Better than a Promise...

There's my engagement ring. I'm enamored with it, can you tell?

My fiance was planning to purchase a promise ring for me for our 2 year anniversary. It didn't happen for us with our status as broke college students. I'm not the type that asks for jewelry, yet he bought me a beautiful pair of green, peridot earrings. Although, I was still secretly hoping for a promise ring because we had been discussing it a lot during that time. I have revealed a little about our ring story, I believe. In a nutshell, my promise ring evolved into an engagement ring. We knew we both wanted to marry each other early in our relationship and had many talks regarding it.

Driving home one night, he sweetly drove me home and stopped the car before we arrived. He was telling me all these sweet things I can't remember right now, but said, "Lauren, I want to discuss my plans with you." So, after telling me how he was planning on asking my family for my hand, I began to research ring styles I liked and ended up going to Robbins Brothers. I ended up picking something a little unexpected, yet something that perfectly suited my personality and lifestyle. I was going to let him pick it out, but my heart sort of jumped out of my chest when I tried on "the ring."

 So, no promise ring ever made it to my finger. Instead, the most beautiful engagement ring slid on my left hand a month before our 3rd anniversary in November 2010. It made me cry because we both felt that it was much more meaningful for us to take this huge and natural step together. And that was that. We became engaged soon after! It felt real once he sweetly put the ring on my finger after proposing to me on my birthday, alone, between hundreds of luscious orange trees. An adrenaline of excitement surged through my whole body, and I never thought (even though we both knew what was about to happen) that the moment the ring fit my finger, it changed me. It changed my fiance. It was thrilling, so emotional, so loving, joyously overwhelming--it was so real and so pure for us. Words cannot describe the feeling in that moment!

So happy! Oh, happy day!