Those who follow me on Instagram will have already known from our announcement about a month and a half ago that P and I recently got engaged. If you haven’t been following along on our story over there, then you may have noticed if you looked carefully at some of my blog photos and saw the new permanent piece of jewelry on my left hand! Regardless, I’ve been putting together this post for the longest time ever and I’m extremely excited to be sharing everything with you! I can only imagine how much more excited I’m going to feel every time I post something about our wedding planning process, and even the final wedding post itself!
First things first, I want to thank each and everyone of you who has been around for the ride, and who has shared all of my special moments with P on this blog. I guess that by now I should formally introduce you all to him since he now has his own blog and isn’t as much of a mysterious figure on my blog as he used to be! Everyone, meet Peter! Peter and I have been together for almost 6.5 years now, so marriage seemed like a natural progression to us. But let’s rewind back to the beginning, back to a time way before we were together and let me catch you up to pace on our story as a couple.
Before Us
Before we were ever an item, Peter and I spent a lot of time together as friends. We met through mutual friends and didn’t bond over any sort of similarity, other than the fact that our personalities meshed and we got along well. At the time that we first became friends, we were both seeing other people and hadn’t even considered the idea of being a couple. Though through the unhappy relationships that we were in, we naturally gravitated towards each other for comfort in times of upset. Peter was always there for me at 2 AM whenever I needed a shoulder to cry on—figuratively of course because we were still so young and didn’t quite have the accessibility of upping and leaving to spend time with the other person on a whim. This was in the gold rush of MSN/Windows Messenger, so our version of crying on the other person’s shoulder was ranting through the wee hours of the morning over the internet.
I remember him telling me as a joke that “I would love him as a boyfriend” and boy was he right. We spent about 4 years as really good friends before beginning a relationship and a lifetime together.
The Dating Game
As our friendship bloomed, I had at one point told him that I had never made a Build a Bear and had always wanted to. The day that we officially documented as the start of our relationship involved him taking me out on a date to our local mall, and making a stuffed animal together. At the time I was studying to go to medical school, so together we built a rabbit and dressed it in scrubs. I still have that stuffy to this day and it follows us to each new place we move into.
We dated for about 4 years before the topic of marriage came up. We have this strange chemistry where we rarely ever argue (I’m not even kidding), and this remained the same even way long after the honeymoon phase ended. To this day, we don’t often ever get angry at each other, and even when we do, it doesn’t last for longer than 30 minutes to an hour max. After being together for 4 years, the thought of living together forever felt right and we broached the topic of marriage. At first Peter wasn’t completely open to discussing the topic even though he agreed that it was the next natural step for us. It took a lot of coercing for me to get him to comfortably open up and to share his thoughts, so there would often be periods of time where we wouldn’t even come close to the topic for months on end. One day something in him changed, and a switch was flipped. He suddenly began actively contributing his thoughts to us getting married and thus began the search for the ring.
We casually dropped into a couple of retailers here and there to get an idea of what sort of designs they had available, but a single ring kept coming back to me from a previous press preview that I had attended. A few months before hand, I had been invited to a preview of David Yurman’s wedding collection and fell in love with a ring that I had seen. I also felt extremely connected to the story of their cable bands which represent the love that David Yurman and Sybil Yurman share. To me, the intertwined bands represented togetherness, and the circular connection of the ends into a ring really felt like a foreverness. Cheesy I know, but when it comes to relationships, I am the ultimate cheese ball of cheese balls! Plus something about that ring felt right and it called out to me. We booked an appointment with their Yorkdale location and went in to try on the rings in person.
Yes, we shopped for the ring together, and that is something that is completely common noawadays. Seeing that the ring was going to be a permanent installation on my hand, I wanted to ensure that it would be one that I truly loved and cherished. We agreed that it was the right move to celebrate the selection of the ring together as we had shared so many other moments of our relationship together.
After we agreed on a ring design, the rest is history! I was left completely blind and out-of-the-loop while Peter organized the entire process behind closed doors. I wasn’t privy to any knowledge in regards to when the ring would be ready, or when he would have possession of it.
The Engagement
Leading up the engagement, Peter began planning intimate dinner dates, planned weekend excursions, and randomly bought me flowers. We lead quite the non-romantic relationship in the sense that we don’t do a lot of the cutesy stuff that other couples may do, so I became suspicious that something was awry when there was an uptick in our date frequency. He would schedule dinner dates into my calendar, and then chalk it up to wanting to spend quality time with me. He later confirmed that these were all precursors to the big question in an attempt to keep me on my toes. I also found out that he spent around 5 months of unsuccessfully proposing before the special day actually came to fruition! Looking back in hindsight, I can see how each and every situation was a fun set up for the special question.
There are so many stories to tell of all of the unsuccessful proposal attempts, but I’ll let Peter tell those stories as I know he quite enjoys it. I’m sure that he’ll be making a cameo on here to tell his story at one point or another and I wouldn’t want to ruin his moment! On the actual day of the engagement, I had made plans to drop by a flower shop on my way home from work to pick up some roses for an upcoming campaign shoot. Peter had decided to work from home that day stating that he “wasn’t feeling well”, and I didn’t suspect anything of it. Unbeknownst to me, he had already placed an order for 100 roses to be delivered to our place while I was out during the day, and had planned his “work from home day” to stay at home to receive them.
Upon leaving work at 5PM, I texted him to let him know that I was off to the flower shop. We argued as he tried to convince me to come home first so that I could drop off my belongings so that he could come with me to help bring home the flowers. His argument? That bringing home 100 roses would be too difficult of a task to do by myself and that I would need his help. I grew tired of arguing and conceded to going home first before heading out together. I had assumed that he was trying to be “cute” and that I should just let him.
I was supposed to text him when I got off of the streetcar to let him know that I was close to home (the reason why will become apparent later in Peter’s tell all of his version of the story), but I didn’t and headed straight upstairs. I opened the door to a flurry of barks from Kobe and to Peter approaching me. He typically likes to chillax on the couch and doesn’t usually greet me at the door, so I thought that it was off but didn’t think much of it. Because Peter knows that I hate wearing jeans for longer than I have to, he fervently encouraged me to change into my sweats before we were to leave. At first, I refused saying that it was silly because we weren’t going to be out for long, but he was insistent enough that I ended up agreeing and made my way towards our bedroom.
As I opened the door, I noticed that the lights were on and immediately proceeded to yell at him for leaving the lights on before the bed caught my eye and I stopped mid-sentence. I noticed a bundle of flowers on the bed and the first thought that came to my head was that he had decided to be sweet and went out and purchased the flowers for me while working from home. It took me a couple of seconds to register that he had spelled out “Marry Me” with the flowers, but when it did I was stopped dead in my tracks. I quickly turned around to find him kneeling behind me with the ring in his hands and the rest is history!
Everything next happened in such a flurry of emotions that I only remember saying “Yes“, but Peter swears that I started crying and backing up into a corner of our bedroom.
And there’s our engagement story! I know that it may not be as Disney-esque as some may dream of, but I cherish every moment of that night as it was perfect to me in every way possible. I had never wished for an overly public or elaborate engagement as I have always preferred it to be as intimate of an event as possible. The fact that he spent 5 months attempting to propose makes that culminating moment an even more of a special one. I’m extremely excited for Peter to share his story and all of the so-called “failed attempts“, but even more excited to be partnering David Yurman for the next year to share some phenomenal content that we’ve created together that will cover all things related to engagements rings (ie. What to keep in mind when ring shopping? How to take care of your ring?). So if you’re in the process of getting engaged, or discussing the next phase of your relationship with your partner and curious of what to expect, I invite you to join me on the journey of being engaged!
This post was produced in partnership David Yurman, but all views are 100% honest and my own.
