A Proposal Story by Snap, Crackle, Pop

Hello, happy Yes Teacher Crafts readers! I’m Jaclyn, filling in for our lovely host Sarah as she is away on maternity leave.

I make jewelry over at Jac & Elsie and blog at Snap, Crackle, Pop. I also have a temporary blog with the oh-so-creative name Engaged: The Blog over at my and my fiance’s wedding website. I share this only because, well, this is the story of how I got engaged, and it seemed relevant.

So stop by any of the above links and say hello! In the meantime ...

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So a few weeks ago, I’m at the gynecologist. (Don’t you just love a story that starts that way?) As the nurse is going through my files, she sees that my new emergency contact person is listed as my fiance.

“Oh, you’re engaged! When did it happen?”

“A few weeks ago,” I told her.

“How did he do it?”

“He waited until I got home from work one Sunday. He came over and dropped to a knee.”

“Oh … ?”

And the lack of words in her trailed off “Oh” was the loudest pause ever.

My fiance did not write of his love with a dirigible. He did not hide a ring in a dessert or ask his best friend to hide in the bushes and take pictures (though, I recently found out, he considered it).

Instead, he walked in my apartment, tripped over his own feet because he didn’t want to turn his back to me in case I’d see the bulge of the ring box in his back pocket, turned red, sweat up a storm and shook like a freezing baby before he got on his knee and said, using my full name, “Will you be my wife?”

It was exactly the way it was supposed to be, even if he did have a ring in his pocket back on Valentine’s Day to ask me over dinner. (He chickened out. His words.) When we got drunk at my friend’s Mexico wedding a few days later and I told him, “We should go ring shopping when we get back,” he agreed. He did not say that he had left a temporary ring in the car back at the airport in Indianapolis. (Again, he chickened out.)

There was no grand plan, no grand scheme. When he woke up that Sunday morning, I don’t think he told himself, “I’m going to propose today.” He just did it.

I’m not sure where society gets off thinking a proposal needs to be some crazy, grand gesture. I’m quite glad he never asked over Valentine’s Day, in fact, because I wouldn’t want some strangers intruding in on our moment.

Instead, when he dropped to his knee and pulled out the box, I swore. When he asked me to be his wife, I clapped my hands to my mouth and said “OK!!” We hugged. I asked, “Oh my gosh, are you sure???” because I am insane. We hugged some more. I said, “Wait, there was a ring. Where’d it go?” Because in my utter happiness, I had forgotten all about that silly piece of jewelry (which, by the way, happens to be perfect -- we went shopping together and I picked four favorites for him to choose from. He unknowingly surprised me with my favorite of the four).

Then we sat on the couch, finished a bottle of champagne I had in the fridge, and reveled in the fact that we had a secret no one else on the planet knew about.

So, Ms. Gynecological nurse? You can bite me. Because my proposal rocked.