Josiah Duggar Part 7: Waiting for the Wedding Pics

[Meggo]

Hubs & I had been dating 3.5 years by this point & valentine's day was coming up. (I later found he talked to my friend before hand and said "I think I'll wait till after Valentine's Day" and she said "Do so at your own peril...")
We were going to a boat show with all our friends and at some point in the day - he and I were in the downstairs of some big yacht. I noticed a weird little thing on the counter of the boat and said "What's that?" (thinking it was a fancy water dispenser or something). It was a small box that matched PERFECTLY with the cabinets. He said "I don't know - what is it?"
So I poked it - and it moved.
I opened it - and I'll be honest the rest is a blur. I am sure he got down on one knee, am sure he asked, I am sure I said yes, I think we kissed? And then according to him - I said "Are we going to get out of here?" and wanted to immediately get OUT - he says I ran away (because our friends had locked us in the downstairs of the boat - and I get claustrophobic).

Our friends were all in on it - they'd all take turns holding the bag with the box in it.

And then we went out to dinner (with our friends)
 

[candygirl200413]

I really enjoy this thread drift! I like how everyone's stories have differed and yet they wouldn't want it any differently :).

[Runningfromreality]

I will add that sometimes the weirdest things come out of your mouth in the moment. I knew my husband was planning on proposing and still the first words out of my mouth when he got down on one knee were "what are you doing?!" I don't think he'll ever let that one go. 

[InTheNameofRufus]

I love reading everyone’s engagement stories! Thanks for sharing! 

On my 23rd birthday, almost Mr. NameOf  planned a day out at a nearby state park. It was fall, rather cold but at least the sun was out most of the day. We stopped at several overlooks, walked though a gorge with two waterfalls, and just enjoyed being together. We went to a higher end restaurant in the park for lunch, and he wasn’t quite himself. I thought he was getting sick and thought we might want to go home. He just said, nope, we’re not done yet. After lunch, we went to Inspiration Point, one of my favorite views in the park. We sat on a stone wall and relaxed a bit, then he pulled out a ring and proposed.  (Turned out he was just nervous, like I was going to say no after we’d been together 5 1/2 yrs) I loved it, we were alone with no crazy family members around. We were engaged for exactly two years and one week, because I would not settle for just anything for our wedding. It was worth it, both days (proposal and wedding) were perfect!

This October is our 20th anniversary. Do I want to whack him almost every day for some dumb ass thing? You betcha! But I still love him as much as I did 19 years ago. 

[Rachel333]

My mom's first words after my dad proposed were, "I think I'm going to throw up." She meant it in a good way, but that wasn't exactly what he was hoping to hear. 

[Four is Enough]

22 minutes ago, InTheNameofRufus said:

 

 

 

This October is our 20th anniversary. Do I want to whack him almost every day for some dumb ass thing? You betcha! But I still love him as much as I did 19 years ago. 

I think that goes with the territory. MR. Four and I get exasperated a LOT...

[DrPusey]

You guys know how in the Quaker tradition, everybody sits around at meeting waiting until the spirit so moves them to speak? MrDrPusey and I had a Quaker engagement. We'd talked in elliptical terms about marriage, a subject which had been introduced jointly and that had been more or less talked of in terms of "when" not "if."

Round about March we realized that if we were going to get married in the summer (which we had to do because of grad school schedules), we'd need to get cracking. So we went to a favorite state park, stood at an overlook in silence for maybe half an hour. We kissed and sealed the deal and that was the engagement/proposal.

(apologies to any Quakers who might be around if I misappropriated your tradition back in the day or am oversimplifying it now)

[lumpentheologie]

I love reading all the engagement stories!  But when I read the title for this thread I thought J&L had managed to already get married and we were just waiting for someone to leak the pics! 

I didn't really get engaged at a particular moment. I was visiting my (not yet) fiancé in February of last year, and we had been together for two years and long distance for about six months.  He was really very anti-marriage, he had been that way since he became a punk kid at 14 when his parents got divorced (we're both in our mid-30s now). He was clear that he loved me and wanted to be with me very seriously for a long time, but he just hated marriage as an institution.

This was right after the first of Orange Monster's travel bans, though, and I was getting really worried that it might get harder and harder for one of us to immigrate to the other's country in that political situation, especially if we weren't married.  I was so worried I woke him up crying at 3am, and he hugged me and asked what was wrong and I couldn't say anything for a long time because I was so worried that he would be appalled that I wanted to get married. Eventually I said I wanted us to get married, and he asked me why and was just kind of quiet and said he loved me and he would think about it. 

Four months later we were in bed one morning and he said he could imagine us getting married in about a year. I was thrilled, and I asked if I could consider us engaged now.  He said yes and we had pastries on his balcony in the sun and I called my parents and best friend a few hours later.

He was still pretty uncomfortable with the idea at the time, but he said it was the best option and he had decided to do it.  Now it's 9 months later and we're wedding planning and he's much more comfortable with the whole thing.  He said he went from 51% pro marriage when we got engaged to 80% now, and that it really helped that I didn't push him and gave him time to think about it.

I think 80% is really pretty good for someone who used to swear up and down that he would never marry. It's still kind of a weird idea for him---people don't really get married in his social circles, or if they do they wait until they have a few kids and then do it quietly without telling anyone.  He's never even been to a wedding before---ours will be his first.  I never got a proposal, but I would have hated a big to-do, so as long as we get married I'm fine.  

[Galbin]

Husband and I took a month long trip around Asia nine months after meeting and he says that is when he decided he wanted to marry me. He had been a bachelor until the rapture before then.  Not because he was avoiding relationships, but just because of circumstances surrounding his job and hobbies. He started planning a proposal a year before it happened and he apparently kept asking me what type of ring I would want. I have *no* recollection of these ring questions. 

The proposal took place in New York. We had already been there together twice as it’s my favourite place in the entire world, and he knew that. So he planned it there deliberately. We went to a baseball game and then to the Empire State Building. It was about 12.15am by the time we got to the top. I had not realised how high up it would feel and I started to back away against the wall, wanting to get the heck out of there. But then he beckoned me over and so I slowly moved away from the wall.

He put his arm around me and said something about how we had been together for a few years and that he wanted to marry me. I was so overcome that I lost the power of speech*. Completely. I just kept hugging him and nodding yes. But he kept asking me for a verbal answer. He later told me that he didn’t feel nervous beforehand, but he sure did when I didn’t say yes. Finally after about two minutes I was able to croak out a “Yes”. We then hugged and kissed and looked out over the Empire State Building vista. It was beautiful.

The next day we went and got the ring. Three stones: past, present, and future. He got down on one knee and put it on my finger. We also got my wedding ring at the same time as I told the lady I loved my ring, but that I had always thought I would have my birthstone on my engagement ring. She then informed us they had wedding rings with rubies in them, so I ended up with not one but two ring in a day. It was all very romantic!

*Luckily, I lost my fear at the same time as I lost my speech.

[fluffernutter]

These are so sweet. I was 18. OMG we were babies. I'd freak the hell out if our kids did this to us. We started dating when we were 16, planned our colleges so we could be near each other, and just knew we were going to stay together. He did ask my dad's permission, which I thought was sweet. We went to the outer banks together instead of senior week, and on our two year going-out anniversary (so sophomoric lol) he waited until sunset and proposed on the beach. People walking by clapped. The stipulation from our folks was I at least get my degree ( I was going for my associates, him, a bachelor's).  So that's what we did. Got married 3 days after I graduated. Our 25th anniversary is coming up in May. And our oldest, 23, just got engaged herself. Her fiancé asked my husband's permission, which is kind of funny, as our daughter's minor in school was gender studies/feminism. But very sweet. Planned wedding Fall 2019! 

[Mela99]

Mine was pretty basic. DH stuffed it into my stocking and walked away to make coffee. I suspected but when he walked away I got disappointed. Pulled out a paper box -- not a ring box -- and popped the lid off.

Lo and behold, it was white velvet inside and a diamond ring. I whipped around and found him behind me on one knee.

He admitted he wanted to be more clever and maybe spell it out with candy canes or leave notes but four cats make that sort of thing difficult.

And I was absolutely dumbfounded and unable to speak. I spat out a yes and then a few minutes later asked him .. "Wait - are we engaged?"

He never lets me forget that [emoji23]

[ihaveanexamintwodays]

I dreamt that I got engaged (this dream occurred right around the SiRen engagement and I had procrastinated an entire day away by binging on fundie wedding trends lmao). i swear i'm normally not the type of girl to go all goo-goo about my future wedding, but this dream was so bizarrely realistic that i'd laugh my ass off in complete unsurprised-ness if this actually ended up being how my boyfriend proposed.

basically in this dream we were snuggled up in bed, eating ice cream cones from our favorite ice cream place, when dream-boyfriend asked dream-me to reach in his bedside drawer to look for a napkin, then remembered that he'd hidden a ring in that drawer, at the exact moment that dream-me accidentally found it. dream-me was like, "is this yours?" and dream-him was like, "no it's yours", and then i put it on. and then we called his dream-roommate in to take our first picture as an engaged couple .  the only idiosyncratic parts were the ice-cream-in-bed, and the fact that this dream-roommate is in reality his best friend's little brother, lol. 

i'm glad this thread-drift inspired me to put this dream in writing, so that i have something to compare to when real-proposal happens a few years down the road 

[nonymouse]

Mr.Mouse asked my mom first, as she raised me alone and had the stone I wanted for my engagement ring. (She'd picked it up during a business meeting.) She said no, surprising but not quite shocking us. He designed his own ring with his own stone, drove me up to our favorite lookout, and started pointing out the stars. Except I couldn't see any damned stars and he was pissing me off by insisting I just look harder. When I spun around to sulk back to the car (because come ON already, it's been 2.5 YEARS, this is so romantic, we've been friends forever, insert ALL of the curses) he caught my arm, whipped me around, dropped to one knee and proposed. The first words out of my mouth? "Are you sure?" I figured he just didm't want me to be mad, but nope, the ring had been on his finger the entire time he was pointing out the stars. Nearly 15 years later and I still haven't lived that one down. (I also beat my mother in the "how long will this marriage last" pool!)

[fluffernutter]

I forgot a funny thing about ours- at the time, a popular commercial from one of the big jewelers in the US at the time was regarding spending three months salary. So he was working part time at toys r us, and he said "See? i did the three months salary!" My ring is a bit bigger now from our ten year anniversary, but that little ring is still up in my jewelry box. 

[Rachel333]

Did you guys see the video of the couple who each unknowingly planned to propose to the other on the same night? It was pretty cute. I believe the mom of one of the women kind of nudged them both into choosing that night.

 

[Captain Obvious]

Mine's pretty dorky...

It happened in Iceland, when we were on holiday. We got to Reykjavik and Mr Obvious insisted on taking me jewellery shopping. I was slightly surprised because he normally tries to drag me away from jewellery shops, but the jewellery was pretty damn awesome. In one shop, as I was looking around he kept asking the sales assistant to show him rings. I’d just bought a necklace, so I said “nah, I’d rather get matching earrings”.  We went to a few more shops, and now I think about it, he probably looked at rings at all of them but I didn’t even notice. 

(I should explain that, two days after we got together, Mr Obvious told me that he didn’t want to get married again, and we’d never discussed marriage since then (we’ve been together four years). So I didn’t really think it was going to happen, though I sort of wanted it to.)

Later that same day, we went out for a meal and two drinks (literally two – I wasn’t drunk). We were a bit tired so we decided to call it a night at about 10pm, walking past the jewellery shops we’d just been to. The ground was a bit rainy, I was half-looking at the jewellery in the shop window and thinking about going to the hotel for some sexy-time (well, you know), when BANG! I don’t really know how it happened, but I tripped, couldn’t stop myself.

I fell forward (it was down a hill) and hit the wall of the jewellery store head-first. (Later, Mr Obvious told me that he was terrified I’d done serious damage to myself, poor thing.) And the next thing I remember I was surrounded by about 20 drunk people trying to help me. Trying to convince them that I was okay, but then I realised I couldn’t stand up. They all helped me to my feet, and then I realised I had a huge lump on my head, and my knee actually really hurt.

We persuaded the drunk people not to call an ambulance (because it would have been really expensive), but Mr Obvious ended up driving me to hospital to spend 4 hours in emergency watching Lethal Weapon dubbed into Icelandic. There I found out I didn’t have concussion or any break to the knee, and was discharged, but the knee had swollen up like a balloon and the Dr thought I had ligament damage. Great, I thought – I’ve ruined our holiday.

Over the next two days my fears were sort of confirmed as I couldn’t walk properly, I had a bruise on my face and was basically miserable, as there was still three weeks left on our holiday. 

Two days after the injury Mr Obvious decided to take me to an outdoor thermal hot spring, since the floating around in water thing seemed to help the knee a bit. It was in a fairly remote town about an hour away from Reykjavik. 

We got to the thermal spa – it was part of a swimming pool complex next to a fjord – at 9pm, so the whole place was empty. It was about 5 degrees outside (40 degrees F), so not very warm, but 35 degrees (95 degrees) in the water. I hobbled to the pool and we swam around together. At least in the water I felt mobile, and the stars were really bright, and we had the whole place to ourselves so I was able to obviously grope Mr Obvious without anybody seeing us. We were floating in the water, hugging and looking at the views when Mr Obvious said “what do you think about getting married?”. I sort of squeaked “yes!” before saying “of course I fucking would”, because I’m that classy. More kissing and groping followed. 

And then the first person I told was the swimming change room attendant. While I was naked. Yeah.

Then the next day we went to buy a ring. FROM THE SAME FUCKING JEWELLERY SHOP I’D INJURED MYSELF ON. I realised it had been the worst, most painful engagement hint ever. 

But it worked. And – torn posterior cruciate ligament and $2000 of medical bills later – it was still worth it

[viii]

These stories are all so sweet! I've kind of given up on marriage for myself, but I love hearing other people's sweet stories. 

[Daisy0322]

My husband proposed on Fourth of July during the fireworks. He actually wrote a letter asking me to marry him because writing each other love letters is kinda our thing.

[Four is Enough]

16 hours ago, Galbin said:

The next day we went and got the ring. Three stones: past, present, and future. 

I love the symbolism of that!

[Ms Lucy Fur]

The Ex Mr Fur & I had too much wine after Easter Sunday dinner with his family & woke up a little hungover the next morning. I made coffee & brought him some to the bedroom. I opened the windows  & it was gorgeous outside. The first really warm day of the year. I said, I wasn’t going to work today & he said he wasn’t either. I said let’s go rock climbing & he said, “sounds good.” So then something just struck me I said, half jokingly, “Let’s get married.” He said, “sure, let’s do it.” I called my best friend, she & her mom set up a nice little ceremony by her pool, I bought my dress, we got wedding rings, marriage license & I even had to go to traffic court that day. We were married at 5:30 that evening. Our cake was a birthday cake that had the happy birthday writing scraped off of it. Although we’re now happily divorced & friends again, I wouldn’t have changed a thing because it was totally us. Plus, we got 2 great kids out of the deal. 

[Furbabiesonly]

My boyfriend popped the question this past Saturday

after a day out on the town where I was totally expecting it, we went home and I figured today wasn’t the day so I changed into my PJs. He then lured me into the backyard where there was a bouquet of roses and got down on one knee. Very sweet. Not how I had imagined it but perfect none the less. The ring is gorgeous too. I love watching it sparkle. I suppose I’ll get used to it eventually! 

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

On ‎3‎/‎25‎/‎2018 at 1:35 PM, Nargus said:

My mom was brushing her teeth and my dad was taking out/cleaning his contacts, and he off the cuff said ‘So how about we get married?’

This is on par with DH & I's engagement.  We were laying in bed talking about stuff and he said "so you wanna get married or what?" So romantic.   but so very us.

 

We'd only known each other 3 months, we were married 6 months later and now 21.5 years later, here we are.

[karen77]

1 hour ago, allthegoodnamesrgone said:

This is on par with DH & I's engagement.  We were laying in bed talking about stuff and he said "so you wanna get married or what?" So romantic.   but so very us.

 

We'd only known each other 3 months, we were married 6 months later and now 21.5 years later, here we are.

Our timeline was similar, but I did get teh down on one knee, thing, after about falling on his face slipping on ice which happened right after a nice dinner I believe. Engaged 2 months after our first date and married 8 months later! 10.5 years so far.

[Bad Wolf]

Married 4.5 months after we met. Going on 43 years. Got those Duggars beat by a mile.

[allthegoodnamesrgone]

2 minutes ago, Bad Wolf said:

Married 4.5 months after we met. Going on 43 years. Got those Duggars beat by a mile.

This is why I'm not always so quick to judge short dating/engagements, they can & do work out, and I love it.