He put a ring on it

So, I'm engaged. Let's talk about how it happened.

Joel had pretty much been talking about going on a trip to Las Vegas since our second date. I laughed it off for a while -- who the heck starts talking about going on vacation with someone they've just barely started dating?? But somewhere along the way, the idea came to fruition and when our tax refunds came along, we booked a spring break trip to Vegas, along with two Cirque shows. He had been several times and I was excited to go on a trip with my own built-in tour guide.

I will admit that I picked out the ring and knew it had been purchased but wasn't expecting a proposal on this trip. Our coworkers teased us mercilessly about going to Vegas just to elope and we laughed them off, but we pointed out every wedding chapel in Vegas to each other, talking about the jokes we could play by taking pictures in front of them. When I posted a picture of me wearing a simple white dress on Facebook, I got the comment about wearing a white dress... it would have been a fun prank, although it's way past April Fool's Day now.

We were there from Monday - Friday and on Wednesday we had spent the day walking around, doing some window shopping, etc. and we'd come back in the afternoon to get ready for dinner and to go to the Cirque show "O" at the Bellagio. I promptly fell asleep and little did I know that Joel took this opportunity to call my parents and ask permission to ask me to marry him. He wanted to ask before we left for the trip but he never really got the chance to talk to my parents without my being there. It's probably a good thing because my mom would have been DYING if he had asked several days before, she already went crazy trying to keep that secret for the couple of hours that she had to.

After he woke me up and we got spiffied up (I just thought we were looking nice to go to the show!!), we headed to Margaritaville for the second night in row. He says he was worried about the time that it was taking us to get our dinner and get out of there, but he certainly didn't appear nervous or anything. Once we finished at dinner, we headed to the Bellagio and to see the fountain show as we had plenty of time before "O" was to begin at 10. We found a good spot and watched a fountain show and stood around and talked. After the second fountain show ... there's about 15 minutes between each show, he turned to me and said, "I think I have a way to make this night even better." I'm pretty sure he said some other things but the next thing I knew, he was down on his knee opening the ring box. My reply was basically, "Are you going to put the ring on or are you going to make me??" That's when he pointed out that I hadn't said yes yet. I told him yes and he put the ring on my finger and I pulled him up and promptly started smiling and crying like an idiot. I didn't get too long before he had to make sure that I called my parents since it was nearly midnight back home by that point. I was also able to get in touch with my brother since it was spring break and so teacher bed time was not in effect.

The only hard part was that it was late and a week night so that was pretty much the extent of who we could tell that night. The next morning Joel's friends started calling at about 6:30. We tried to go back to sleep, telling each other that we'd call them once we woke up. Well... I was way too excited and insisted that we start calling people. It was 10 AM at home, it was totally legit!

By that afternoon, my mom decided she had enough of not telling the Facebook world so she called her sister to tell her so she wouldn't find out via Facebook and we went on our merry Facebook-official way. So excited to start planning!!!