the story.

Here's how it went:

Yesterday afternoon Mckay text me from work asking what I wanted to do that night. I responded, "go get me a gold band so that we can announce an engagement" {background: we had decided on Sunday to get married on Sept. 17th & I was so anxious to be engaged and start planning but we didn't have a ring-so I was content with a fake just to get going}. He said, "Haha. Yeah right. I fundamentally cannot do that. Please understand. I would, however, go ring browsing with you tonight if you so desire...". Jackpot. He made it clear that we weren't buying a ring, this was just to get an idea of what I liked.

We agreed to meet at the Westchester Mall that evening. He text me later in the afternoon that he had some projects to finish up and wouldn't be able to be there very early. I said that was okay and that I would still go early and scout out the ring shops. He ended up getting there at 8:15ish, by that point Tiffany&Co. had closed, and I was a little bummed because I wanted to do the super lavish upscale thing for fun. We {finally} met up {me trying to not be cranky about his tardiness/missing out on Tiffany&Co.} and went to Zales. 

Zales didn't have a huge selection and we weren't really interested in anything. The store closed at 9pm and we left empty-handed, which was what I expected, but it was fun to try on the rings anyway.  We headed to Tarrytown to our favorite Greek restaurant for dinner. After stuffing ourselves with the most delicious lamb gyros we went back to my house.

{what i thought was our ordinary scrabble game}

When we got home I made him look through some bridal magazines with me, he was so thrilled I'm sure, but after a few minutes of that he suggested playing a game. Scrabble is our favorite, so I ran down stairs to get it. We started {I drew the "A" so I got to go first, my lucky night for sure} and made it to the point in the game where you're just drawing out all the stinking vowels and it's hard to make words. By this point I was a little distracted and checking my email during his turns. My turn rolled around, I put "heal" on the board and then reached into the scrabble bag for new letters.

My heart just stopped.

I pulled out a ring box.

Was so confused for a few seconds, I remember thinking, "Did he get me something at Zales?! No... Is this a joke?"

Then I looked at him and said, "What is this?"

He just grinned & said, "Open it"

So I did, with shaky hands. At this point I had started to cry.

I turned around to him, and he got down on one knee, I was sitting on the edge of my bed and he started to speak but then got chocked up. He put his head on my shoulder and I nuzzled him and cried a little. Then he gained composure and said, "Honey, I love you. Will you marry me?".

Of course I said yes, we kissed & he put the ring on my finger.

{tears}

{the happy couple.}

{Turns out, he hadn't been working late, he'd hardly been working at all. He'd spent the last two days in the city working with a jeweler to find me the ring.}

He stayed over until about 3am and we just laughed and talked and smiled.

We called family and friends {the picture below is probably my favorite of the night}.

And talked more about our wedding and future.

My favorite part of this whole experience, besides staring at my gorgeous ring & having Mckay as my fiance, has been the outpouring of love and support from friends and family.  It has been incredible and I just feel so grateful to have such wonderful people in my life to share this with.  My grandpa wrote me a sweet email this morning and said, "hold tight to each other". I am so excited to do that.

So this is the start of our new life together.