Love and marriage*

As many of you have heard by now, I am engaged! Jeremiah asked me to marry him on Friday night after work, at Erinshire Gardens here in Abilene (one of our favorite places). It was impeccably planned and beautifully executed - I am so impressed by him (again) and so wonderfully, incredibly, deliriously happy.

He picked me up after work and took me home, and we hung out at my flat for a bit, then went on a walk down to Erinshire. (I thought I spotted a video camera through the trees when we passed the little chapel there, but he shrugged it off and tried to act nonchalant.) We walked around for a while and then "randomly" ran into our good friends Tim and Julie Danley from church, with whom I lived for a while. They hugged us both and then talked to me for a bit while Jeremiah ran off through the trees to answer a phone call. By this point I knew something was up...

He called me a moment later from the chapel and said, "Come to the chapel. I have a surprise for you." When I reached the chapel, I heard guitar music and saw Kendall Massey (director of Sing Song and Jeremiah's good friend) sitting in the chapel, playing. Jeremiah sang Josh Groban's "When You Say You Love Me" (one of our special songs), then dropped to one knee and asked me to marry him...and I said, "Of course." My sister was there, taking pictures, and our friend Robert was taking video (I had seen the camera through the trees!). We took lots more pictures and I called my mom; then we headed to some friends' house for what I thought was a surprise birthday party for Jeremiah, but turned out to be a surprise engagement party. So everyone was surprised in some way. :)

We're planning to get married in Abilene, sometime next summer ('08) after I finish my coursework in Oxford. I'll keep you all posted, don't worry. But for now, I just wanted to let everyone know.

There will be LOTS of pictures forthcoming, but most of them aren't on my camera, so for now I'll just leave you with a couple:

Jeremiah singing to me, and Kendall playing

Here's us smiling afterward. Check out Julie's blog for a close-up picture of the ring. More pictures to come!

*from "Love and Marriage" by Frank Sinatra