WEDDING

 During the Easter season of our senior year, I called home to my parents with a request: "Mom and Dad, I want to start looking for an engagement ring."  Shannon was home with me for the Easter vacation, so my Mom and I had to shop for a ring on the sly. After searching a few stores, I settled on the one and couldn't have been happier. A few weeks later, the ring arrived and I picked it up. After seeing it, I realized how excited I was to propose and spend the rest of my life with my best friend. Knowing how important family is to Shannon, I knew I needed to ask for their blessing. I went over to her family's house for dinner and had a plan at how I would ask. Even with my great plan, things of course did not go the way I envisioned. I wanted to ask her parents after dinner, but we started to clean up so fast that I lost my opportunity. After we were done cleaning, I tried to make sure I had both Gary and Kim in the same room and proceeded to say, "so there was more of a reason for coming over here tonight....I wanted to ask for your blessing to propose to Shannon." With pure joy and surprise, they both emphatically said yes. I brought the ring with and showed both of them and automatically Kim started to cry. I called Abby into the room and asked her as well and also showed her the ring.  As I was driving home that night, I figured CJ, who was in Madison, should be kept in the loop. I called him and told him I was planning on proposing and he was extremely excited and happy for me to join the family.Now that I had the approval of Shannon's family, the only other person I needed to say yes was her. I wanted our proposal to be a surprise and I wanted to be close to her family so they could be the first people she could show the ring to. We went to a park that had an ice cream shop nearby and spent part of the afternoon walking around the park together. I was paranoid the entire day of her finding the ring and box in my pocket that I wore a fleece with pockets on a 75 degree day...not smart. We were walking around and we found our way to the gazebo and it was time to propose.Let me tell you, proposing is not easy. I had all of these wonderful things to say in my mind like, "you are my best friend", "I want to spend the rest of my life with you", "and God has blessed me so much to have you in my life;" however, all of those things left my head seconds before I proposed. We get in the gazebo and I look at her and say, "I love you" to which she responds, "I love you too." I followed with, "No, I really love you" to which she said, "well I love you too." I was so flustered at this point that I just got down on my knee and opened the box asking, "Will you marry me?" With a sense of confusion, she responded, "Wait, is this for real?" After showing the ring again, I got the only "YES" I needed!  Regardless of how smooth the proposal went, I got the answer I wanted and was now on the way to marrying my best friend. I love you so much Shannon.

 

-Aaron