let's get engaged

let's get engaged....sure.

Jaime and I have talked endlessly about how best to tell the story of our engagement and subsequent marriage.  This included an ill fated performance at IO West theater in Los Angeles.  Much of the following blogs involving the year of our engagement are drawn from that performance and our discussions.

As if our first year in a new city wasn’t hard enough; as if money wasn’t tight enough, as if everyday life wasn’t taking enough out of us, Jaime and I decided to make our like even harder by getting engaged.

How did this whole thing begin?  As best as I can remember it was the middle of April on a beautiful warm day.  Both Jaime and I were off work early and we had an afternoon to burn, without much money we decided to stay in and...well do what you sometimes do when you’re at home and have no money.  Afterwards we found ourselves laying in bed together, I can remember looking out the window and watching the bird fly up and land on the roof.  Somehow and even now I cannot fully remember Jaime brought up the topic of marriage.

The previous October we attended my brothers wedding and when people 

would turn to us and ask when we would be getting married we laughed.  

Half jokingly we told them that when all our friends were divorced we 

would get married.

Truth be told I only entered this conversation with Jaime because I could sense that to attempt to blow off marriage talk would only instigate a fight and I was far too exposed and relaxed for a fight.  I humored her, we talked about who we would invite, family and close friends only, where we would do it, at my mom’s house with a pot luck dinner.  We decided when, mid May of 2009 perhaps the 16th.

I imagine that this is where female readers will close their eyes and slowly shake their head from side to side wondering exactly how men can be so oblivious.  I understood that we were getting married but what I took away from the conversation was that this would happen somewhere in the future like buying a new car or going to Europe.  That date we set was loose and not set in stone.

We went the rest of the night without discussing the wedding and Jaime did not rush to tell anyone, the following morning was the same and I was almost able to forget about the entire thing.  On her way home from work that evening I learned how wrong I was, she had spent the entire morning looking at engagement rings and had told everyone at work that she was engaged.

“Look,” I said “I don’t want every conversation to be about weddings now.”  As soon as I said it I wished that I could take it back.  

An argument ensued and it nearly ended in a break up.  We discussed things further that evening and I began to understand that our conversation the afternoon before had not been a bunch of loose ideas and dreams, it was for real and I was acting like a total asshole.  We talked not about wedding plans but rather about why it was that I didn’t want to get married.

I didn’t have a good answer, the best I could come up with was that I wanted to wait until I had the money to throw a big lavish wedding.  I didn’t really want that, I believed that expensive weddings were a waste of money.  Sure you had memories and memories are important but it is just a day and with the money saved you could do so much more.  What I think my real fear was, was telling my parents.  In our situation and at a time when everyone was warning of a second depression it did not seem to make much sense to be getting married and I really didn’t want to have to justify our decision.

I had some time to think about what I wanted to do, by the next day it was clear to me that I had no reason not to marry Jaime.  I loved her, I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her and that was reason enough.  I called her that afternoon and told her that when she picked me up from work that we would head out to the Glendale Mall and go to Zales to buy her engagement ring.

Through out the entire process of getting engaged and eventually married we did very little conventionally.  Picking out the ring was far from conventional, she’d seen it on their website and loved it.  Unable to afford anything expensive it was to our benefit that technically this was a promise ring and priced at less than $120.  Jaime pointed it out to me in the case, she tried it on and then I insisted that she leave while I purchased it.  I didn’t let her wear it out of the store, it went into the box and sat in my dresser drawer.

We were technically engaged, preparing and planning for a mid May wedding.  There were dresses to buy, invitations to send out, parents to tell.  I was also holding onto a ring and I knew that at some point I would need to get down on one knee and ask her to marry me.  I didn’t know when or where or how I was going to do it but I did know that I was going to make her sweat about it a little.