A Facebook friend of mine who reads my blog recently inbox messaged me some love for the blog and in her message she included a question and a special request. She asked me how long I waited for Gibran to ask me to marry him, exactly when I knew he was the one, and what it was like waiting for him to pop the question. She suggested that I share the answers with everyone on the blog, rather than just write her back on Facebook privately. So, here it goes!

Q: How long did I wait for Gibran to ask me to marry him?
A:We dated for six years before he proposed, but I honestly don’t think I was “waiting” for him to ask me to marry him until I started working as an editor at a wedding website. Ha! (Writing about other people’s beautiful weddings has a habit of making you overly excited for your own if you feel that you’re close.) What I really mean is that for a good part of our relationship I wasn’t waiting for anything. I was just enjoying being in love and being with someone I felt completed me and truly made me happy to the core. Just falling so deeply in love with him was a huge step for me anyway. I had been through quite a few bad relationships with guys who didn’t appreciate me and that had lingered well past their expiration date, so I had a wall up when I met him. Once that wall came down, I was just happy to be in love and to know that it felt right. We talked about being married in the future all the time and I guess because we both knew it was coming it wasn’t really something I cared to rush. The best thing about our relationship is that it just happened right before our eyes. I think I felt that if I rushed our wedding day, then it would be going against the vibe that had made us work all along.

But after editing real wedding stories for two years and being an “expert” wedding advice giver in the media, when Beyone came out with “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It!)” I did kind of get the itch. I won’t lie. At that point, I began to ask myself, were we ready? Was it our time? I felt the answer was yes, even though when I talked to certain people in my life about it they would say “you’re still young” or “you need to be financially secure and established first”. I didn’t believe in any of that then, and I don’t believe it now. I knew we were ready to make vows to one another and to commit to keeping them and spending the rest of our lives together. What else was there to wait on? Does the rest even matter? That’s when I started hinting that I was ready, just in case he was still wondering. Our engagement came about a year after that “revelation”. (AKA, about as long as it probably took him to save up for my ring.)

Q: Exactly when did you know he was the one?
A: I don’t remember an exact moment. I just remember waking up one day and realizing that no matter how far I looked into my future I saw him. In my daydreams he was there in the baby delivery room with one hand in mine and the other with a video camera. He was there at my first book signing. He was there helping me move furniture into our first house. He was there holding me when I cried over the awful unknowns in life yet to come. He was just all over my future and my mental projection of marital bliss. At that point I could no longer see past Gibran. He was my everything and therefore My One. I just feel blessed that he felt the same way about me. I can’t imagine the pain I might have felt if he hadn’t.

Q: What was it like waiting for him to pop the question?
Slightly nerve-wracking at times. I used to say to him that “what we have is so special that calling you my ‘boyfriend’ just didn’t sound like it had enough meaning, but yet I can’t say fiance or husband”. Alas, once I realized  marriage  was what I wanted, and that I wanted it to happen sooner rather than later, the waiting sucked a little. Mostly because Gibran did such a good job of pretending he was dead broke all of the time I didn’t have a clue he was saving, so I kept telling myself it wasn’t happening any time soon. (Look out for that trick ladies!) In fact, I had done such a good job of convincing myself an engagement wasn’t in our immediate future that I actually got over the waiting and moved on so much so that when he did finally ask me I was taken totally by surprise. Like shocked! But, it made the moment that much sweeter.

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