Monday Open Thread: Anniversaries and Proposals
Today marks three years since Drew asked me to marry him. That’s us just after he popped the question and I said yes. He proposed in Central Park (where we were married a few months later) on a snowy, wintry Friday afternoon just after work. I met him at the entrance of the park which was, at the time, just a few blocks from where we were living. A week earlier I had given him my great-grandmother’s engagement ring (which I had procured from my mother over the recent holidays) and told him to have it sized and give it back to me when he was ready.
So on February 6, 2009, we met in Central Park for a Friday evening stroll and, as we were crossing over one of the bridges near the southwest entrance, he made some motion to the sidewalk below and said as nonchalantly as he could muster: “Oh, look!” I peered over the edge of the bridge and saw the words “Wendy, Will you marry me? — Drew” written in big sidewalk chalk. I said “yes” and the rest, as they say, is history. Later this week will mark one year since I found out I was pregnant with Jackson — another exciting day in our lives, for sure.
In addition to these dates, we also acknowledge the day our mutual friend put us in touch with each other for the first time (April 19th), the day of our blind date (May 5th, which also happens to be my mom’s birthday) and, of course, our wedding anniversary (July 24th). We don’t “celebrate” all these occasions, but if we remember, we at least make some verbal note of it and sort of acknowledge the passing of time and how well things have worked out so far.
What about you? Do you and your significant other have special dates on the calendar you mark every year? And if you’ve been engaged, what was your proposal like?
My current boyfriend is brand new so we don’t have anniversaries yet, but we’ve already made plans to make the coming leap year day a big “anniversary” thing for us. Eating awesome food, getting massages and pedis, going out and partying.. Just in general appreciating life on such a rare day.
And as a side note, I think it’s seriously adorable that Drew used sidewalk chalk to propose! That’s so creative and sweet 🙂
Treat. YO. Self. Treatyoself 2012 Best day of the year(s)!
Yes! High five if that is a Tom Haverford reference… Treat. Yo. Self!
Your proposal picture is adorable, Wendy!
My husband and I celebrate way too many anniversaries, usually in small ways, but it keeps the romance flowing. We celebrating our “we made it official anniversary” (june 23rd) our engagement (april 23rd) and our wedding anniversary (august 13th). We usually go out on a date for each of them and giggle over how far we’ve come from those days or how much we haven’t really changed since then. We’re not big on presents, so it’s more just acknowledging and be thankful for each other.
My proposal ended up being a bit of a mess, but it was amazing. I spent months complaining that I never see my friends and family since we moved. So, my husband got it in his head that he would arrange this trip back to our alma mater (where we met) for an alumni weekend and have as many of my family and friends there. It was supposed to be a private proposal at a special place on campus, but when we arrived four hours late and just in time for our “celebration” dinner, he ended up getting on one knee in a packed restaurant and I spent about two minutes looking around at everyone going “is this really happening?” It wasn’t the way he planned and it wasn’t private but I loved it, because his heart was in the right place and I had an instant engagement party.
Also, he gave me a journal he kept throughout the process (the day he decided he wanted to marry me, the day he bought the ring, etc) when we got back from the trip and it’s such an important keepsake to me. It meant so much to me to see his feelings are paper.
Giving you a journal is one of the sweetest things I’ve ever heard! I love that so much.
omg, the journal thing is the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard! love it!
The journal makes me wish I could propose to someone and do something awesome like that!
Thanks! He really did an amazing job with the journal. It’s saved his butt a lot of times when I want to scream during arguments. lol He’s terrible at keeping secrets from me and he wanted the whole thing to be a surprise, so he thought a journal would be a good idea to tell me eventually how everything happened.
The journal is such a sweet idea! What a great guy you have!
Nice! We actually only have one current anniversary – May 20, but will soon have a new one when we get married. Here is what our proposal was like.
We were actually in Minnesota visiting my family for Christmas.
The day before we left we spent together. We went to a sit-down Pizza Hut (those things are rare here in CA and he absolutely loves them) for lunch, got lost in the sky-ways in Minneapolis, saw “The girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, skated at the old train Depot and then had dinner.
We got back to my home at ~10pm and he wanted to go to my old “tree-house” which was recently remodeled inside, in order to spend the last bit of our trip together. I was like “No we have to pack first!” since our flight was at 5am the next day. So we packed.
When we finished I asked him if he still wanted to go up to the tree-house and he said he did. Since we didn’t have the heater up there at that moment I suggested we bring some candles to try to heat it up a bit. My mom said we should bring some wine (she knew already :P) so we brought our little picnic up to the tree house and were sitting under a blanket when he started saying things like “You know my family loves you, so does your family, and I love you too” and “I want to be with you forever”. This was getting a bit weird so I said “It sounds like we’re getting married! haha” then he said “Well if you’ll let me we could get engaged” and he whipped out the ring!
I was so surprised! Even though in hindsight the insistence that we go to the tree-house, the wine etc. should have tipped me off, but I was really clueless. I think I said yes eventually after some of the giddiness subsided.
Awww!!!! A treehouse proposal! That is so sweet!
May 20 is our anniversary too! 😀
Anniversary of our 1st date is important to me. I didn’t make a big deal out of it last year, though. I just got him a really nice card and wrote him a letter with all the reasons why I love him. This year I’d like to go out for a nice dinner at our favourite restaurant. I don’t expect a proposal for a few more years, though.
I met my husband in December of 2006. We worked together for months before I accepted a first date. We went on our first date July 3rd, 2007. We started officially dating on July 5th, after months of friendship and of me refusing to accept that I might have feeling for him. We moved in together September of 2008. We got engaged October 30th, 2009. I had just come home from working (served at a Mexican Restaurant). I smelled like fajitas and had told him I had a bad headache. I could not understand why he thought it was a good idea to buy wine. I thought to myself, ” I just told you my head hurts!!” He talked and drank a glass of wine until a look of nervousness came over him. He got on his knee and proposed. One year later (and a month into my new PhD program, we were married. I couldn’t be happier. Can’t wait to celebrate our ” day I found out I was pregant” day.
My husband and I met at work and worked together for almost 5 years, he had just gotten a new job and I was having a hard time with the change of not seeing him as every second of the day (i’m totally over that – i couldn’t imagine working with him now). We had planned a night out with friends and he had taken a “side job” which led to him not sleeping and I thought he was going to be cranky and not wanting to go out. I was upset and started fighting with him, so he wound up explaining himself and proposing in my mother’s den (the side job was he had gone to get my ring and had intentions of getting up on stage at the bar and proposing in front of our family & friends). I screwed that up..but once I got over myself I was thrilled. We don’t celebrate our dating or engagement anniversary, if we remember we’ll mention it, but for our wedding anniversary we’ll usually go out to dinner or take in..try to do something special together. This year we will be married 10 years!!!
Tomorrow, Feb 7th is my birthday and is the day last year that my fiance proposed to me. We went to breakfast before work and when I dropped him off at our house, he asked me to come inside to pet our cat. As soon as we got inside the door, he got down on his knee and asked me to be his wife. I was quite surprised! We are getting married on August 4th, which is close to our dating anniversary (August 7th). I’m really looking forward to it!
Wait – to pet your cat? Is this normal? Did you think something was up then or does he regularly ask if you’d like to come inside to pet the cat? Do cats like being petted?
I just realized I sounded kinda bitchy when I wrote that, and I didn’t mean it that way! But I feel like you’re leaving out some of the story!
At the time, I thought it was strange that he asked me to come inside to pet our cat, but not really that strange. Keep in mind, it was around 8:30 am so I wasn’t completely awake 🙂 Nope, that’s the whole story. It was very simple and romantic
These were my questions too! I know I would have been like “Uhh, I’ll pet the cat when I get home like I always do, and it won’t be a big deal. See you later.”
Of course cats like to be petted! Mine routinely demand to be stroked and massaged and kissed. They are always head butting me and purring and following me around the house. I can’t go anywhere without two cats trotting after me. The little one (a very vocal siamese) howls until I pick her up and rock her like baby.
Awwwwww! Your cats sound adorable.
My husband proposed by telling me the things he loved about me, and the ways having me in his (and his son’s) life made every moment happier… etc. It was beautiful. Except…
I was standing in my closet, in my underpants. Not quite how I imagined that would go. 🙂
Awesome!!
Thank you so much for admitting that. Mine was pretty much the same, except I was topless.
We got the ring. After he had it for several weeks and had not proposed, I started arranging trips to gardens, arboretums, any place nice, trying to give him every opportunity to do it. Nothing. One night I was changing clothes and he said something along the lines of “When do you want the ring?” and I said “When you propose,” so he did it then and there, with me half dressed. I tried to get him to do a do-over so that I would have a story I could, you know, actually tell people when they asked, but nope.
He wanted to keep it anonymous….eh?
That’s hysterical. My best friend’s husband proposed to her in front of me. She had on sweat pants with paint all over them, gloves, and a paint roller in her hand (actually it might have been gardening tool- I might be confusing her old sweats with what she was actually doing at the moment haha). Anyway. I went with him and her uncle to help him pick out the ring, and he said he was going to take her to where they had their first date, but he was so antsy I should have known he wouldn’t wait! Then we headed to her place for a previously planned dinner (in separate cars, but a few minutes apart).
I walked in the door to see him getting on one knee in the kitchen. She said yes and then was like “I didn’t even wash my hair today!” It was pretty funny. The ring was burning a hole in his pocket.
Hah this is awesome. I think if I were to propose that would be me. I can never wait. Last year I got my boyfriend the perfect gift for our anniversary and was so excited I gave it to him a week early.
He remembers it differently, of course, in his memory I was wearing pants and he got down on one knee.
In reality, underpants, no knee, ring came along about 6 weeks later.
My husband and I have a ton of anniversaries, too.
January 26 is the night he got very drunk and friend requested me on Facebook (we were in the same graduate program, and I guess we’d been admiring one another for a while, but each of us thought the other one was unattainable for one reason or another… he thought I was still engaged to someone else, and I thought he hated me) with a very cryptic message attached.
January 27 is known as “Paper Plane Day.” After spending the previous night exchanging several Facebook messages and discovering our reciprocated feelings, we passed notes folded as paper airplanes to one another in our department’s graduate office.
January 28 is the anniversary of our first date (you’ll notice we did not allow ourselves much time for buildup; it was all so exciting and happened so fast–it was a wonderful blur!).
October 26, the day before my birthday, is the anniversary of his proposal. He had been planning an epic, well thought-out proposal, complete with a scavenger hunt that ended with my finding both him and the ring. I kept messing up his plans. My grandfather was dying, so I didn’t go to class when I was supposed to, and I didn’t want to go to hospice without my now-husband. He had also been “throwing me off the scent” by openly declaring his disdain for marriage as often as possible–think Chandler Bing. Anyway, on the third day in a row that I had foiled his plans, he decided to just go ahead and do it. We were staying at my parents’ house at the time. While I was in the shower, he set up a display of the presents he got me in my childhood bedroom: a beautiful coat, a scarf, a stuffed elephant (I love elephants), a card, and a wrapped box. He’d intended for me to find everything on my own after my shower, but I’d taken my pajamas into the bathroom with me, so I didn’t go by my bedroom. I found him in the basement, and he looked really confused. He asked me to go back upstairs and grab a pair of shorts for him (Um, what? Seriously?). I headed up the stairs, and I guess he crept up after me at some point. Anyway, I started going through the gifts, when I got to the wrapped box.
I unwrapped it. Inside was a pretty blue-painted wooden box with a dragonfly on it. I thought this was the gift. I started gushing about what a pretty box it was without opening it. This went on for at least a minute, when I finally decided that maybe the box wasn’t the present and I should open it.
Inside was a beautiful aquamarine ring. My husband came up behind me, got down on one knee, and said, “Will you marry me?”
I, being terrible at moments like this, said, “Are you sure?”
He’s much more suave, and replied, “I couldn’t ask for anything more.”
I’m not sure I ever actually said yes. There was a lot of happy crying.
May 4 is the date of our courthouse wedding.
June 11 is the date of our wedding ceremony/reception. (I didn’t want a wedding and he did, so we had a small ceremony as a bit of compromise.)
So, January is kind of commemoration-heavy, and everything else is nicely spread out 🙂
Whoa, sorry about the novel!
haha the part about your husband being more suave made me laugh out loud
I was totally thinking Chandler Bing before you said “think Chandler Bing”
Cute story!
I can’t remember when our first date was exactly, we had done a few group things that we both attended and some other group date type stuff at first.
But he proposed to me on Christmas morning. I had flown out to see him (we were long distance) for my first “alone” holiday with him away from my family. We spent the days checking out LA and seeing some sights, but mostly hanging out naked. Christmas morning, we woke up and exchanged gifts, then he said he had one more for me, asked me to close my eyes. When I opened them he was on one knee and asked. And we were both still naked! It’s not everyday you get proposed to, let alone while in your birthday suit.
We just celebrated our 7th anniversary in December!
We don’t celebrate any other days really, just our wedding anniversary. I remember our first time holding hands, first camping trip together, our first cross-country drive, first kiss (which we still debate over who initiated lol), first time I saw him after he was back home from Iraq, and so many others. No specific dates, but we reminisce about our past together, makes me feel close to him.
Over the weekend my “serial monogamist in a dry-spell” friend started talking about how he missed “date night”…once a week getting put together and doing something fun, one on one, with someone you care about and I never really thought about it…but he is totally right. I have no anniversaries to contribute here, but this thread made me want to remind ya’ll not to take “date night” for granted!
As another single person, I’ll have to second you. I’ve been single for almost 6 months and while the vast majority of the time I enjoy it, I definitely miss things like “date night” and just generally getting to spend time with someone who you care about a lot, and who feels the same way about you. That said, I don’t really intend on getting into another relationship unless I’m pretty convinced that person could end up being my husband. I’m an all or nothing kind of gal, I guess!
haha yea, i feel the same way. Our mindsets won’t speed things up very much either.
Eh, I really see nothing wrong with that mindset. I’d rather date a very few amount of men seriously than date a bunch of dudes casually. I see so many people going on date after date after date…and they’re exhausted. I’m just content to live my life and do what I enjoy, and trust that some guy will come into the picture while I’m busy having a great time being myself.
That was my attitude exactly and it worked for me. I didn’t want to date just to date and I didn’t want to lead any guy on into thinking I was interested in him when I wasn’t. The nice thing about it was that when I met my husband I wasn’t involved with anyone and so was free to start seeing him.
I think its a great mindset. I’ve only dated 2 guys- one ex and my current bf who may be the one! My best friend maintains that you need more experiences (she means sex. She’s kinda slutty, and I mean that in the best way possible) but I’m perfectly happy with a low number and fewer broken hearts.
Hey hey kids – cool it with this obscene flirting. Just because I’m out of pocket and out of the country doesn’t mean THIS can happen. (Truth, I’m not sure who I’m jealous of. Ugh, of whom I’m jealous.)
Do you guys miss me yet? Because I miss you! I can’t wait to catch up on Dear Wendy when I get home. Though I’ve been keeping up a little. What can I say, I’m a dedicated Dear Wendier. I also can’t wait to detox, do laundry, sleep in my own bed, and go back to work – wait, no.
P.S. Thank you to whoever recommended The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. I read it over the past few days and absolutely loved it!
P.P.S. When did Duty Free get so pricey? I promised my secretary a carton of her favorite cigarettes, but now may be a good time to take a staunch opposition to her nasty smoking habit. Though, I did find enough change for some of my staple perfume — Coco Mademoiselle for those looking for a Valentine’s gift for me.
P.P.S. Is it sad that I really have missed you DW people – people I don’t actually even know – over a mere 6 days? Maybe a little pathetic.
Addie! Can I just say I smiled when I saw your name on the recent comments. I was like YAY ADDIE! Obvs I miss you. Like TONS. Even though I don’t comment or discuss often with you (although I am getting better at opening up and commenting) I always loved reading your funny quirky comments. I’m sure its kinda sad since this is a one sided relationship with me way more invested 😉
Gah I hope I don’t sound creepy. I’m still recovering from a crazy party girl weekend. I guess I should just embrace the creepy.
Yay Lili! And can I just say that you should clearly comment more because you clearly have the BEST things to say. And you are my new best friend. I’m currently eating authentic Mexican chicken fingers at an authentic Mexican Bubba Gump restaurant at the Cancun airport waiting for my flight reading this month’s Vanity Fair and wondering how that non-celebrity stole my boyfriend, Matt Damon, and wishing I had ended up the mother of his 4 children instead. (There’s a short Q+A re him, you see. The Q+A also, features George Clooney (my other boyfriend), but I don’t pine over him bc his GFs are a revolving door of tall skinny brunettes, and I’m missing 2 of those requirements, whereas Matt actually married a commoner (in Brit parlay) that could have been me, damnit.) There, that’s my quirky comment for the day.
I think you’re more Matt (smart, funny + a dw celeb–of course DW has celebs pretty soon I will be expecting the Comment Oscars) than Luciana (unknown) so lets find you a cute unknown non celeb who you can have some down to earth chill time with.
Agree on Clooney. You don’t want to be constantly traded in for a newer younger model. Thats just insulting.
OMG Addie! Thank you for saying EXACTLY the same thing I always say about Matt Damon. People always stare at me like I am a crazy person just because I state he should have married me instead if he wanted a “normal” person. We would have been amazing together.
You have made me feel not quite so insane, so thanks for that!
Dude I can’t remember what it was now, but yesterday I was showering and thinking about something and I’m like, omg self, you must remember to tell DW that. Yea, I think about this website while showering apparently and refer to it in my head as DW like its a real person.
Also, I miss you too Addie!
I do the same thing! DW is a person to me, albeit a schizo person who is Addie sometimes, then LBH and Reginaray. AKChic is the cool outdoorsy persona.
I should prolly add that I have an alter ego. Her name is Kimmie. She comes out to play after too much jaeger, and was out in FULL force this past weekend. Sigh.
Hi Addie! Where have you been?
addie! where in mexico did you go? im going to cabo in march, so im hoping you went to cabo and you have lots of good recommendations for me!!
ps. of course we miss you!
oh we just stayed in Cancun, at an all-inclusive resort. I only left the resort ONCE and that was to go to a Hooters (I know, I know), but we had to go there because they played the MU v. KU basketball game for us. … (go tigers!)
so I have no recommendations. it was lazy, cheap, uncultured vacation for sure. have fun in cabo!
Sorry Addie, I just couldn’t handle that you were gone. I am addicted to flirting…it isn’t you – it’s me.
Ha! I see what you did there.
Do we need to put you in a 12 step Budj?!
i think you’re right. & it feels really good to date & say to all the men, “actually i believe in 1 person & Forever Love & i want that… i don’t want to be just someone’s Girlfriend… & i don’t want to commit to Exclusivity unless that person is talking about Forever with me” yum : )
thanks, budj – that’s sweet : )
I agree, I’m in the same boat too. It’s so nice to look forward to things like date nights!
My fiance talked for weeks about going out to a park that is far away from our large city to look at the stars. We picked a day and we decided to do a picnic first. We went shopping, he made the sandwiches and packed them in a bag and then we left so we could enjoy out picnic at sunset. The picnic was great! We then decided to take a walk and we found a little hill (like the kind you find in Houston) and watched the sun set. Right after it set he said something like “you know how I always say, ‘we’ll see’ well I think going forward it will really mean we’ll see together because I want to see things with” I was thinking he wasn’t making a whole lot of sense so I just said “yeah, okay” then he said “so with that being said, I wanted to see if you would marry me?” then he got on one knee and opened the box. I took the box and looked at him and looked back at the ring in the box and I said “for real?” then he asked again and I said yes! 😀 Wedding is November 3!
“a little hill (like the kind you find in Houston)” <— hills? You mean the overpasses??
😉
no, like the fact that Houston parks aren’t landscaped and wherever the dirt lands there it stays. The little hill was caused by dirt being all in one pile. Seriously, it was about 6 inches high.
Our wedding is November 3rd too! I am so hoping it stays freakishly warm. What state is your wedding in???
Texas! I hope it is warm too!
My husband and I will probably keep celebrating our “we became official” date, which was June 14, 2006. We got engaged on March 23, 2010. Last year we let it pass by without really mentioning it, probably because I was in the midst of finishing law school and planning the wedding, maybe next year we will remember!
We got engaged on a spring break trip. Three of the years we were together in college/ beginning of law school for me, we decided to save up and go on a trip just us. Two of the years we went to Gatlinburg. The next year, I suggested going on a bigger trip, and we went to Virginia Beach. I had a hunch he would propose there, since my mom accidentally let it slip he had stopped by in February when I was at work, then couldn’t think fast enough to make up an excuse for why he was over (he was picking up the diamond we used in my ring, it was my great grandma’s and was set in a necklace at the time).
Our trip started out on a bit of a bad note. We decided to drive to Athens, OH where we went to college (and my husband was finishing up his last quarter) then leave the next morning, making our drive a little more bearable. When we got there, my husband realized he forgot his keys to his apartment. We finally got someone to let us in, and then he asked me “hey, is your bumper supposed to look like that?” To which I replied “um no honey, its not supposed to be hanging a few inches from where it should be attached.” We almost came back because of worry about the expense of fixing the car (something broke under the wheel, causing it to separate). We decided to go anyway.
When we got to the hotel, my husband showered and I couldn’t help it, I poked around his bag trying to feel a ring box and I didn’t. Turns out it was in his shoe, he was prepared for me! I think he was a little annoyed that I had a hunch, which he knew since I nicely said “If the ring is here, propose soon or hide it in the lock box, because this Days Inn probably isn’t the safest place for it!”
One night we went for a walk after dinner, and we decided to come back down on the beach. I stopped to take a picture, and when I looked up from fumbling in my bag, he had the ring out and was getting on one knee. I said yes before he got the whole sentence out and before his knee hit the sand! I spent the rest of the trip with my left hand clenched, because I think they measured me too generously at the store and the ring was a little loose. I was petrified of losing it!
We got married August 27, 2011, and I am looking forward to celebrating that anniversary. We might go on a trip if vaction time and money will allow! Also, that wedding cake top layer is still in our freezer. Its take up a shit ton of room, so we may eat it before the year mark!
I had that clenched left hand experience w/ the loose ring too! We were on a 3-week trip of Ireland & the UK, and he proposed on day 3, and the Cliffs of Moher (aka the Cliffs of Insanity!) in Ireland. He had stolen my right hand ring at one point to measure the size, which he found out was a size 6 when he went to buy the ring, but he remembered that I had mentioned a few times that I was a size 7. Since it could only get sized once, he went w/ the size 7, and it turns out I’m a size 6 according to the jewelers sizing chart. I also just wore it on my middle finger a few times. ‘cuz it fit great on that finger!
My husband and I don’t really celebrate any of our anniversaries. Neither of us can remember the date of our first date (we just say it was the begining of March). Last year I think I casually mentioned our engagement anniversary (June 29th)… but this year we will definitely celebrate our 1st Anniversary of being married!
As for our engagement… I had a very strong feeling that it was going to happen that summer. Like REALLY strong. So I was on high alert. He mountain bikes and I run, so frequently we’ll go to the park together so he can bike and I’ll run- but I had recently hurt my shoulder and wasn’t running. So he asked me to go on a walk in the park with him to check out the baby deer he’d been seeing while biking lately. I’m a sucker for all things baby animals, so I agreed. It was a Monday night, not really a prime time for an engagement, but still I knew something was up. He’d brought his camera and a backpack, which I thought was suspect, and he kept messing with something in his pocket, which I assumed was a ring. It was starting to get dark, so we started heading back to the car. He then pulled his lenscap out of his pocket and put the camera away in his backpack. At that point I lost all hope, and just assumed it was a normal walk in the woods. He walked down this little embankment down to the river and was like “come down here and look at the water with me”- I’d had enough at that point and replied something to the effect of “eww! There’s a ton of bugs down there- Gross!” He convinced me to come down, and we were standing there on the riverbank when he pulled out the ring and asked me to marry him. I apparently didn’t say yes until we were halfway back to the car. I kept asking him if he was sure he wanted to marry me 🙂
He planned it out very well, because I was seeing all of my extended family (who live 5+ hours away) that weekend, so I got to share the news with all of them in person!
I don’t have a proposal story yet, but I just wanted to jump in and say I love this thread! Reading everyone’s romantic stories makes me all warm and mushy.
Agreed Kristen, this is a super cute feel-good thread. My boyfriend and I have two anniversaries. The first is the day we met (June 4th 2009) and the second is the day I moved to Austria and we moved in together (March 11 2010). We usually get all dressed up and go out to a really fancy dinner. Last June we rented a paddle boat and drank beer and paddled and swam around the river before dinner at this amazing little riverside restaurant. Oh man, I miss summer! haha!
As for proposals, I haven’t had one yet, but I know EXACTLY what I want. The two of us, alone, by the christmas tree on Christmas Eve. In my fantasy, he ties the ring on the tree like an ornament. I tell my whole family on Christmas eve/day, and then tell all our friends on New Years Eve (no facebook announcement until after!)
In a room filled with balloons. Stella anyone?
what? movie reference?
Yea, its a movie with Bette Midler. I remember watching it as a kid and that’s how she’s proposed to. Actually, I think she says no, but it always stuck in my mind as how I want to be proposed to.
I love these stories. My fiancé and I met through Match.com (it really can work!) and our first date was October 9, 2010. He proposed on May 12, 2011 (yes only 7 months later) and we will be married on September 1, 2012! We both had quite a bit of dating and relationship experience by the time we met and it didn’t take us long to realize this was it for us! I still can’t believe I met him online and am so thankful I decided to give the whole online dating thing a try.
You know, for as prevelent as online dating is, I know almost zero couples that have used it. I met my husband on eHarmony and a friend of mine from college met her husband from Match, but that’s it. Nice to meet you, fellow online dater! I sing its praises all the time! We always joke about being in the commercials some day, and every time one comes on, my husband always has to “thank the good doctor” or just smiles at me.
i met my husband online too! 🙂
Oy. My proposal story is awful. I will share it because I take the chance to bitch about it whenever possible.
My husband hates forced or expected shows of affection. He hates V-day, anniversaries, birthdays, etc, but he’s the type of guy who surprised me with brunch just this Sunday (chocolate croissants! quiche! sparkling wine!), routinely makes a fire and buys nice wine just because it’s Wednesday, cooks meals which he names after me, and is physically and verbally affectionate on a daily basis. I’ve determined that I more than come out ahead on the deal, so whatever.
Well, proposals fall under “forced or expected shows of affection” for him. He couldn’t get into the idea of a big proposal. So he started asking me to go to the courthouse to get married, in a conversational way. He wanted a “secret wedding” because we were only together about 8 months and neither of us thought people would take us seriously so early on. I said no, that I wanted a real engagement and then I’d be happy to do the courthouse thing. Basically I said “I will get secret married, but I want to be for-real engaged in the meantime.” We actually went back and forth on that for quite a while, with me refusing to go to the courthouse and demanding some type of proposal/ring (nothing big, but I thought that his refusal to do ANYTHING was obnoxious, and possibly that it meant that he wasn’t taking this whole thing seriously enough) and with him digging in further, refusing to propose on principle. He even bought a ring that he knew I loved, then gave it to me and said “here, you might as well just wear this.” So of course I refused to. For 3 months. We both got so entrenched in our viewpoints on the subject (even though we were in agreement that we wanted to marry each other!) that it caused a huge divide.
In the end, the military threatened to deploy him (and eventually did), so we got our heads out of our asses and pulled together a lovely wedding in 2 months.
As for the proposal, he gave me the ring (still not sized, even after having it for 3 months… stubborn/forgetful bastard) while we were on the couch in our PJ’s. He got down on one knee and asked, and I said yes. I instantly felt anxious and didn’t tell anyone for a week, because it was such a sore subject and I didn’t want that damn ring anyway at that point.
That said, marrying each other was the best thing that either of us ever did. I don’t think that either of us is proud of how we acted around that subject. Without the external pressure of the military we both could have let things unfold naturally. I’m aware that plenty of people get a great proposal but a sucky marriage, so I am grateful for what I have, of course. My husband’s brother recently asked him point-blank if he wishes he had handled it differently, and that’s the first time my husband ever said that yes, he wishes that he proposed in a romantic way.
My husband and I don´t really celebrate anniversaries, but we do say something about it on the day, around the date.
We have: September 28th (2002: 1st date), February 28th (2004: when I moved in with him), July 26th (2007: when we got married).
I always remember June 11th 2002 was the 1st day we met (the day after his birthday).
Totally unrelated- Wendy, you have the perfect “no teeth” smile! I keep trying to master that, but I end up looking like a fool 🙁
We acknowledge our dating anniversary (Nov 25 – we made it up because we couldn’t remember what date we actually became boyfriend and girlfriend. It’s definitely the date of our first kiss though!) and we will be acknowledging our wedding anniversary – our first – on June 12.
Although I do remember the date of his proposal, we don’t celebrate it or even say anything about it. I guess we’re boring, ha.
His proposal – we picked out the ring together and it came in (without my knowledge) while we were visiting his family across the country. When we came back I passed out from jet lag and he left to pick up the ring in a part of the city he wasn’t familiar with. He also brought back some of my favourite things like sushi and bread for us to have lunch with. We went on a walk and he was acting all weird so I knew it was coming.
my husband and i are pretty low key about anniversaries. it could be that i have a terrible memory and tend to ‘remember’ the big things like two months after they’ve passed. we were thinking of going to dinner for our 6 month wedding anniversary and we just realized last week we missed it…back in november, haha. good thing we’re both on the same page with being forgetful 😉
we had our third date and our first real kiss on new years eve. so that’s always a special date for us.
our proposal is actually fairly hilarious. he had hidden my ring in a slim jim container (like one of those old metal ones they used to sell them in back in who knows what year). anyway, there was never anything in there (just a decoration, his idea of a decoration ;)) and then one day about 2 and a half years in to dating i picked it up to dust and i was like what is in there. instead of being secretive he was just like go ahead open it up. yeah, i took my own ring out of the slim jim container. but then he sat me down and said all the romantic cute stuff he’s so good at saying and it made up for the slim jim container. part of the proposal was that he wrote a poem for me. i haven’t done anything with it yet, but i’m trying to figure out a cute way to display it in our house. i’m not very crafty so if anyone has any ideas feel free to share 🙂
this may will be our one year wedding anniversary, which i’m definitely looking forward to 🙂 i’m hoping to go to charleston for a long weekend to celebrate!
(ugh and this is jlyfsh for some reason my computer logged me out and it defaulted to my old user name, i’m starting to feel a little crazy with my name switching. the fact that i forget to log in or my computer randomly logs me out all the time does NOT help.)
You could put it in one of those multi-photo frames and fill all the other frames with pictures of the two of you. Also, despite the slim jims, this is really cute.
thanks, one day i’ll eventually give this a try! 🙂
My boyfriend and I aren’t really big on anniversaries. Our first date was July 3rd, 2009 and one year later I pointed it out and we joked all day that it was our “date-iversary”. Last year, I was out of town in July, and this year, I think I’ll be bogged down with work. In general I’d rather not build up one day to have to be something special – the same reason I tend to dislike Valentine’s Day.
My fiance and I don’t really know what our anniversary is. Is it our first date? Or is it 6 months after that when we decided to make it official? (He went back to his ex-gf after our first date, and then realized she was still a crazy lady and asked me out again). I know the general days (our first date was the first Redskins game after Sean Taylor died, so I could figure out what the day was, I’m sure) and the latter day was a Wednesday in June, but I’m not sure of the actual date…didn’t take note of it the day it happened! When people ask how long we’ve been together we go “oh, uhhh…about four years” We were given a diamond that was his grandmother’s by his family, and got the setting made. I jokingly asked him “are you going to actually propose, or are you just going to toss the ring box at me on the way home from the jewelry store?” He said he wanted to propose to me and do it right. Let me just say, the time between going home from the jewelry store and the actual proposal was TORTURE! I had this gorgeous ring sitting there waiting for me, and I knew where it was, and I couldn’t wear it!
So many people are getting engaged right now though! My good friend and then my aunt both got engaged this past Friday, another friend a few weeks before, and about 6 couples I know got engaged over the holidays! Lots of weddings for me this year!
My boyfriend and I have several dates too. There’s Valentines Day, which is special because we weren’t dating yet at all. I wrote a piece about it last year:
Our actual anniversary- the day we became “official”- I can never remember, which is a running joke since stereotypically it should be the other way around. We went to the annual dance held by our college and got in an argument. It sounds so juvenile, but hey we were still kids back then! I said something along the lines of “You’re mine, and that’s not cool with me!” He had apologized about ten times at this point, but when I said that he stopped looking sorry and grinned at me, which shut me up. “What?!” I said. To which he replied, “Oh I’m yours, am I?” I paused for a second and then yelled at him, “YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT YOU ARE!” And then he kissed me… and well, we made up, obviously. Haha.
The reason I can’t remember the date is this: it was after midnight, and I can’t ever remember if we said we would honor it the date of the dance, or the after midnight date. It was the end of the month: the 29th or the 30th. It was a Friday or a Saturday. And for the life of me I can never remember which was which. I have a mental block on it. I have to go back through a calendar every single year to figure it out, and then I always second guess myself. I can’t wait until we’re married so he can stop teasing me about not remembering our anniversary! I want a new one to cancel this one out. Lol.
awwwww tears at work reading that piece you wrote : )
My husband and I celebrate 2 anniversaries, the anniversary of our first date (December 7th, 2007) and I’m sure we’ll celebrate our wedding anniversary (October 15th, 2011). We haven’t really ever celebrated by giving each other gifts (we’re more “go out and do stuff” kind of people), and we celebrated our very first anniversary (Dec 7th, 2008) by recreating our first date. Not sure how we’ll celebrate our wedding anniversary, but I’ve teased my husband that he doesn’t have any excuse to forget our wedding anniversary because it falls 4 days after my birthday and 1 day before his twin brothers’ birthday. 🙂
As for our proposal story (we got engaged June 25th, 2010, but haven’t really celebrated this date at all), it was actually pretty funny:
We were on a roadtrip out east that began with a stop in the New River Gorge region of West Virginia. We were planning on a day of whitewater rafting, and the day got off to a bad start because Chris (my husband) was hell bent on staying at a certain campground that was ‘first come, first served’ and long story short, we ended up pitching our tent at the wrong campground. By the time we realized this, it was too late to move the tent, so we drove to the correct campground and put down some camping chairs and a big water bottle to mark our spot. I was getting pissed at Chris because we were going to be late for rafting and I didn’t really care where we camped that night. After the day of whitewater rafting (we weren’t late, fortunately!), we went back to the first campground, picked up our tent and then went to the second campground only to find that all of the stuff we had put down had been stolen, and a group of sketchy looking dudes had taken over the spot we had marked, so we didn’t press the issue. Chris suggested that, since we were already there, we should go for a walk and we hiked a trail along a creek right before sunset. We stopped to admire a beautiful little waterfall when Chris sat me down on a rock and told me that he had brought me there for a reason and then pulled out a ring box from the cargo pocket of his shorts, got down on one knee and presented me with a beautiful ring as he asked me to marry him. It was pretty much perfect (and we both promptly forgot about our stolen camping chairs). 🙂
This is fun! The BF and I have two main anniversaries. The first date- 12/18/07 we always go to the movies because that’s what our first date. Ok this year we didn’t because there weren’t any movies we wanted to see…but we plan on starting up again next year.
Our other anniversary is “I Love You Day”. He was dropping me off at home and he leaned over, gave me a kiss, and said “bye, I love you.” He got this terrified look on his face and cover his mouth with his hand, totally embarrassed. Neither of us had before said it before, so he was totally shocked. It happened to be April Fools Day which makes the whole story even better 🙂
And the proposal, well that is happening before May 1…I’m not going to his little sisters wedding as his GF! And it’s only been 4 plus years!
I LOVE the accidental “I love you” slip!! We had that happen too – I don’t know about you guys but we had been doing the fun dance around it for a little while. We kept saying like…everything but. “I love spending time with you.” “You’re the most amazing person.” “I like you so much.”
But I think that when it kind of blurts out that it’s sometimes much more special…you know they’ve been thinking it for a while and that they really mean it.
Yeah, he kept saying things like “you love me” and such. It was super adorable 🙂
ohh, proposal… don’t remember when but it was in january 2010 in the middle of the idahoan witer. during dinner with a mutual friend we were discussing our future; he becoming a teacher and me starting my ph.d. and moving away and leave the state. our friend said; well, why don’t you just get married? the idea was always there, we has already thought of getting married but i guess in that moment everything made sense to us. he said, “well, i will if you ask me.” and i did and he said yes. since there wasn’t ring i tied one hair around his finger while our mutual friend was crying her eyes out, she was so happy for both of us. we got married at the courthouse in july but we celebrate our wedding anniversary on october 10th because that’s the day we threw out small wedding party with family and friend at our friend’s beautiful backyard
I love reading everyone’s stories! On a random note, I hate when people kind of lie about their anniversary. It’s not any of my business, but it still annoys me. One of my friends counts her and her boyfriend’s first kiss as their anniversary date…when that was two years before and they both had committed relationships to other people between that time span. So whenever people ask how long they’ve been dating, she says “Three years” as if the rest of the time didn’t exist. I just think it’s odd, but to each their own…
My best friend played revisionist history like that too. She and her now-ex were friends with benefits, and only a few of us close friends knew that. Others would say “are you two dating?” and they would always say “no just friends.” In that time they dated and had benefits with others but did eventually become an exclusive couple. Then they counted all that time when they were FWB as part of their relationship.
I guess if the feelings and/or actions were there but it wasn’t official then it’s silly to deny that part of it, but on the other hand you are kind of artificially inflating the length of your real relationship to include all this time you were screwing around. But you’re right, its not our business.
Then again, me and my boyfriend never had a “lets become officially official” talk, it just happened… so have we really not been official at all? Maybe some would consider me lying about the length of our relationship too.
My fiance and I celebrate kind of a lot of anniversaries but usually in silly low-key ways (an excuse to go on a date night, out to the movies or make a special dinner at home)- we celebrate the anniversary of when we became official (Jan 7th) each month, the anniversary of when we moved in together (August 3rd) and the anniversary of when we got engaged (November 2nd) each month. It sounds silly, but its just an extra excuse to cut out special time out of our days for each other (its not like we’re getting each other 3 gifts or cards a month or anything lol).
Our proposal story is..well..absurd. I had been pestering him about it for a while and it had been the source of a lot of heated and emotional discussions – he told me in January that he wanted to propose to me “in a few months”…and obviously he waited like 11 months to do it, so you can only imagine how frustrating it was as March, April, May etc. all ticked by with no ring. He would do weird things that would make me think he was about to propose (I burped once and he grabbed my hand, got down on one knee, and asked me for my hand in “burp marriage”). Suffice it to say, I was on edge and I’m sure it was making it stressful on him to try to figure out how to make it a surprise for me.
It turned out to be a surprise to both of us. I got home from school around 5 or so, and he was taking our dog for a walk so the apartment was empty. I called my mom to chat about my week and noticed as I was pacing around that there was a random screwdriver on the kitchen counter. So when he got home, I asked him why the screwdriver was out and if something was broken. He said “nothing, don’t worry about it” which immediately got my suspicion up, so I started asking “What did you break? Why is this here?” His response, obviously, was to yell “NOTHING!” and run into our bedroom and shut and lock the door. So I chased him, and started banging on the door – I mean, what the heck was he hiding?? When he finally let me in he said “I didn’t want to do this now but…” and got down on one knee and asked me. Apparently he said some romantic stuff too but to be honest I don’t remember that stuff lol.
It was ridiculous and absurd and frankly, we’re pretty strange, so it’s kind of the only way that the engagement was going to go down – a big romantic moment just isn’t our style lol.
Wait so did the screwdriver have something to do with proposal prep? Or did he really break something and distracted you with a ring?
OK Completely forgot to explain that part! So he had apparently used the screwdriver to open the box in which the jeweler mailed the ring to him. He thought when I was asking about the screwdriver that I had figured it out…when I really just thought maybe one of the cabinets in the kitchen had come loose or something. Sometimes he can be a little dopey – and after he explained it we came up with like a zillion reasons he could have given for having the screwdriver out – because, after all, who would be like “a screwdriver? YOU’RE PROPOSING!!” What can I say? That’s my babe 🙂
So adorable! My husband and I celebrate our first date (December 20th) and our wedding date (August 2nd).
For everyone engaged I have a related suggestion. Have your wedding date engraved on your wedding ring. This sounds very silly but I occasionally forget what year I got married but I can always slip my ring off and check 🙂 It was only 4 years ago but somehow I still get confused.
The jeweler told me to add the date to my husband’s inscription so he would never forget. So his inscription is In aeternum and the date.
My wedding ring is a simple gold band, but it’s inscribed with a note from my husband and our wedding date. It definitely makes it more special.
A few people gave us gifts that had our wedding date on them- One in particular was a beautiful handmade mosaic that had our names and wedding date. It’s on display at our house, so there’s really no excuse for forgetting our anniversary!
Timely! My longtime boyfriend (going on eight years) proposed on Friday. I’m still a little wigged out to be honest (and that’s making me more freaked on top of it–“Why are you wigged out? Stop! You’re excited! Be more excited!”).
Congratulations!
Yay! Congrats!
How exciting! Congrats! It can be really overwhelming and weird feeling at first. Give yourself some time to adjust!
We’d been living together for a little over 7 years on New Years Day and we were reading the paper on the couch at home. It was a quiet morning so I blurted out: Ya want to get married this year? She said “Sure, why not.” It was romantic as all get out. No ring was involved but I called my mom with the news which sealed the deal in stainless steel.
It was labor day before we had an open weekend for a wonderful wedding in our backyard. More then 100 friends showed up which surprised us. That day marked 8 years and 1 day that we’d been together. We forgot to put out the chocolate waffler favors, they were in the fridge, until later that weekend. We still have one of those in the freezer.
My boyfriend and I aren’t engaged/married, but we have celebrated our first date anniversary. It ended up being almost disastrous because I have the worst memory paired with never wanting to write anything down so I really didn’t know what day our first date was on. I knew it was somewhere in the middle of October so I ended up in this awkward always-be-ready-with-small-gift-and-card for about a week and a half. I could not admit to being the lame one who can’t remember something. And he was so excited about it.
I cannot remember if we went out to eat or what, all I remember is that he gave me a big card with a bunch of cut-out animals from a magazine saying that I could get whatever animal I wanted to keep on his farm. Such an amazing present! I believe I wrote him a note saying all the things I loved about him and then gave him a handkerchief I cross stitched on. I don’t think we are planning on getting engaged anytime soon, which is fine with me. But I hope that the story ends up being slightly humorous, slightly sweet, because those are always my favorites.
Though I got engaged years (decades) ago it seems like only yesterday that it happened. My husband and I had been dating two years and had discussed marriage. On December 23rd he picked me up after work and he was very sketchy about what we were going to do. Plus, he was very, very nervous, which I had never seen him act like that before, which in turn made me nervous.
He had planned to take me out to dinner and take a romantic stroll on the beach, and propose there, but I didn’t know this. I’m a control freak and do NOT like surprises! Since he was acting so weird/nervous and I since he was being vague, I asked him to please take me home. He agreed, then kept insisting on taking a stroll in this dark, secluded park on our way home. (Because he was acting soooooo strange and I have an active imagination, I thought “OMG he’s going to kill me and bury my body and no one will ever know what happened! Cue Psycho theme song here)
I started to panic and asked him to please just take me home. He pulled over and stopped the car. I quickly got out of the car and I started walking toward the bus stop, he called my name and when I turned around he was down on one knee with a box and a ring and asked me to marry him. I said “Yes, but seriously I thought you wanted to kill me!!”
I love telling people my psycho engagement story and he loves telling people how I ruined his romantic plans to propose.
hahahaha!!!! This is soooo something I would do! Your story is awesome!
Tomorrow is our 15th wedding anniversary!
aw! i love reading everyone’s stories.
my boyfriend and I dont celebrate anything. we dont even have an actual date that we got together. this one night, after we had gotten back from a group trip in canada, he helped me bring my luggage back to my dorm room, and we watched the little mermaid, and we were together since. we did decide this year that we need an actual date, so he suggested 3-6-09, since it sounds so cool. and he said he wont forget it because its 3-6-9… haha. so maybe next month i will get to celebrate an anniversary with him!
These stories are so cute. 🙂
My boyfriend and I celebrate our dating anniversary on June 17th. We started dating when we were working at a summer camp, and it’s really nice that we still go up there every year because we can recreate that first night that we decided to be a couple. Shortened version of the story: I was the one who suggested that we think about dating after we got to know each other. We went on a dinner date and had an amazing time getting to know each other. We got back to the camp and decided to take a walk. The camp has a beautiful garden area about a mile or so away, so that’s where we went. (I should also mention that this area is on the border between two countries.) We walked through the gardens and found our way to the border. So we stood there, one person in each country. He brought me in for an amaaaazing hug (he’s a great hugger!) and then he told me to close my eyes. He then kissed me, each of us in a different country. That was when we decided to make it official. 🙂
My boyfriend and I don’t celebrate anything together, which for some reason is really bothering me today. I’ve always put so much of a focus onto being the opposite of high maintenance that I sort of decided for us that we weren’t doing those things years ago (when we dated the first time in my high school/ his undergrad). And I’m usually okay with that. I would feel reeeeeeeally stupid if we did the whole red roses, high heels, nice dinner thing for Valentine’s Day. But I do sort of wish we celebrated an anniversary together. And of course if I don’t say we should, he’s not going to. Gahhh I’m just feeling really cranky.
Sometimes you gotta help them out. Like I am super picky in everything. Like example – this fall I really wanted a grey leather purse with both light and dark shades in a patchwork style. Pretty specific huh? Well turns out that purse doesn’t exist. When I say I checked 23 different purse stores online, I am not exaggerating. So that was a long rant. But what I wanted to get at, is I buy most of my own presents from him, wrap them, and make him give me a card. Then everyone’s happy!
If you want to celebrate your anniversary – this is what you do – “Hi honey I got us tickets to a cool new wine tasting in town, and I figured we would probably be pretty hungry after getting all boozed up so I made us some reservations for dinner afterwards. Oh and I’m going to dress up because I got cute new pumps, so you should try to match or dress up or at least shave. Oh and p.s. it’s for our anniversary. Don’t worry about getting me anything because you just bought me 10 passes to Corepower Yoga, which was so sweet of you. (This only works if you’re married or have access to his bank account). Love you!”
hahaha! That’s a good idea! It wouldn’t really work for us, because he likes to put a lot of meaningful thought into things that he gives me. And I really truly do not want him to buy me stuff any more than he already does. I guess I’m just lamenting the fact that we don’t even acknowledge an anniversary with a card or talking about it or anything. I truly don’t want anything except an “I’m so glad we’ve been together for X years, happy anniversary, love you!” The way our set up is now, we don’t do any of that ever. And it’s my fault for setting that precedent to begin with… but hey, how was I supposed to know I would turn into an adult with emotional needs? haha Maybe I’ll take your suggestion about making anniversary plans for us and seeing what happens. I’m always so concerned about coming off as high maintenance that I’m too afraid to bring up things that I want.
Why not start now? It will still be special, and you can start a new tradition!
Girl, you gotta let that go. I too used to be all like – i’m going to be the best. girlfriend. ever. I’ll let you go out with your friends whenever, i’ll go shooting with you, we can drink beer, I won’t ever yell at you or call too much. Well that was annoying. Being laid back can be really high maintenance sometimes you know? It took effort to not care that much. So if you’re not into buying yourself stuff from him I think you can still plan the day. And I don’t think he’ll care that all of the sudden you want to celebrate it.
My mom (who is amazing by the way) always told me that your feelings are allowed to change. Things become important to you as you age that you never cared about before. So another little anecdote – I rarely wear my wedding ring. GASP. I’m just not that into jewelry and I don’t remember it half the time – and the other half i’m more likely to lose it while wearing it. Oh and i’m kind of oddly OCD in the fact that I hate washing my hands with it on because it sticks up you know? If I wear anything at all I will wear my band because it’s flat, but even that i’m not really into. Weird. The only jewelry I really wear is earrings, and that’s because I keep the same diamond ones in all the time. My friends think i’m really strange like i’m breaking some huge life rule. I just tell them my husband doesn’t think it’s a big deal, I never get hit on so I must be putting off some kind of taken vibe (that or i’m ugly, which I refuse to accept yet, haha) and I’m just not that into jewelry. Anyways I started to feel really strange about this, like what’s wrong with me? Why aren’t I just o.m.g. i’m married and everyone I meet has to know by the huge rock on my finger. I felt like I was missing some girl gene or something. But my mom was just like don’t even worry about it. It will probably become more important to you the older you get. It totally clicked. Like i’m not crazy, this is not a huge deal. And I thought about it and realized how right she was, probably if I ever have kids I will care about it, but for now I just don’t.
So my point is don’t worry about it. If you all of the sudden want to celebrate your anniversary, that’s fine. Just start doing it every year. Worry less about what he’ll think. Honestly he might be super excited about it. Make a new tradition or something that makes it fun and not a drag. It doesn’t have to be boring dinner and a movie. You can make it anything. My ideal anniversary would be hiking followed by the coors brewery. But you can do whatever.
Excellent point! I’m writing that down right now. I’ve been so afraid of changing my mind about things that affect both of us for appearing to be the crazy-bitch sort of high maintenance. Man, what happened in my childhood that I’m so scared of taking too much in relationships? I’m going to work on this. Thanks for your help!
My husband and I are anti-stuff people. In that if we’re going to spend money on some item either for ourselves or any one else, it has to be something that can get some kind of use out of it. Fortunately, neither of us are anti-gift card people, either. We also both vastly prefer experiences over things. For example, the 4 Valentine’s Days we have spent together went like this: dinner at a French restaurant in Georgetown where we got to get dressed up (years 1 and 2), a Black Eyed Peas concert and we used some gift cards we had gotten for Christmas to have a free dinner at the Cheesecake Factory (year 3), a cruise and we celebrated the holiday on the ship’s romantic, and somewhat pricey, restaurant (year 4) – this was also our mid-wedding planning vacation, and it was such a nice break from all the stress. This year, well, I’m not sure what we’re going to do. We just bought a house, some furniture, and paid for a wedding, so we be po’ at the moment. We’ll probably use the gift cards my dad gave us for Christmas to P.F. Chang’s since we won’t have to pay for anything, and we’ll celebrate early since he has to work late on the actual day. For anniversaries we have gone to other shows, and the one we had while engaged we saw Michael Buble in concert (his suggestion – good man!). One of his songs ended up being our first dance song, too, so it has extra special meaning. For Christmas a couple of years ago, and as a wedding gift, he gave me a gift card to get a massage and facials and stuff. If there’s not something we need, or even want that badly, we try to find ways to do stuff together. It’s especially nice since with his work schedule, and the fact that we have a roommate, it is so rare for us to get true alone time. We like spice it up when we do. And since we don’t do the whole tangible gift thing regularly, or lots of stuff throughout the year, we prefer to save up our pennies for something extravagant and out of the ordinary every now and then or for special occasions. I actually told him he can do a card if he wants, but don’t get me a present. I don’t need anything. I just want to go to dinner or something low key.
That sounds so fun!! I now want a cheesecake factory gift card, by the way. Just as a note to all the DWers who want to buy me stuff…. I know you’re out there somewhere!
I HATE when I know exactly what I want, but then I can´t find it anywhere. Shame I´m so useless, otherwise I would sew/knit myself the stuff I invent!
My husband and I celebrate the date of our first date and wedding anniversary. I can never remember when our first date is, but I’ve kept the e-mails ( we met online), so I can look it up. Reading them right now made me smile.
We got engaged on our fourth anniversary. He proposed at the waterfall where we had our first kiss, and had wrapped the box in a small cap and gown that he had gotten at Build a Bear, since we were ‘graduating’ to the next step in our relationship.
On a related note, we went to Australia on our honeymoon because it was one of the two continents that I hadn’t been to. We are talking about going on a cruise to the Antarctic for our 10 year anniversary.
My bf and I celebrate our first date anniversary, May 14th. Well we’ve been together not quite two years, so we’ve done that once. Last year he got me a roomba though, which I have adored every day since. I think this year I’ll suggest just a nice dinner out, rather than presents. Partly because nothing will ever top the roomba.
Also if I remember that it’s the 14th of the month on the 14th of the month I’ll say something like “oh it’s the 14th, we’ve been together X months.” We don’t celebrate the month-iversary, as I call it, except to acknowledge that it happened.
As for proposal… hasn’t happened yet, but the cat is kinda out of the bag. We had been talking pretty seriously about getting married for a couple months and then I said “Why don’t we just decide to be engaged and bypass the ring?” but he said no, that it would take all the romance out of it.
Then a week later we are at dinner and he goes “I have something for you” and pulls out a little ziploc with rings in it. They were sizing rings from some website and he had me try them on right there in the restaurant to decide what size I am. I’m a little envious of everyone that gets it to be a total surprise, but I guess that’s just not our style. I’m hard to surprise anyways, because I’m the planner of our relationship. If he got all shady and told me not to plan X day because he wanted to plan something, it would be a dead giveaway. I pretty much expect I’m going to inadvertently plan my own proposal because I’ll plan the dinner or activity and he’ll just decide that sounds like a good one to propose at and do it then.
We had EXACTLY the same thing with our engagement. I’m definitely more Type-A in our relationship, and I am an over-planner. There was pretty much no way it was going to be a surprise if he tried to do a big, romantic proposal. And, sure, while the surprise ones are nice, every couple is different.
I have a friend who was COMPLETELY SURPRISED when she got engaged…as in, they had never even talked about getting married. After he proposed they had to have a long talk about if they were really going to do “this.” I don’t know that I’d ever want a surprise of that magnitude – I think its good that you both know where you’re going, you’re both making sure it’s what you want, and he’s pretty much going to know he’s not buying the ring for nothing 🙂
This is true. It surprises me that anyone would ask that question without already basically knowing the answer- like talking about it, feeling her out, etc. I certainly wouldn’t want to be proposed to completely out of the blue, but maybe a little less advance notice would be nice 😉
Ah well, I love him so I’m kinda stuck with it, huh? That said, I had thought he might do it sometime back, before we had really talked in depth about it. Because I’m all type A obsessive-like I sat down with myself and thought about it and (nerd-alert) wrote out in my journal about it. And came to the conclusion that I would say yes. So now I’m prepared!
I read somewhere else today about the dynamic of proposals, which creates a situation in which a man has months or years to come to the conclusion to marry someone and then a woman has basically the span of a few seconds to decide if she wants to say yes. Certainly doesn’t seem very fair.
I’ve tried to get my BF to agree to the “Why don’t we just decide to be engaged and bypass the ring?” thing too and he refuses! We’ve set a wedding date and are starting to look for vendors and he still insists on a big, grand proposal! It is incredibly sweet…but I’m past ready!
I’ve tried to get my BF to agree to the “Why don’t we just decide to be engaged and bypass the ring?” thing too and he refuses! We’ve set a wedding date and are starting to look for vendors and he still insists on a big, grand proposal! It is incredibly sweet…but I’m past ready!
TODAY is my 1.5 year anniversary with my wonderful boyfriend 🙂 We are planning to celebrate later this month by spending a weekend at a “tzimmer” — a romantic little guesthouse in the north of Israel that has a jacuzzi and sometimes a princess canopy bed (fingers crossed!)
Let’s see, special dates for my husband and I:
– Sometime in September (matched up on eHarmony)
– October 7 (first time we talked on the phone, and what we count as our first date as it was an 8 hour convo!)
– October 10 (first date in person)
– October 11 (date we decided to be official, and yes, the next day)
– June 3 (date we got engaged)
– September 10 (date we got married)
We knew pretty much right away we were going to get married, and at first, our relationship progressed super duper fast. My friends were worried, and rightly so, but it didn’t take long before they relaxed on that. We had decided probably 4 or 5 months in that we were going to have a 9/10/11 wedding date (which we did) and that was pretty much the guideline for when our engagement would be, unless things changed and we decided it was better we wait (but we definitely weren’t going to get married any earlier). We met in 2007, so that was almost a 4 year wait, but a wait that ended up being well worth it and gave us plenty of time to grow as individuals and as a couple. I told him that I wanted a 13 month engagement – 12 months to plan, and the first to just enjoy the new relationship status without all the pressure and stress. If he wanted to get married in September, he had to propose by August, but if he wanted to propose later, then we’d pick another date to get married. He ended up proposing in June, which gave us a 15 month engagement. We had gone to his sister’s wedding over Memorial Day weekend (where he caught the garter, and I caught the bouquet, and it was not intentional!) and then had gone down to OBX with my family for a week at the beach. I told him he needed to wait to propose until after his sister’s wedding so we could focus all of our attention on her, and then she could do the same for us later. Our first day at the beach, we hung out in the hot tub with my brother and his girlfriend, and when we decided to get out, my husband kicked his foot against the side of the tub a little too hard and ended up breaking a toe. A few days later, he really wanted to go out for a romantic dinner, so he picked this wonderful little place on the sound side of OBX in Duck, called the Blue Point Grille. In retrospect, I should have realized something was up, since my family kept asking me what I was going to wear and reminding me to not forget my camera. I thought they were crazy, but the fact that something was up never crossed my mind. We got to dinner a few minutes early for our reservation, so we just kind of wandered around the shops for a bit. We stopped on one side to look out at the water and just hang out, and as I sat in a chair, he put his hand in his pocket. We were alone, and for some strange reason, I thought he was going to pull out a ring (I had never had this feeling before, but right then and there, I knew something was up). It was the camera. But the feeling stayed with me. He was being quieter than usual, so I asked him why he was being weird, but he just responded that he was relaxed for the first time in a long while, which was certainly a reasonable response so I didn’t think anything of it. We had a wonderful dinner, where it randomly poured down rain (turns out he wanted to propose out on the beach, but that kind of screwed it up), and then right as the waitress was bringing out the dessert, he looked at me and said “I ordered something special for you”. The waitress put down a small plate with a little red box right in front of me. He then got down on one knee, and one broken toe!, and asked me to marry him. It was so sweet. I didn’t even know what to say. Everyone clapped and cheered for us, but I barely even noticed them. The wait staff brought us out some free glasses of champagne and were all gaga over my ring. Then we found out the couple sitting next to us were celebrating their own wedding anniversary that night, and they had gotten married in the restaurant, so they gave us the remaining bottle of their champagne (which was mostly full!). It was pretty awesome and perfect.
We don’t really celebrate many of the anniversaries, except the day we became official and the day we got engaged, though we do recognize the rest through conversation and a kiss. It’s always good to reminisce over those kinds of occasions to remind yourself how far you’ve come and why you fell in love in the first place.
Also, I found out that he had brought my ring and kept in the vault at work (he works in a bank) with two cameras on it and the vault had to be opened by two people. He didn’t want me to stumble upon it so it was the safest way to keep protected and hidden from me.
This is the first time I’ve ever written on here although I’ve been a fan for a while!!! I figured this is the perfect time to lose my comment virginity since I got engaged over the holidays! Me and the current fiance had been dating about 3 1/2 years and I had really been putting the pressure on (it’s rough when everyone around you is engaged and you’re in a million weddings and you’re just waiting on the guy to propose!!) I finally had kind of chilled out about it and I picked up on a few things. First, a ring of mine went missing and he mysteriously found it. Also a friend of mine had started asking me about what kind of rings I like. I kind of put two and two together and so then it was just the waiting game. I had expected it to happen on Christmas Eve (I adore Christmas!). We had gone out with a few friends on the 22nd night and when we got home around midnight (so it was technically the 23rd when it happened) he said we should exchange our christmas eve presents! I of course gave him a goofy gift and he gave me a beautiful Gone With the Wind ornament… I was perfectly happy with that!! Then he said he had gotten a gift for our dog (the other love of my life)… All of a sudden my dog comes running out with a Christmas sweater on and on the back it was embroidered and said “Mom, will you marry Dad?”. Then he got down on one knee and asked! It was everything I could have wanted, especially because he knows how important our dog is to me 🙂
As for anniversaries we celebrate, we usually just stick to when he asked me to be his girlfriend. May 3rd 2008… occasionally if I remember on the 3rd of whatever month it is I say something to him like Happy 3 years and 8 months anniversary!!!
Aww! That’s so cute! One of my good friends had the dog involved in her proposal too- He had tied the ring on the dog’s collar.
I thought my last relationship was serious since we were talking about a timeline for marriage/babies, but I realized we weren’t going to make it because of what happened during our year anniversary. It was my first time celebrating this landmark, and he knew that I was really excited about it, but as we came closer and closer to the date, I started to suspect that my boyfriend didn’t plan anything for me since there was no hints from him about making sure I was free during the evening. Sure enough, the day came, and my boyfriend’s year anniversary gift to me was a 4×6 picture frame with a picture of us that he had printed off at Target, along with a grocery store bouquet of flowers and a card that he dropped off to my apartment in the afternoon. When he picked me up later on that evening to get dessert somewhere, the bag from target was still sitting on the floor of his car along with the receipt. I was shocked and hurt by how generic and thoughtless his gift was, especially since I know how hard working he was other areas of his life. I started to think back on our relationship and I realized that there was a huge difference between the things he would say and his actions. It wasn’t until months after our breakup that I could see how self-centered he was, and how it led to most of the problems we had with our relationship. I’m glad we didn’t stay together, but it makes me sad that it took me so long to see it.