We're Engaged!!
Yes, folks, the rumors are true! As of July 11, 2004, I am engaged to be married to my absolutely amazing boyfriend (now fiance) Tim. For those of you with whom I've been out of touch and those of you who haven't met my sweetheart yet, I'll give you a few details on him. He's a software engineer for Apple Computers, where he works as a member of the design team for a new product called Motion. Originally born in New Jersey, he grew up in Minnesota and Arizona before moving to LA after high school.
Tim and I all dressed up for a night at the opera
Tim and I at Huntington Gardens in LA
I guess it's pretty fitting that we first met online. We were both trying out several personals websites looking for other Christian singles in the LA area. Tim first saw my profile on Yahoo Personals and decided to send me an icebreaker note (a short 1-2 sentence email selected from a set of pre-written statements provided by the site). I had actually gotten into the habit of not responding to those sorts of messages because most of the time the sender did not follow up with a full email. Only paying members of the site could send full emails, so sending free icebreaker notes was pretty popular. When I saw Tim's icebreaker and profile, however, I felt compelled to respond with an icebreaker of my own. We exchanged a few emails and found we had a lot of similarities (including an almost identical list of goals for life). We had our first date on November 30, 2003 at the Benihana in Santa Monica. We were both incredibly nervous (I kept dropping all of my utensils throughout dinner), but we had such an amazing connection and found it so easy to talk to each other that we started spending more and more time together.
Tim and I outside my parents' house in Virginia
After dating for several months, we decided to meet each others' families and started talking about possibly getting married. Tim especially wanted to meet my parents so that he could ask my dad for permission to get married. My birthday fell 2 weeks after we returned from visiting my parents in Virginia, so Tim decided to plan a big surprise for me. However, since he didn't want me to suspect that he was going to propose, he kept giving me lots of different, misleading clues to throw me off. That evening, we went out to dinner at Yamashiro, a Japanese restaurant on a hill in Hollywood overlooking the city. We had a wonderful meal with an incredible view of the city from the restaurant.
Yamashiro Restaurant
I knew there was a surprise of some sort planned for after dinner. To my surprise, when we got back in the car, Tim drove out of the restaurant and right into the parking lot for the hotel down the hill. We got out, and he led me into one of the rooms. There were rose petals scattered on the floor making a path from the door to the bed, and there were rose petals all over the bed. In the middle of the bed, there was a jewelry box.
Tim's proposal set-up
As soon as I saw the rose petals, I got really excited because it looked like he was about to propose. So, I rushed over to the bed and opened the jewelry box....only to find a pair of diamond earrings! To say the least, I was a bit disappointed to not find a diamond ring in there. According to Tim, my face went from elated to disappointed almost immediately...which was all part of the plan. He wanted to keep me guessing the whole time. Since they were very nice earrings, I sat on the edge of the bed for a moment trying to psych myself up to act excited about them. As I turned around to thank him for the earrings, I saw that he was holding a diamond ring in his hand. He got down on one knee and asked if I'd marry him. I immediately said yes!
My engagement ring!!
Apparently, at that point Tim contends I started trying to grab the ring from him with my left hand while he was trying to put it on my finger. To me, it seemed like he wasn't moving fast enough... Anyway, after that we hung out in the room for a little while to enjoy the view and then took a walk down into Hollywood (I was too excited to sit still...). Overall, it was the best birthday ever!
To answer the usual questions, no date or location has been set for the wedding. We'll argue all of that out over the next few weeks and post updates later....
