Flashback Friday: Engagement!

For this blog, I am taking a break from just catching up and am linking up with The Journey of Parenthood, another blog (that I read allll the time).  Emily started off the link up by sharing her engagement story...I thought I would do the same (and since it seems like everyone is else sharing their engagement stories as well). 
Check out Emily's blog, it really is great!


I will give a little back story before I jump right in to the night that Michael and I got engaged.  We started out as just friends working for the same credit union.  And we did lots of 'friend' things together for about a year and a half before we actually even started dating.  By 'friend' things, I mean we worked out together a lot, hung out for drinks after work, went to concerts and out to eat...sometimes in a group and sometimes just the two of us.  As the year and a half went by, we realized that we were pretty close friends...and that we wanted it to be even more than that.  The thing was though, that both of us still worked together and I didn't want most of our co-workers to know that we had started dating.  For lots of reasons, but the main one being that I didn't want so many others in our business before we could find out if we were going to last as a couple...I wanted to just enjoy my relationship with him and to get to know him even better, without other opinions, advice and general nosiness from our mutual co-workers and friends.  So, for a timeline, we started to date in August of 2007.  Our first official date was during Atlanta Restaurant Week, at a place called Avanzare, in a hotel downtown. 
Fast forward 5 months, to January.  I decided to leave the credit union to pursue other things and most folks there still didn't know that we were dating.  Once I left though, I didn't care who knew.  Plus, Michael and I already knew that the relationship was serious.  I, for one, knew that he was the one who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.  By May, I had started a new job at a jewelry store.  In that atmosphere, the topic of engagement rings and the subject of engagement came up a lot in our conversations.  Michael really wanted for us to have dated for at least a year before becoming engaged.  I agreed with him and his reasoning behind it.  With his family living in Florida, there had only been a few occasions that I had gotten to travel down with him to meet them and spend time with them.  He wanted to make sure that his family liked me and that we got along and all that (which we did, his family is so super nice I can't imagine anyone not really being able to get along with them).  So, the longer we dated, the more opportunities I had to spend with his family, as well as him spending time with mine. 
Meanwhile, at the jewelry store, I had looked at some things and I knew that Michael knew what styles that I liked so after we talked about it a little bit, I decided to just leave things between him and my boss.  I might have checked every single box that came in to see if it might be something of interest, haha.  But my boss was totally on top of things (either that or he had stuff shipped to his house) and I really never saw anything.  Michael told me that he was opening up a safe deposit box at work so that he could keep the rings in when they were done.  Seems plausible, I am a touch of a snoop, haha. 
Anyway, we were a couple weeks away from our one year anniversary.  In my head, I sort of thought that a proposal might come some time near my birthday (which is mid-August).  Towards the end of July was Atlanta Restaurant week...and we decided to go to the same place where we had our first date, Avanzare.  It was a Wednesday.  I really wasn't thinking much in the way of proposal.  We were dressed pretty nice, but it was nice place.  One funny thing...as we were heading down to the restaurant on the escalator.  I reached back to grab Michael's hand...I may have brushed against his pants or something...and he practically threw my hand off so fast I nearly fell down the escalator.  Well, that could be an exaggeration, but he obviously made it clear he didn't want to hold my hand!  I should've taken that as a sign that maybe something was up.  Nope.  Not a clue. 
We had a really nice dinner.  And after that we went out to where there is a deck area.  For some reason, Michael didn't seem to want to leave, even though we were just kind of standing around.  There was some crowds of people milling about.  Finally we ended up leaving.  On the drive home (I can't remember why, but I was driving) we started talking about when we first started dating and even before that.  There was a park that was between my condo and his apartment that we would always meet up at....and somehow we decided to stop by there before finishing the date. 
It was nice because we were really the only ones at the park.  We sat on a bench as it started to get dark and were talking.  Again, Michael didn't seem to want to leave.  Finally, I was like, well, we better go and then all of the sudden Michael was on one knee in front of the bench! 
I really was surprised.  He said originally he was going to propose at the restaurant, but we were seated in a table that wasn't 'romantic enough'.  And then again when we were outside, but there were too many other people.  I'm not sure what his plan was going to be if we hadn't started talking about the park and decided to go there...that wasn't part of his original plan!! 
It took me a minute to even realize that he had a ring box in his hand...I had no idea the ring was ready at all, between him and my boss throwing me off, I just never expected a proposal then.  I LOVE that he was able to surprise me.  I figured I would know when it would happen and I was actually happy to be caught off guard.  After that, it really was dark, so we left the park!  I immediately took a picture of my new ring when we got back to my place.  :-)

The best part of the ring was the fact that waaaayy before we got engaged, maybe even before we were officially dating, some how a conversation of what shape of diamond I like came up.  I think maybe there was a magazine ad that sparked that conversation?  And I told him I really loved radiant cut, since it was a cross between my mom's emerald cut diamond and my sister's princess cut diamond and that I really loved both of theirs but wanted something different for my own. And Michael actually remembered that and told my boss and picked out a radiant center stone for my ring. 
Like I said, we were the ONLY people at the park....so I am sad to say this is the only picture from minutes after we got engaged....

A real great one, right?!  But even looking at it, I remember exactly that night and how great it was.  We planned our wedding and got married in February, six months later.  :-)