A Proposal, Girl Style.

In my last post, I mentioned that I proposed to E over the weekend, and that he said yes (unsurprisingly, since he had already proposed to little old me). This reverse-proposal was something we talked about before we ever got engaged, mostly in the context of him wearing an engagement ring. The tentative plan is for him to have a thicker engagement ring and then a thin little wedding band and wear them as a set, but that might change because he's nervous that two rings will feel weird on his man-hands. So, while he's known the ring was coming since we got engaged (I am just a lazy, indecisive sod who couldn't pick one out), I decided to formalize it a bit and pop the question myself.

Enter this book. I decided to make a secret-compartment book to put the ring in, which then evolved into a plan to decorate the pages up to the big reveal with reasons why I think he's a cool dude. With Valentine's Day fast approaching, it would seem innocuous enough, right?

The weather didn't really cooperate with my plans to finish the book in secret -- E came home around noon on Wednesday because of snow, which was supposed to be the day I'd get a lot of it done. I was stuck getting up really early to work on it before he got up for the day and encouraging him to take naps -- which I would then "forget" to wake him up from -- so I could rush through it.

I managed to keep the project a secret until Saturday afternoon, when E came out of the bedroom suddenly and unexpectedly and I had to squawk at him not to move and to close his eyes for a second, confirming his mounting suspicion that I was up to something. So close! 

I stuck mostly to relatively generic statements, just because I figure this will probably sit on our bookshelf for a long time and I don't really want strangers or our future children to read things like "I love you because you never hold my head under the blankets when you fart in bed," no matter how true it is.

I painted over the pages with a wash of acrylic paint, freehanded the numbers, and then doodled with black pen. I found my metallic pen, too, at which point all bets were off and things got sparkly. I'm a glitter kind of gal.

I also used elements from the book in the composition -- the photo of the thinking man on reason #10 (where I just realized there is a massive, panic-over-spacing-induced spelling error that I have to fix haha), the seated crowd on #7, and, my favorite, this Japanese mask on #2. Seriously, it's too perfect, I had to.

Ta-Da!! And then the big moment. He turned the page and saw a love letter on the left and my super-awesome-secret-agent ring compartment on the right. It reminded me of the terrible movie Troop Beverly Hills when the pushover sidekick woman has a camera hidden in a book to report on the awesome red-headed troop leader's misadventures with her spoiled scouts. I think I'm the only person in history who's seen that movie. 

Anyway, I was surprisingly nervous, given that we already have a wedding date set and venue booked, that he'd say no. I was probably more nervous, however, that he'd be mad I destroyed this old encyclopedia volume and that he couldn't read it. Luckily neither of those events transpired and we are happily engaged-engaged. Double engaged? Re-engaged? In any case, it was a lot of fun pulling this off, and he liked it a lot, even if he wasn't surprised because I left the website where I ordered the ring open on my computer. Still good!