This post is a little bit of travel, since I’ll be talking about Cinque Terre, Italy and a little bit about relationships and humor, since it involves my engagement story.
So, my engagement was actually a surprise to me – we’re a big “discuss major decisions” couple and early on, we had discussed/agreed that marriage wasn’t necessarily for us. I always figured if one of us changed our minds, we’d talk about it. Instead, my husband (boyfriend at the time) decided to surprise me with the proposal instead during our first international trip together. Let’s just say, there were so many hijinks along the way!
He didn’t propose to me right away – he had a plan to do it when we went to Cinque Terre. Well, the day we woke up to start our journey to Cinque Terre – a bug had bit me in the middle of the night somehow so my entire left eye swelled up basically to the size of a golf ball. Me, being me, went “oh well, not a big deal! I’m not in pain, not having issues breathing, and we’re on vacation anyway, so I’m not going to worry about. I’ll just wear sunglasses, and it’ll eventually go down.” My hubs (unknown to me) was freaking out because he had prepared for engagement/proposal pictures, and all he could think of is that I’d have a big old swollen eye in them. Fun fact – Europe (or at least Italy, Spain, Paris) doesn’t really have ice lying around and easy to get to, so he had to improvise on a way to get the swelling down. He decided to grab the cold can of coke from our fridge and told me to put it on my eye. I thought it was weird, but decided to humor him.
Luckly, over the day, the swelling went down. We spent the first day in Cinque Terre exploring one of the cities. For those that don’t know, Cinque Terre is comprised of five “cities” (thus the name..roughly translating to “five lands”) where you can travel between via a hiking path or by train. It’s a beautiful area, along the ocean, and very hilly, as the cities are set into or on top of the hills/mountains.
We learned that the cities were very hilly, so when my hubs suggested we dress up for dinner the following night – he immediately had pushback from me. One, I didn’t want to wear my nicer flats until right before dinner because I figured I’d survive the walk into the city better in tennis shoes. Two, most of the places we’ve been hadn’t been that fancy, so I didn’t really see why I had to wear a dress. At this point, I was a little suspicious, but still was of the belief that if he was going to propose, we would’ve talked about it. Poor guy – if he was with a more girly girl, he wouldn’t have had so many issues trying to get me to agree to dress up for a nice dinner date!
In the end, it all worked out! He was able to coordinate with the photographer, and he proposed on top of the castle in Vernazza. To say I was surprised, would be the understatement of the year! Of course, me being the dork I am, knelt at one point when he did because I was trying to raise him up while he was kneeling.
Hopefully, some of your engagement stories went more smoothly than mine!
Miuzing 