I have wanted to propose to Emily for a while now. She is an excellent partner, she is helping me grow in many ways and she enjoys learning new things and growing with me. I already feel like we are officially life partners. We have been living together for over a year at this point and dating for almost 2 years. I wanted to be engaged and to give her a ring in particular, not to tinkle on her in some patriarchal way, but to communicate better to her and her framily, as well as to my own framily, how important she is to me, and how much I love her, and that I absolutely want her in my future, should she be interested. We talked about and went around looking at rings a few months ago. I told her how I didn’t want to support the diamond norm or the diamond trade, and that maybe she would like a moissanite ring. She said she understood my position and thought that moissanite was a nice compromise. One of the designers that we seemed to like best was Mark Schneider. His rings are elegant and beautiful, and I liked the amount of metal working and secondary stones he uses. Her favorite (and the one she now has) was the Pledge design. One small problem was that he does not list moissanite as an option on his site. After a few days of email correspondence with one of his reps, we were able to go to a store to see his rings in person in Charlotte, before ordering a moissanite version. I am at the same time delighted that he accommodated me, and disappointed that any customer should be delighted when they are accommodated in an expensive transaction (Mark Schneider nor his reps made me feel this disappointment, just a general trend of poor customer service I’ve experienced).

I was trying to figure out a way to have a nice engagement story. And after a little discussion with Shun, I decided that I might could get away with (that is, be able to do the following without her necessarily figuring out it was engagement until the moment of the big surprise) having a date where we drove around Charlotte with her nice camera and took pictures of places that meant something to our relationship, since we’re both leaving Charlotte soon, and since we have a scrapbook for our relationship. We created a list of these places together. Emily had the Great idea of borrowing her dad’s tripod so that we could actually be in some of the pics together, brilliant!

One problem I had was that she has wanted me to propose for a while now also, but what she didn’t realize was that our lives weren’t making it very easy for me to propose to her, and in a special way. Her granny (paternal grandmother) passed away recently, we also went to the beach with her (maternal) extended family, and then her pappaw (maternal grandfather) was moved into hospice, and she needed to get some work done on her car, and she needed to possibly travel to Harnett county to pre-interview for a job (yes teaching in public schools in NC is in a terrible state), so it has been very difficult as of late for me to find a good opportunity…Then, enter Friday July 10…

I had already finished my hours and a good bit of work for Amentra, and so I had a sort of windfall of time. So we decided Thursday night that we would have our date the next day. We got a late start, so we had to modify our plans a little, but we got some Great pics of Freedom Park, some places on Central avenue, and Roasting Company. (She should be posting some of these pretty soon. UPDATE: here they are!) Then after a DELICIOUS lunch at Crepe Cellar, which took WAY too long, like 1.5 hrs, for just the two of us, when there was no wait for a table, and maybe 5 parties (So, definitely go to Crepe Cellar, just bring a book to read, or bring a partner with which you can have a Great conversation, and get there before your starving.), during which it POURED down rain, and nearly ruined my chances at getting to propose, I convinced my sweet, frugal, Emily to go to Amelie’s French Bakery & Cafe for dessert and pictures. Because she says I’m “obsessed with food,” she went along with me wanting to bring the tripod in so that we could photograph ourselves eating these delicious desserts, without suspicion. We went out and ate in the sort of Atrium area, and got several pictures, then, at the end, it worked out just right somehow, and after she set the 20-second timer for our last picture, a shot of us licking our plates, I waited til she returned to her seat, and turned to pose for the camera, and then super-ninja-fast popped down on my knees (one knee just wouldn’t have been enough to stabilize me for this Great maneuver) with the magically materialized ring box in my hand, and she noticed this and turned to see what I was doing just in time to make her wonderful happy surprised face for the camera! She was the photographer for her own engagement! So she sat there smiling and crying while I proposed, and then we hugged and kissed a Great amount, before clearing our place, and heading home to prepare to go to MomN and DadR’s EZ Manor for the weekend with a bunch of friends and DadR. We left in such a hurry that we forgot to notify Amelie’s guestbook that we had just gotten engaged there! Guess we’ll have to go back!

No: we have not set a date yet. It will probably be next Fall some time, probably outdoors. I’m very happy to have made her so happy and to have been made so happy by her, I’m also very excited to continue our lives and growth and educations as partners.