Engagement

Ryan and I went to visit her family up north in Chicago for Christmas of 2007. I had planned on asking her then, but trying to plan an engagement in a place that you've never been before is a pretty hard task. Plus, it's very cold in the winter there. Too cold for the likes of this southerner. After spending Christmas up north, we flew back on the 26th of December. We got back into Murfreesboro around 7'ish that evening. We still had some Christmas gifts that we had left there to open when we got back. By this time, I had already been given my "big" Christmas gift from Ryan. An Xbox 360. She made a big mistake getting me that ;) So Ryan was opening a few gifts from me. Just little things that she had wanted around the house, an electric can opener, a toaster, the final season of The O.C. on DVD. It was down to her last gift (so she thought). She started unwrapping it and was very confused. It was a wedding planner, you know, one of those huge planners that details everything in a time line and budgets every penny you have for the wedding. Her reaction was, "are you sure this is mine? Is this someone else's gift that I opened?" Then she turned around and there I was with the ring. I don't even think she said yes. I don't even think I had time to ask her the question. She just said, "Are you kidding me? You're kidding me, right?" Then she tackled me. The whole week after we were trying to figure out a good date for the wedding. We had both decided that Fall of 2008 would be a good time. At that time I puled up UT's football schedule online and told her that these dates are off limits. So we had originally planned to have the wedding on UT's bye week, September 13th. In February of 2008 we hade made the move back towards Knoxville, TN. During this spring, UT had changed their schedule around, so this meant our wedding date had too change as well. So, bye week was changed to September 6th, 2008, and likewise our wedding date was set.