Wedding Week: The Engagement

This week, my husband and I are celebrating our 8th wedding anniversary. Given what’s happened over the last year, the fact that we even made it to this anniversary is a big deal. To celebrate, I’m turning this week into “Wedding Week” here on Daily Money Shot. It’s a 4 part series detailing certain aspects of our engagement and wedding planning. I should note that we did have an expensive wedding and we were fortunate to not have to pay for most of it. I will only be sharing the parts of the wedding planning that we did pay for. 

My husband and I do not have a very interesting story of how we met. We met in the fall of 1996 when we were both sophomores in college. Where did we meet? In class. Great Crimes, to be exact. Our professor sat us alphabetically and he wound up next to my roommate. She’s the kind of person who talked to everyone and soon we learned that he lived in our apartment building. So, she invited him to be our new BFF (mainly because she had a crush on him. Yes, I know. I’m terrible) and 3 months later, we were dating. End of story.

If you’ve done even a quick bit of math, you’ll realize that we started dating in 1996 and didn’t get married until 2004.  Believe me, that was a sore point for me, too. In fact, in late 2002, around our 6 year anniversary (and, I should note here that we were living together at this point), I started to kind of freak out that we were not even close to being engaged. Which led to a GIGANTIC fight where he promised that by the end of the year, we would be engaged. Case closed.

But not really.

You see, by the time New Year’s Eve 2002 had come and gone, we were still not engaged. I let it go that night but the next day? I. Was. Pissed. I believe we had a conversation that went something like this:

Me: What the fuck?! You don’t promise someone that you’re going to get engaged and then not propose. You don’t get someone’s hopes up like that and then not follow through. You’re an asshole. I can’t fucking believe you did that!!! (Did I mention that I curse a lot when I’m angry?)

Him: Aren’t you going to go get lunch?

Me: WHAT??? You have nothing else to say? You’re a dick. (Pause). Aren’t you at least going to come with me? (My thinking was that I could continue my diatribe in the car).

Him: You really need to learn to do things on your own. (Note: He claims he said this to get me out of the house since he was running out of time on the chicken costume rental. I claim he said it to be an asshole.)

Me: FUCK. YOU.

And then I left to go get lunch. Mainly because I was hungry and way too angry to stay in the apartment. About 15 minutes later I came back home with lunch in hand and guess what? The jerk had locked the apartment and I had to stand outside, in the rain, fishing around for my keys while he got stay all nice and dry and smug inside the apartment. I was completely prepared to lose my mind on him but then, when I opened the door, I was stunned into silence.

The apartment was completely covered in lit candles and there he was before me…in a chicken costume, holding a series of signs with the last one that read “Will you marry me? Cluck, cluck”.

Yes, that’s right. I was proposed to by a 6″1′ chicken. And I’m pretty sure that I’m the only person to ever receive the words “cluck, cluck” in a marriage proposal. And I’m pretty sure I’m the only person to actually say yes to a proposal from Big Bird’s evil twin.

Of course, the only camera we had at the time broke as I was taking the picture of him.  This probably should have been some sort of sign.

For the record, I did make him take off the head and actually say the words; being proposed to by a sign was just a little too…unorthodox (because, you know, a chicken suit is totally traditional). Also, he did not propose with a ring. For the three weeks after he proposed until I got my ring, almost no one believed me that I was engaged.

So, for those of you unsure that your proposal isn’t romantic or proposing is too expensive, rest assured that it is not. Of all the ostentatious proposals I’m aware of, mine was certainly the most unique and probably the cheapest. And that didn’t diminish its meaning one iota.

(Oh, and the reason behind the chicken suit? Let’s just say that I used some pretty colorful language during our argument 2 months prior and this was the least offensive costume he could find in relation to that.)