Monday, August 30, 2010

The Pre-Engagement Post

Ok. Whit told me that after she did a post about her engagement experience, I had to do my side of the story as well so that we can compare the two. Granted this happened close to a month ago. But late is better than never, right?

Where to start?
We first discussed the "M" word in April at the end of one of my visits to Logan. We didn't really entertain the thought too much more for a while. Whit would drop occasional hints here and there on things that she liked, etc. At first she was pretty anxious from what she told me. She was almost expecting it to happen at any time. But when she realized that she might have to wait a bit, she stopped worrying about it. I didn't know about this.
She continued to drop hints, and joke about the fact that she didn't have a ring yet. Which was weird since we were starting to plan the wedding already and pretty much the whole ward knew that we were getting married. The news spread like the plague and I wasn't too much of a fan of that. I wanted it to be unknown to everyone else until that happened. But I didn't even know when I was going to pop the question. I was (and still am) dirt poor, and didn't know what to do.
Finally I decided to just talk to Kendall to officially ask for his permission to marry his daughter. It started out with just Kendall and I at the dinner table and I made some lame joke about how as my home teacher, he needed to help me with something. But we were both nervous so it wasn't too funny. But we got the business out of the way pretty quickly actually. I promised him that I would take good care of Whit, and that I loved her more than anything. By this time both Suzanne and Courtney had entered the room and were involved in the conversation. Haha. We talked about a bunch of other things for like 15 minutes which was nice. This was in the middle of July sometime.
My Dad finally told me to start thinking of a time period when I would like to do it. I got a lot of opinions on what to do, and finally settled on the idea of doing in over the 24th of July weekend when I would be at a family reunion with all of Kendall's side of the family at a cabin near Strawberry Reservoir. That was about a two weeks away, so on one Saturday, my Dad drove down from camp, and he took me to a place that he had just thought of. He had been thinking and the impression came to go to J.P. Lee Fine Jewlery in Draper. He compared it to Oceans Thirteen where they had the group of men that shook Sinatra's hand. He said: "This guy shook Grandpa Butterfield's hand." I loved that. Apparently Grandpa had been doing business there for years, and so had my aunts, and some of their children. We went there and got treated like gold. I picked out a ring, but it was a little different than the one that I had in mind, so he told me he would custom make the ring. The problem is that it would not be ready for two weeks. This was the 21st of July. I was hoping that it would be done in a few days, but he was going out of town for a whole week, so it would take an extra week to get done. (on Aug 4th)
So we went to the family reunion, and that whole two weeks I was super ornery at the fact that I couldn't get the ring yet. Any time that any of her family joked about it I was super sensitive because I was still upset that it was in the works and I couldn't talk about it.
But the day finally came and I picked up the ring after work on Aug 4th, and waited for Whit to get off work so we could drive up to Logan. The rest of that story can be found here or here again
Thats pretty much it I think.

Saturday, August 07, 2010

We're Engaged!!

I'm terrible at updating. But, I do have something very worthwhile to write about.
I'm engaged!! After about 8 months of dating I finally got a ring and popped the questing. Granted it seemed as if it was a formality since we had already started planning the wedding and set an appointment at the Draper Temple. But it was good to finally get it done.
I had to do orientation at school on Thursday Aug 5th, so we went up the night before, and met up with Whit's friend Parker and her boyfriend Kris. We went up Green Canyon in Logan, and made a bonfire and sat around the fire for a while. Parker and Kris got up and left, so we were just by the fire, and I dropped to one knee and asked. I had planned it out with Parker, but Whit was still suspicious. She was surprised, but not really. Oh well, I tried, right?
Wednesday was also my one year mark since being home, so that also made the day even more special.
So, now we just have to make it through four more months and we are there!
It was also good to get registered for classes and take care of other school things.

I will post pictures of the ring later.