So yesterday I was driving home thinking about what I wanted to feature this week on Wedding Wednesdays…the insane flower quote I got? These things grow in the ground for christ’s sake! My first solo lunch with my future mother in law? Picking a honeymoon location? Putting together the guest list? And then it dawned on me. I recently had a lengthy conversation with a friend who is dying to get engaged and is so frustrated with her boyfriend for not having asked yet and I thought, I never told you all how much I wanted to get in engaged. Like not in an endearing way. Like I kinda lost my mind there for a few months while waiting for Brian to pop the question. Brian and I now lovely refer to that dark period as “When Kate lost her mind”…it’s funny in retrospect. Really, it is. For a person who fancies herself zen, I can certainly be impatient. I like things to go my way and on my timeline and waiting for Brian to propose was simply the most maddening exercise the universe had ever given me.
The whole experience says so much about our personalities too. I throw myself head first into just about anything. I blaze ahead with out thinking. A quality that has both gotten me in trouble as well as helped me make bold decisions that have paid off. Brian on the other hand is meticulous about his next move. There isn’t a decision he’s ever made, quickly. If he’s in the market for a new jacket he scours the internet for days (even weeks! even months!) looking for the perfect one. I on the other hand go to bloomingdale’s with no intention of buying anything and come home with a new closet. We’re just different.
Also, guess who said “I love you” first? I just blurted it out one night as we lie in bed. That’s another problem I have…blurting things out the minute I feel them. So there I went throwing out the “I love you” much too early and got crickets. HE SAID NOTHING GUYS. I had scared him right back into his little shell and it took many, many many weeks for him to come out again and say, “I think I love you”. He couldn’t even go all out with it at first. Too scary! He had to tip toe into the water. This is the funniest thing about it though. This quality that makes me insane also made me fall in love with him. He’s not a bullshitter. He doesn’t say things unless he means it. He never tries to be anything he isn’t. Or feel anything he doesn’t. And guess what? When he finally did tell me he loved me it meant more to me than anything in the world. It was like I had never heard those words uttered to me before. They sounded new. He meant them deep in his bones.
So when it came to getting engaged, I knew I would have to be patient. Did that make the process any easier? NO. It literally consumed my thoughts for months. Why isn’t he proposing? Does he not want to marry me? But I feel like he does? Oh and every time a friend (who am I kidding, a stranger even!) would get engaged, I would become unhinged. I would either start a fight about it, cry, or just close my computer and walk out of the room, letting my silence speak for me. Clearly, this is the way to make a man want to spend eternity with you.
It was a totally annoying six months. But luckily, I finally exhausted myself and decided to STOP talking about it with him. I still talked about it to everyone else though. My poor mother probably wanted to get a new daughter. One that was normal.
The less I talked about though, the less it consumed my thoughts. Things were returning to normal at our house. He could even sleep with his eyes closed again.
And it was then that he surprised the living shit out of me with a proposal. I was wearing Pajamas for crying out loud. And you know what else? When he asked me to be his wife, I knew he meant it with every fiber of his being and I knew he meant forever.
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