The Proposal: A journey of a ring

So I'm going to start by saying, this is the first blog post I've ever written. Which means that I'll probably like, win a Pulitzer Prize or something over here.

My tale of the proposal begins several weeks prior, with the forging of the One Ring. Emily and I had gone out ring shopping so that she could show me the type of ring she likes and then I would go later and purchase one to where I could surprise her (which didn't work out at all, by the way). During the course of our little excursion, after enjoying hot chocolate at Jared's, we came upon a ring that it was obvious to me she fell in love with. I also knew that I would probably need to sell a kidney or other vital organ to be able to get it (you only need one of those, so I hear). Fortunately for me, and my kidney, I knew of a place that could custom make one for much cheaper. So, armed with pictures of the ring she liked, I went and had this place start work on her ring.

It was a little under 2 weeks until we were to leave for Thanksgiving to go and meet her family. They told me the ring would be done in 2 weeks or perhaps a little less. I was hoping that they would be able to get it done before we left so that I could maybe propose to her on the way back, but when I called them before we left they told me it would be the following Tuesday. So there went that plan.

We get back, its Tuesday, and the ring place tells me it isn't quite finished, but it will be the next day. Well I had to scratch the plan to propose to her that night. So the next day comes and I give them a call. Turns out the ring had some sort of oxygen contamination when forging part of it and they had to redo it. Probably never had this type of problem at Mt. Doom. No problem, they tell me. It'll be ready by tomorrow. So I give them a call back the next day. The ring is done! Yes! Its out at the independent appraiser and isn't back to us yet. No! Finally though, I'm able to pick it up on Friday.

Now, the other thing you have to know about this, is that we had engagement pictures on Saturday. You kind of need a ring for engagement pictures. So Emily knows its kind of do or die time for me.

I had contacted Derick and Becky, my middle brother and his wife, for ideas on how to propose. My brothers advice to me "She's going to be telling this story to people for the rest of her life, so make it memorable." Well, no pressure there.

I knew that the temple is a special place for Emily, and so I decided that I wanted to do the proposal there. I had my brother pick up roses and hide them behind a bench at the back of the Provo temple. Turns out he takes that duty very seriously, even going as far as scaring other people away so that we could have the place to ourselves.

After the ward party, we were supposed to meet up with Derick and Becky to go out to get some dessert. I called them as we were leaving and they were still "busy" so I suggested we go for a walk around the temple while we waited for them. I'm pretty sure this is the point that she knew she was about to get proposed to. We walked around to the back and sat down at the bench where the roses were hidden and talked for a bit. Emily talked about how that area was a special place for her and told me some of the experiences that she had back there, I took that as my cue, and pulled out the roses from behind the bench and told her we needed to add one more special event to the list. At that point I got down on one knee and asked her to marry me. Since we had already been planning the wedding for several weeks at this point, it did take some of the nervousness out of it since I had a fairly good idea what she would say.

So, while it wasn't a surprise and wasn't the more elaborate thing, it happened in a place, the temple, that is very special to both of us. I'm still super excited that she said yes!