We’re Doing a Thing!

We are doing a thing – B and I are getting married! This post is a long time coming, since the news is over a month old, and I already have a tan line on my finger. It’s still kind of exciting to think about though. After 6 years we’re going to do the thing I (we) knew we would do eventually – that is, make it so that I can get on B’s incredible health insurance (kidding, but not kidding – DPS offers us the worst health care coverage plans I’ve ever seen). Jokes aside, I’m pretty excited about his next thing we’re doing!

Our engagement story: we don’t have one. Like any self-respecting social media addict, I Instagramed the good news to friends (I at least face-timed family). The next day at school, I told my classes the cool news and they all wanted to know “the story” of how it happened. So after being built up with 15 years worth of prom-posals and Taylor Swift videos, I think my non-story ruined a few storybook expectations of real life marriage proposals. So instead, our story is the whole story – we met, we meshed well, we did things, now we’re doing another thing. This clip sums it up pretty well, I think.

B and I met on the internets in 2011. Those were the okCupid days in San Francisco, and I was in the midst of a dating streak – about 2 dates a week for a couple months. I had a solid system down of a few email exchanges, then meet up for a drink. None of these dudes worked out, and it was feeling like a part time job. Then B messaged me one evening (while out on a work trip in Portland), and we met for drinks a week later. I told my friend Aimee about this guy I was meeting, and how he is 6’4″ and Australian. She said, “well, you might as well just throw your panties at him!”

I went into our first date apprehensive with low expectations. The moment I walked into that little wine bar though, B got up out of his seat and stretched out his arms to give me a hug. I remember thinking, “What. The. Hell. Weirdo. Who hugs on the first drink date? What do I do? Do I hug back? Do I offer a handshake instead? OMG, this is so weird!” And that’s how we met. The rest is pretty standard. We hit it off, we talked for hours, we played the internet dating game for about a week, and then went on our second date. For literally our third date, I brought him on a Russian River weekend trip with my girl friends, and on the drive home, we planned our first vacation together to New York the next month. We’ve spent almost every day together since. Needless to say, we moved a little fast at the start. Friends were skeptical – especially when we simultaneously decided to move in together and move to Brooklyn a year later. But there were no red-flags, timing was right, B is super fun, personable, smart, outgoing, and I felt like I could be 100% myself, 100% of the time. It was a no-brainer.

Since 2011, I’ve started this blog, we’ve moved to two different cities in two different states, taken three international trips, bought a house, started a garden, and amassed a collection of 6 different and fully functional shovels. At the start of May, we went to our neighborhood brewery Spangalang, for their release of our favorite summer beer, a cucumber gose that is essentially a very, very, tasty pickle-y beer (sounds gross, but it is amaze, trust me). I don’t remember how the conversation started, but it drifted into B and I talking about what we had in mind for a “wedding” type thing, which morphed into an initial invite list, and ended with “well I guess I should get you a ring then to make it official. Didn’t you have something on your Pinterest board?” Why, yes, I do. Here’s a good website. I let him pick out the ring, and the FedEx truck dropped it off later on in the week.

That Thursday, I taught my classes, and went to Costco, and came home to a giddy B urging me to go see what was in the dining room. We toasted each other, and I put the ring on my own finger. Then we FaceTimed our moms (mums) and drank a bottle of white bubbly in our garden. I stuck the ring on a baby spinach plant, and sent the news out into the internets. The end. For now.