Oh, you know we all have stories, and the other engagement ring thread will derail if we don’t start a whole thread for “this is how I got engaged” . Also it would be fun to hear heirloom ring stories, especially for those of us with sons (what do I do with my heirloom ring?)
Are these proposal stories or ring stories or both?
Mine is not so exciting but it is my story so I love it 
Luckily we had a friend of my grandmother’s who was an old-fashioned jewelry on Jeweler’s row in Philly when DH and I were dating. So he was able to shop there and feel like he was getting a good deal (not necessarily a discount, but he was getting good service from someone known to the family).
He had NO money then, I was making considerably more than he, and he bought a simple stone in a setting he described to our jeweler. The jeweler gave him a nice little china dish of some sort to give to me as our first engagement present.
We bought matching plain gold wedding bands. I wear them all the time, I only take them off to do heavy duty cleaning. I even forget to take them off at the beach.
For our 8 years of dating, my H was chronically late for every event. We were heading up to a resort on Lake Superior and he was obsessed with being there by a certain time. As soon as we arrived he grabbed a roll of duct tape, grabbed my hand and we ran at top speed to a sailboat rental office. He and I along with a nice young captain headed out for a ride on the water. By now I had figured out that something was up. As we were returning back to shore and just after we passed the end of the breakwater, he thrust his closed fist toward me and with a silly little boy look on his face, he said “here, I got something for you. Do you want to get married?” The young captain took our pix and then asked my H what he would have done if I had said no. The answer “I would have tossed the ring in the lake.”
The duct tape was to adjust the size of the ring in case it was too big - which it was, so I spent and entire weekend with a wad of tape on the back side of my finger.
He had my ring custom made and then on our 13th anniversary we went to the same resort and he presented me with a an upgraded model. I never did get a wedding band.
My engagement story is meaningful to me, but not particularly story worthy.
My best friend, however, had a cute one:
Her boyfriend got down on one knee and proposed to her…
on the floor of the ocean while scuba diving.
DH was away for a semester when we were in college…he arrived for the usual visit and I went to hug him and thought he was having a heart attack, his heart was going so fast. So I draw back to look at him and he just hands me a card. Taped to the back was the ring, and “marry me” written underneath. I looked back up and he had sat on the floor rather than pass out!
I have a 25th anniversary band on my right hand, as does he. He’s an aeronautical engineer so they are “silver” – actually, titanium, which is the indestructible metal plane parts are often made of.
It is my March spring break and I am ready to graduate from dental school in May. I am visiting BF in another state and he is not making any future plans, so I say that I am willing to move to his state for one year and then we either get married or it is over. That gets his attention! So he says how long to plan a wedding (32 years ago)? I say 5 months and 5 months from today plus 2 weeks to tell our parents in person is July 31; how does that work for you? He says yeah that works, let’s get married then. Me: what about your Phd? you have 3 years left. He says all that’s left is the research/thesis and he’s no longer interested, so he will find a job.
We had no money and I wouldn’t let future MIL buy me a ring. My wedding ring cost $60 and his $30. He got a job 10 days before our wedding so we didn’t have to live with the in-laws.
H & I had been dating about a year. One nigt, he took me to a nice restaurant and had a private room. He brought me flowers and at the beginning and at the beginning of dinner, got down on one knee and proposed. He gave me a cubic zirconia ring (that was way too big), and said let’s buy the ring together. That was several decades ago.
We shopped together (in secret from our families). Spent $250 on both rings. Hid them in my sock drawer for four months until we were sure our parents wouldn’t have a fit. We were sophomore and junior in college and knew we would get kick-back about being too young. The original ring was 1/5 c diamond with tiny chips in the wedding ring. We got a 1/2 c diamond put into the same setting at 20 years. I could have a much bigger one to keep up with the neighbors but don’t care to. It’s important to me that we still have that ring, and that bond from the innocent penniless days back when.
At one point when we were installing the landscape in our second house in two years, we bought a plain gold band because I had nearly lost my diamond digging sprinkler ditches and connecting the pipes. The prongs were bent over when I noticed it. That lasted about 6 months. I don’t remember to switch when I’m going to be grubbing around in the dirt. So far, haven’t lost a diamond…going on 39 years.
Future H and I didn’t really want engagement rings, but he had bought these marvelous ceremonial African wedding rings and we decided they were it. They were huge, made of bronze, using the lost wax technique and while the female one was a solid circle, the male one had an arrow off to the side.
The inside surface was a bit sandy, not bronze, and the male one was a bit bumpy. It was so big that it rattled around even on my thumb but H couldn’t get it on any of his fingers (we wore them around our necks on a leather strand). I was making fun of him and his fat fingers, that I couldn’t believe it wouldn’t even fit on his pinky. So he tried again, and was full of excitement when he got it on!
Well… you can probably guess the rest. It wouldn’t come off easily and he pulled on it and pulled on it in an increasing panic. We had been out and when we got home he tried running it under hot water with lots of soap to loosen it but it didn’t work. We called the local ER for help and they said to always use COLD water since your finger will expand in hot water faster than the metal would (and there was all that sandy stuff too).
Finally, we ended up in the ER at Boston City Hospital. Oh lord, they laughed and laughed! Got the ring off in about 3 seconds with some surgi-lube and a thin strip of plastic. They didn’t charge us either but made us bring home some extra surge-lube just in case.
Still have those rings somewhere, safely on their leather strands.
@greenbutton: “I looked back up and he had sat on the floor rather than pass out!” is just about the most adorable thing I have ever heard!
H and I got engaged only 3 months after we met. I don’t remember the actual proposal. We were in Peace Corps at the time. It was at my house and H shaved off his (long scraggly) beard before he asked. It was not anything formal on bended knee–it was more like, “Wanna get married?” I said, “Let me think about it,” and I gave him my answer the next day–after reviewing the pros and cons in my head that night 
There was no engagement ring, and I didn’t expect one. Since we planned to get married soon, and H didn’t have any money, I bought myself a gold wedding band for about $60. After our third anniversary–when we were still starving grad students, H’s mom gave me her grandmother’s diamond (about 1/3 ct) that she had re-set as my “engagement ring.” (She had her own rings–her grandmother’s ring had been sitting in a drawer since she’d inherited it.) It looks very nice–it has a different style of cut than they do today. I wear both rings all the time, never take them off.
H and I had been dating for 11 months when he proposed. We had just eaten dinner at my parents’ home and he asked me to take a walk with him. We walked to a nearby park. I got distracted with something and when I turned around, I found H down on one knee. I was totally surprised. We got married 7 months later…just enough time to plan the wedding. Our 30 year anniversary is in May.
H is an engineer, so of course it was all planned out. His grandmother had left him a diamond from her wedding band. It is maybe 1/4-1/3 carat. We went to a jeweler to design the setting, but he waited to propose. So … my ring is not fancy, but it is meaningful. Years ago, a group of us compared our engagement rings. We discussed how they symbolized where we were at that particular point in our lives, and we agreed that we would never replace them with “bigger, better” diamonds. None of us have.
I have noticed that it’s a big deal to get a ridiculously expensive sparkler (has been for a number of years). I don’t get it. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, because D has said that she thinks it’s a waste of money to spend a lot on a ring.
My story is kind of awful, really. I proposed to my husband with the immortal words “so, when do you want to get married?” (No previous discussion. None. We had bought a house together, however.) His reply: “Q1.” (It was September at the time.) After he said that, I told him I wanted an engagement ring, please. We went to the jeweler and found a nice ring with three tiny Canadian tenth-carat diamonds. Not terribly expensive (about a week’s salary for him at that time). He bought me a nice one-carat ring for our tenth anniversary. I love sparkly stones and he’s bought me a several over the years
DH is a computer guy. So think back 31 years. He made a long banner with “Will you marry me” on a dot matrix printer. Each letter was composed of those letters (ie the “W” as all composed of little w’s, the “I” of little i’s etc) I still have it.
I hate to post mine after these sweet stories, but just to show that there are two sides to everything…
First let me say that I’ve been married for 29 years, so there’s that. Anyway, we got engaged after 2 for 1 night at the local bar. I definitely didn’t see it coming as he was still in school. My diamond is small, very small (1/4 carat) and while I know that doesn’t mean anything, to me it does. I’ve always thought that engagement rings should be a statement piece, something meaningful or that you could be proud of. Mine got the job done, but that’s about it. We never talked about it before he bought it as it was a surprise. I’ve never told him that I was anything other than happy with it but… I would have loved to replace it at 25 years but that came and went without fanfare. I suppose that’s my biggest gripe - no romance or excitement and I think back to how it all started and wonder - what did I expect??
But like I said, we’ve been together for 29 years so…
atomom,
I got ya beat. DH, who was military, was going to be sent overseas. We got engaged 10 weeks after we met. No way was I waiting for him for a year or 2 and no way was I going overseas. He got out when we married, 4 mos later. So, we married 6 mos after we met, 31 yrs ago. When he asked my dad’s permision over the phone, my dad responded “you’re kidding?”
My engagement story is a more funny than anything and a bit long, so bear with me. We had plans to go to a Dodger game with two friends with cheap vouchers I had purchased online. If anyone knows anything about me, they know I have the biggest Dodger baseball fan on the planet, so H decided to propose at Dodger stadium. They always have the Kiss cam inbetween innings on the jumbotron, and often times there is a proposal at the end when the girl simply thinks they are just on the camera.
So get this…the time comes for the kiss cam (and honestly, I had an idea that this was going to happen…H was all nervous and we had talked about this time period for getting engaged, etc.) AND THE CAMERA MAN WAS SENT TO THE DECK BELOW US!!! H proposed and another random couple was on the jumbotron that should not have been. Dodger administration apparently sent him an email right after apologizing profusely and saying the camera man would come back in another inning to re-do the proposal at the end of the dance cam. However, H does not have a smart phone so he wasn’t getting any email notifications.
The dance cam comes back later on and tries to get us and our friends to dance, which we are not super enthusiastic about. He tells us “You better dance…” all while we have no clue they will re-do the proposal. The words “Will you marry me” come on the screen and we put two and two together. I point to the ring on my hand, but H fake proposes again anyway without the ring to keep the whole stadium from getting really confused.
The administration comes and talks to us, apologizes again and says that they need to really get pictures of the couples beforehand so they can make sure they are filming the right people. We get offered BEHIND THE PLATE tickets for another game…which honestly was more exciting than getting proposed to at Dodger Stadium. Sitting in those seats later on in the summer was like a dream come true for me.
I was lucky enough to have a 2 carat diamond ring passed on to me from my grandmother to my mother. H only spent a little bit to have it re-set and re-sized. We will be married for 2 years in June.
A diamond at the diamond. Cute!