Engagement

Introduction

If you haven’t heard already, Matt and I are now engaged! It has been a few days ago now, but we wanted to make sure we told our families first before we posted it on the internet for anyone and everyone to see. Below is my take on the whole thing, complete with all the girly juicy details that you have been waiting for. If you are only interested in the story of the proposal and the pictures of the ring, you can just skip on down to “The Proposal” and read from there.

WARNING: This blog post is extremely long and extremely cheesy

A Girl’s Fairy Tale

I was never too much into the typical “princess” Disney movies growing up. I did, however, have a few. Like most little girls, I remember imagining having a Prince Charming of my own. One who could sweep me off my feet and we could ride off into the sunset in a horse drawn carriage on a beach at sunset….roll credits. I always imagined that the heroic spectacular life-saving things of “Prince Charming” would be the very things that would make me fall in love. Fighting the enemy and saving the day with the girl in one arm, giving super cheesy lines, or roaming the town trying to find the girl that, for one moment, caught his eye. However, through my journey of falling in love, I have found that none of the above things are that which made me fall in love. Rather, it’s the small things that make up my Fairy Tale. It is things like when he puts a smile on my face that I can’t wipe off no matter how hard I try, the selfless things that he does and says to family or friends or complete strangers, and the absolutely ridiculous things that make me laugh until I cry. Those are the things that made me fall in love. Any heroic, spectacular, or life-saving events on top of that are just extra.


My REAL Prince Charming
The things that made me fall in love…

I decided to make a list of some of the things that made me fall in love. Of course, it is a very incomplete list that is constantly growing, but here are quite a few of the first ones that came to my mind. Here are some special moments in no particular order.

- He gives me foot rubs nearly anytime I ask (I have to try to not abuse that one!). The sweet part is that he hates feet. He wasn’t very fond of mine for a while but I still remember the day he said, “Well, I don’t mind YOUR feet.”

- Just two days after we first met face to face, he pushed me into a bush outside of the church building and I was laughing so hard I couldn’t pull myself out. I know that sounds like the furthest thing from “romantic” but I knew from that moment that we would get along.

- We went and saw the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie on opening night. It is about a three hour movie and it didn’t start until after midnight. I was nearly asleep in the theater when I felt his hand brush up against mine. It was a slow and cheesy progression but we held hands for the first time that night.

- He is real good at the cheesy pick up lines. They are the kind that makes you roll your eyes and let out a nice big “huff”, but once you turn around you can’t help but laugh and smile. For example, I will share the first line he used on me. I was playing a song by a guy named Jason Reeves called “Pretty Eyes”. The lyrics at the first of the song say, “As we were driving you turned your head around and looked right at me. I couldn’t see the road and it was scaring me how beautiful you are when you get crazy. I have never felt so weak. Maybe I would disappear without you, or maybe I would fall into the sky. But I’m in heaven orbiting around you, and your pretty eyes. Your pretty eyes.” In the middle of the song Matt leaned over and said, “Who sings this song?” I replied, “Jason Reeves,” and he slowly turned back around and said, “Oh… I didn’t know he had met you.” I gave a sarcastic laugh and most likely rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t stop smiling all day.

- He is constantly serving me. Even little things like getting me a glass of Kool-Aid when I am being too lazy to get up and get it myself. He opens my doors, carries my bags, and buys me random gifts just to make me smile. He is always doing something nice for me.

- Like me, Matt is very competitive. When I visit his family in Athens, we like to go play racquetball together. I had never played before so he had to teach me everything about the game. I consider myself a fairly athletic person, so I picked up on it pretty quickly but the one thing I COULD NOT (and still can not) do is return Matt’s serves. I was getting so frustrated so he started going a little easier on the serves. Once the game gets going after the serve we are a little more evenly matched and it makes for a more exciting game (at least for me!). Usually I would not like it if someone went easy on me, but then again… I also hate getting stomped. He could kick my butt every time if he wanted to, but he works real hard to only win by one or two.

- He is constantly doing goofy things that make me laugh until I cry. We have started somewhat of a game where, one person locks the other out of the car and won’t unlock the door until they dance. It is funniest when we are in a public place. Sometimes we will just give a quick little move, but sometimes Matt will just bust out with some crazy dance not caring who all sees. It never fails to make me laugh. I really like the TV show “Reba”. Matt would watch it with me occasionally but never seemed to really care much about it. One day, the show came on and Matt started singing along with the theme song and sang every word without missing a beat. I thought it was absolutely hilarious. If you have never seen his impression of a chicken… you’re missing out. If I ever have my feet on his lap or something, he will pick them up and smell them then roll his eyes back in his head and fall on the ground like he passed out. Silly, yes, but no matter how grouchy or tired or uninterested I am, I can’t help but laugh. There are many other things that he does that make me laugh, but those are just a few.

- I’m not much of a cook. I can make a few specific things that are really good, but other than that, my cooking talents are limited. No matter how bad it is though, Matt will always force it down so I don’t get my feelings hurt. Speaking of which, don’t ever try the recipe called Peachy Chicken…

- I can’t even count the number of times he sat up with me on the phone until the wee hours of the morning because I was having a bad night, even though he had to get up for work at 5:00am.

- One night I got back to June’s house (where I’m living) and the smoke alarm in my room was beeping. Not just a quiet little beep, but a loud screeching beep that would keep any normal person from sleeping. The ceilings in the room are really high, so I had to set up a ladder to get up there to look at it. I couldn’t figure out how to get the battery out, so I called Matt. He got out of bed, got dressed and drove over to June’s at about 1:00am to look at it. He got the battery out, but we couldn’t find any new batteries at the house. After striking out at a couple of gas stations, he finally found a station nearby that sold the kind of battery it needed. He came back, changed the battery, and moved the huge ladder so that I could sleep.

- One day he showed up at OC to surprise me after I had complained to him about it being too long since I had last seen him. He waited for me in my apartment as I came in from softball practice completely and utterly disgusting, sweaty and stinky and he STILL gave me a hug and a kiss before telling me to go shower.

- Within the first week of working at Park Avenue we took a trip to Sam’s to get some things for a youth event. While picking up some cokes we both, at the exact same time and in the exact same funny voice, said, “Coca Cola”. We looked at each other and started cracking up laughing. Later, I decided it would be funny to just walk up and down the aisles and just start laughing really loud for no reason. We would get so tickled watching the reactions of the people passing by. Some would give us funny looks and others would start cracking up laughing right along with us.


The Lead Up

Matt and I have known for a while that we wanted to get married. That being said, we knew it would still be a while before anything “official” happened. This past May we were shopping at the mall in Tyler, TX. Almost jokingly we walked into a couple of jewelry stores just to look around. We were both looking at the same thing, but it was one of those that you don’t really say it out loud. The clerks at the stores kept asking us all sorts of questions and we would just respond, “We’re just looking”. When we got to one of the stores, we started finding a lot that we liked. A lady came to help us, and she turned out to be a brilliant salesperson, because Matt signed the papers for a payment plan before we left the store. Matt had said before that he wanted it to be “the perfect ring”. He said he figured he might just know when it was the right one. The moment she pulled out the ring for us to look at it, a big smile ran across his face and he knew immediately. Of course, he didn’t say it at the time so that he could see if I really liked it, but I could tell right away that he did. I tried on a hundred different rings, but I kept coming back to that one, and we eventually decided it was the right one. That being said, I knew he was in the process of paying for the ring, but I was under the impression that it would be more around January or February before I got it (according to the payment plan) but he was sneaky and paid it off early. Therefore, I was not AT ALL expecting it at this time! I was VERY surprised.


The Proposal

On Monday after work, Matt and I came back to the house where he is living for the summer. We were going to sit around and watch TV for a little while then figure out something for dinner. When we pulled up in the driveway, Matt jumped out of the car and ran to the door. I thought he was trying to lock me out of the house, so I tried to hurry to catch up to him. He didn’t lock me out, but when he got in he took off running up the stairs. I asked him where he was going and he just yelled behind him, “I have to go to the bathroom!” I didn’t think anything of it. I had offered to make spaghetti for supper, but Matt suggested going to a restaurant that is up on top of a mountain at the adventure park here. You take a tram up the side of the mountain to get there and it is a really neat place to go. I remember making the comment that it was kind of expensive but Matt offered to take me on a date. After a few minutes he said that he forgot that he wanted to make me a CD so he was going to run up to the church to make it real quick. Again, I didn’t think much of it. When he got back, he popped the CD in and it was one of my favorite songs. He came and grabbed my hand and pulled me up to dance with him. Keep in mind, neither one of us can dance so we were stepping all over each other’s feet, but it was such a special moment. While we were dancing he told me how much he loved me and how he would never be perfect but that he would always try his best. When that song ended, the song “Let’s Stay Together” by Al Green came on. That is a song that has kind of been our song through our relationship. As I said before though, we can’t dance! I laughed and said, “I don’t know how to dance to this song!” Being silly, I said, “Maybe like this,” and did an absolutely ridiculous dance in a circle around the room. When I got back turned around facing Matt I noticed that he was down on his knee. Not expecting a proposal so soon, Matt said I just stood there saying, “Matt Porter… are you serious? Are you serious? Matt Porter… nu uh. Matt Porter.” Not believing it still, I leaned over and got a glance at the box in his hand and saw that it REALLY WAS the ring! I finally calmed down a little and the first thing he said was, “Now… I already proposed to your father and he said yes.” Then he asked me to marry him! I was still really shocked and I’m still not sure that it has fully set in. Then, Matt got out his Bible and we read together 1 Corinthians 13.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

I found out later that when we pulled up the house, the box had arrived in the mail and was sitting out on the front porch. Matt ran up to the door to grab it so I wouldn’t see, then ran upstairs and said he had to go to the bathroom but really went to open the box. All week he was constantly checking the mail, and I couldn’t figure out why… but it all makes sense now! Also, a few days before I got in the car and heard him finishing up a conversation on the phone. All I heard him say was, “Thank you… bye bye.” I asked him who it was and he immediately said it was his mom. I asked him why he told his mom “thank you” and he said, “I told her class went well this morning… and she was happy for us.” I thought it was a little strange but I didn’t think much more about it. I found out that he was talking to my dad and asking permission to propose. At the close of the conversation, my dad said, “Congratulations,” and then I came in to hear Matt say, “Thank you… bye bye.” It was pretty funny when Matt started explaining all of the weird things that he had been doing and how it all fit together and starting making sense!

After talking for a while, we took about two hundred pictures of the ring, and then went to eat. We road the tram up the mountain and sat out on the open balcony that looks over the side of the mountain and the entire town of Glenwood Springs. When we finished eating we walked a little ways up the Grizzly Creek hiking trail and enjoyed the amazing scenery and took a few more pictures.

It was an amazing night and neither one of us could stop smiling. I used to make Matt nervous because we would hear stories about how a guy proposed and I would say, “That’s lame… if someone asked me like that I would just say no!” All of those scenarios were out in public somewhere making a big deal out of it and I didn’t like the idea of that. The way Matt did it was absolutely perfect because we got to spend some time to ourselves to enjoy the moment, then we went out to celebrate. I couldn’t have been happier.


The Ring

I think the picture explains it well enough! It is a marquise diamond in the center, with a round diamond on each side of it. Then, on each side of the round diamonds are two rows of three little diamonds (three on top, three on bottom). It is absolutely amazing! Matt makes fun of me because he will catch me at random times in the day just staring at it and twisting it around in the light to see it sparkle. (remember when looking at the pictures, you can click the picture and see a larger clearer version)

The Plan

Our plan is to still wait another year and a half or so before we actually get married. We want to wait until one or both of us are out of school and we have jobs. I’m not sure, but I think having a job is important… right? So we aren’t making any serious plans right now… in a year or so when we come up with a date, I’ll be sure to let you know.


Sharing the News

Both of our parents are on vacation this week. My parents are on their cruise, so I couldn’t call them right away. I knew that my mom was supposed to call the next day, so I just waited to tell her. She was already expecting it, since she had overheard dad’s conversation with Matt a few days before. I called and told Jason and Summer and Brad and Nova to tell them right away. Matt’s parents were up in Colorado for their vacation, but they were still about five hours away. We had already planned to drive up and see them the next day so we just waited to tell them in person. We printed off a bunch of pictures from different activities that we have done lately (bike riding, hiking, etc) then slipped in some pictures of the ring at the end. They flipped through the pictures, and then when they got to the ones with the ring, they all just kind of stopped then looked directly at my hand. I think everyone approved and was excited for us!


Conclusion

Well now that you have read my book “The Engagement of Matt & Lauren” I guess I can quit telling stories. I know this blog post is entirely too long but I guess I got a little carried away. If you want to look at more pictures from the evening, you can click HERE. I just did a slideshow for this post since my stories take up enough space as it is! So all in all, in conclusion, it was an amazing night and we are both very excited about this new step in our relationship!