aunts and uncles. I said, "oh, so I guess that's not one of the ways you swore you'd never be like your mother, huh?", and she made a face at me and told me just to call them. So by the middle of the day on Sunday (which happened to be Valentine's Day), pretty much everyone knew, and we were able to post it on facebook and officially announce our newly engaged status to the world!

That afternoon, my mom dragged us to every store in Atlanta to start on creating our registries! Yes, we started two registries before we had been engaged for 24 hours. Yes, my mom is crazy. We only put a few things on our registries that day, but I was so overwhelmed by that point that I was running on auto-pilot. I reached my shopping breaking point (which is usually about 2 hours, less if it's in the mall, which this was) in barely over an hour, and luckily we were able to convince my mom that we needed to be done for the day before I had a total breakdown! We went out for a nice dinner, over which we discussed the beginning stages of planning the wedding, and then went back to my parents' hotel for a bit before saying our goodbyes (they left early the next morning) and heading home to go to sleep.

It was a crazy, whirlwind weekend, which was definitely a sign of what lay ahead for us in this planning process. With my mom at the helm (since we are planning from a distance and she is actually there), we knew it would be a fast and stressful, but hopefully fun ride!