Caleb's Story

Pre-engagement:
Cathy and I have been talking about engagement or "moving forward with our relationship" pretty soon after we started dating.  We both had the mentality that we were looking for a serious relationship and that we were not going to mess around with "no scrub." =)
In one of our conversation's we jokingly said we should have the engagement in our one year anniversary.  Secretly I have been thinking of proposing before the new year as I wanted to set the tone for the new year.  However, I played along with the proposal on our one year anniversary as to maintain the element of surprise.

Since Cathy is very modest and humble, I had a hard time getting her to actually step foot into a jewelry store until the last couple months.  We went from doing "walk-bys" to actually sitting down with a jeweler and talking about the style of ring she liked.  It took some work to actually get her to "like" the idea of wearing such expensive jewelry on her humble and modest hands. 

I spent several months learning about the 4 C's and was fortunate to have my brother-in-law and several friends and a roommate who had experience in this area. (siblings please be warned, do not eat before reading the following line) I finally found the perfect diamond that reflected Cathy, flawless to the naked eye, reflects light flawlessly, and once you've seen it, it's hard to take your eyes off of it...

Finding the setting that worked with her petite and delicate hand's required some creativity and imagination as there were no setting's fitting.  So I combined all the different styles and details she mentioned she liked and brought it together with the help of an amazing jeweler (Collin's Family Jewelers). 

The engagement:
So I picked her up to carpool to work in the morning  (it was casual Thursday at her work since she was off on Friday).  We had some coffee and picked up a donut at a grocery store close to her work.  I dropped her off and hurried off to pick up 3 dozen fresh red roses and some baby’s breath.  I went to work afterwards and took the afternoon off to have lunch with her mom and to give her a single stem rose as a “thank you for your blessing” and to pick up Cathy’s clothes for dinner at Jake’s Del Mar where we had reservations for after the engagement.  I went home and set up framed black and white pictures we took throughout the year and set them up chronologically with a candle and some rose petal’s along the stairway at my house.  I also made a trail of rose petals for her to follow to where she would find me. I also had some champagne on ice to celebrate =)

I went and picked up Cathy from work with a single rose similar to the one I gave her mom and brought her over to my home.  I had her wait downstairs for a few minutes while I setup the candles.  I then held a candle on a rose and angled the ring box so that the light hit the diamond ;-).  As she came up the stair's I turned on the song "Marry Me" by the train.  When she saw me she said “what are you doing?!?! Get up ;-)” and then she said YES!!! We then danced to the remainder of the song followed by "Just The Way You Are" by Bruno Mars.