Surprise mutual proposal!

When my anxiety got bad a few years ago I got really into alternative wedding blogs. There was something soothing about being reminded there's no one way to be happy - that there aren't hoops you have to jump through first to deserve it. It wasn't about fantasising about my own wedding - doing that made me cry because of all the imagined stress - but I've always had a thing about what are essentially advice columns and I getting really into telling people how to do things I had no experience of. As a result, I kept looking at the blogs sporadically.

In September I had a work fail and a lot of hormones (yay PCOS providing me with three weeks of PMS!) and started obsessively looking at blogs again. There was something a bit different this time, though, because after seeing my sister get married some of the fear had been taken out of the idea of me being married. That it wouldn't devalue my current relationship. That it wouldn't change that relationship into something worse. That it wouldn't somehow lead to J's death (yay irrational anxiety).

So after poking the thought like an unburst spot for a bit, I decided I would propose. Well, after poking J a lot about his thoughts on marriage (that if we married it would be because he wanted to, not just to make me happy) and watching a lot of Don't Tell the Bride together and trying to subtly get his ring size by commenting on how rings are like duvets - they have a measuring system that corresponds to nothing else on earth, and neither of us know our ring sizes and hey let's find out. Suuuuuper subtle.

We already had a little holiday planned for the end of November in the Yorkshire Moors, because J wanted a break from work where we could just curl up and read books. So, timing sorted. I bought a Whitby jet ring - we both love Whitby, so it seemed appropriate, and most of the other places with sentimental connotations make bad jewellery (oh god, Venetian glass rings are fugly!).

I wrote the proposal down in a card because I didn't think I'd be able to say it. I smuggled some prosecco in the suitcase and hid the ring in a box of chocolates. I didn't want to overplan when I was going to propose, but I decided to get it over with on the first night so i wouldn't be obsessing about it.

So once we settled in I gave him the card and chocolates. He read the card, then turned to the coatrack and reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a ring box.

Because apparently you can't subtly measure someone's ring finger, and they think you're trying to tell them your ring size!

So it was a surprise mutual proposal :) I was a little disappointed at first to have done myself out of a proposal (J was thinking of doing it in Whitby) but J got to experience being proposed to, which is a nice treat for him. Also, we have a really cute story now.