Last week I mentioned in a short post that I got engaged in mid-April. After telling both of our immediate families the night of and the day after it happened, my fiance and I took the news online on Facebook only since both of our personal accounts are pretty much locked down and you have to be friends with us to see anything going on there. I didn’t blog about it, other than those few sentences last week, and I have been reluctant to announce the news on any of my personal social media accounts. It isn’t because I’m not happy or excited, it’s because I very much am both of those things. I am extremely happy about it obviously, otherwise I would have said no and I wouldn’t be engaged, but I guess I didn’t want anything to ruin it or attempt to spoil my excitement; so for the most part, I kept the announcement to a controllable minimum. The blogging world is an open forum of public opinion and I wasn’t ready for people to start forming opinions about something as positive and personal in my life as getting married.

I never really had much public blogging drama here on Woman Tribune, which has been appreciated I assure you, but I know that when I publish something under my name here, it follows me. Before I started putting all of my time and attention into this website, I wrote daily on my personal blog, which predominantly deals with progressive liberal feminist issues. I am a great, big, card-carrying feminist and a lot of my audience, online friends, and people who still follow me and what I’m up to on Twitter and other sites are other great, big, card-carrying feminists. When the topic of marriage is put on the table, there is a lot of support, but you also get a lot of people with question marks spewing out of their mouths. I didn’t want to have to answer questions as to why I am choosing to get married to my partner of six and a half years, or how I’m going to get married, what my plans are, what kind of dress I’m going to wear and if it’s going to be white, what I’m going to do with my last name, and so on. I was reluctant to open myself and my personal life up to this specific topic until I was absolutely ready, and now I am ready.

So hey guys, I’m engaged, and we are very happy about it!

Believe it or not, this whole post started out purely as me wanting to share the story of my marriage proposal, but I went off on a bit of a tangent first. So, moving on…

Life is not made up of grand gestures, and my fiance and I have never really been ones for needing something spectacular for it to be meaningful to us. We both have a deep appreciation for the little things in life, and everyday days that contain intimate moments that make us smile whenever we think about them and that we’ll remember throughout our lives. The way we got engaged reflects that perfectly.

In the early evening of April 12th, I was in bed half asleep. I am known to have an odd, off the wall sleeping schedule, so it was pretty much my early morning, and it was one of those times where you can hear life going on around you–cats jumping up onto the bed and back off, my now-fiance was walking through the room–and you just continue to lay there, refusing to give into the whims of others who want you to wake up. So, I’m laying in bed in all of my defiant ‘I am not waking up and you can’t make me’ glory, and suddenly I am being talked to and asked question after question. This is a surefire way to wake me up, but when I do get up, I am going to be in a bad mood. I cannot stand being half-asleep and being asked questions, it’s a pet peeve of mine. Questions make you feel compelled to answer; as if life will indeed stop turning because you didn’t answer someone’s question, and maybe they really needed to know where something was and now they’re just wandering around the house, unable to find the item that they were looking for, which means they are probably making a mess of things that you will find yourself cleaning up and it’s all your fault and you brought that mess you’re going to resent cleaning up all on yourself. That is what being asked questions while I am trying to sleep does to me.

After I don’t know how many questions, he asks me if I want to get married, all nonchalantly and in the same tone of voice he asked all of his previous questions, and because I am a wildly sarcastic human being, I say, “Sure, let’s go,” and proceed to close my eyes again. This is it for him. The seriousness factor of his question registered at about a 1 of 100 for me, and I was going back to sleep, but he was having none of it. He then starts talking about what a nice day it is outside and that I should look out the window. Then the Summoning My Eyes to the Window Event begins. “It’s a beautiful day, look! Look out the window! Look at how nice it is! Will you just look!?” So I look, and on the window sill right next to my side of the bed is a cup of coffee and an opened jewelry box with a piece of paper at the back of the box that he wrote “Good morning, marry me” on, and sitting in the box is a gorgeous engagement ring.

I don’t know how long I laid there staring at what he had set up. I do know that I had tunnel vision for a little while. All I could see was this box and the note and the ring and I don’t know how long it took for me to reach up and get the box, but when I did, I started laughing, I guess because I had no idea what else to do and my brain doesn’t handle surprises complete and utter shock well. So I laughed, until he said, “You know, people usually give an answer.” After saying yes, I put the ring on my finger, took a drink of my coffee (because hello, morning breath) and kissed him.

He was right, it was a beautiful day.