weddings used to make me sad-cry, now i'm engaged

welcome to my engagement story, please come in and take a seat

“How about we go to that rooftop place for Saturday?”

Glen and I have a standing date night on Saturdays, but because I’m a moody, sleepy lil bitch who’s trying to balance her hormones or heal her gut or feel well mostly or whatever the fuck, we usually decide the details day-of. Saturday date night isn’t a plan, it’s a container for a plan—able to be filled with whatever activity best suits the mood or energy level I’ve been blessed (or cursed) with that day.

But, bitch issues and all, I’m still a romantic. So when my boyfriend pitches a rooftop restaurant days in advance (it’s Wednesday), I perk up instantly.

“Okay cute!! We’ve never been there together. Let’s do it.”

“And then on Sunday we can do a picnic!”

“Okay… okay yeah! You love a picnic.”

Picking up on my drop in tone, he reassures me, “It’s supposed to be really nice weather. It’ll be good.”

“Can we bring pillows and blankets so it’s really comfy though? I feel like my back always ends up hurting sitting on the ground like that. Oh and we should also bring…” I yammer on about god knows what for a few minutes.

Glen is patient, but he’s starting to panic. He tries again to sell me on the picnic.

“Yeah, we can do all that. And we’ll go to the park where we had our first date.”

The park. The park where we had our first date.

Oh.

OH.

I stop breathing. My eyes dart to Glen. He watches as I realize what he just invited me to. I watch as he realizes he’s said too much. We watch each other as we both realize, for the millionth time, what an enormous pain in the ass I am.

I make an attempt at a recovery.

“Yes! I love that park! I love picnics!”

But it’s too late. He blinks at me, and it’s like I’m watching his grand plan burn to dust behind his eyes.

“Wait, Glen…”

“It’s fine.”

“No! I love that idea! It’s beautiful! The park! The park where we had our first date! A picnic! In the nice weather! My nails are done, I’m ready!”

I’d been superstitiously getting gel manicures every two weeks for the last two months in anticipation of this day. In total, they cost me around $240. I don’t regularly get manicures, but for some reason this expense felt extremely worth it—a physical representation of my preparedness and a way to channel my anticipation.

Now, if you know me at all, you’ll know this excited, manicured, ready-as-hell-to-say-yes version of me is a far cry from where I started.

sad-crying at weddings

I am the third youngest of all my cousins, of which there are many. I’ve been to a lot of weddings. And at each one, since the time I was just a girl, I’d cry. Throughout the whole ceremony. Cheeks red. Eyes wet. Big, trembling inhales. Family members would smile at me, there goes Erin again, thinking I was positively verklempt at the overwhelming beauty of two people tying themselves to one another for eternity.

I wasn’t.

I was gutted. Scared. Grief-stricken. I watched in horror as another woman gave up her autonomy, her independence, her name.

My parents got divorced when I was 11. I read The Bell Jar when I was 15. So you can guess how this perspective might’ve been shaped. Those fucking figs, god.

But even before the split and Plath’s shooting arrows, I was not a little girl who dreamed of marriage. I had crushes, I pursued love, I begged for attention. But not once did I play wedding, fantasizing about myself in a white dress with a diamond on my finger, exchanging vows, becoming a wife, tossing my entire life down a single, predictable path.

And yet there I was, manicured and gleeful that the time had come for Glen to propose to me.

I promised you a proposal story, and I promise mine is somewhere in here. It’s just that I keep walking into cobwebs trying to unearth it for you.

Let’s try to get back to it, shall we?

the weekend

Saturday arrives. We sleep in. Have special sex.

I run errands: buy a slinky dress, sexy undies, and strappy heels.

I come home: little bouquets of wildflowers everywhere.

For a second, I wonder if Glen changed his plan. Is it happening tonight?

We go out: mocktails and ceviche. Sweet conversation about sweet feelings. Selfies in front of the sunset. Hand holding. Kissing. Surprise strawberries and chocolate mousse for dessert at home. A rom-com worthy date night. But no proposal.

Sunday.

I wake up to the sounds of Glen making me breakfast, and when I emerge from our bedroom I find three envelopes waiting for me. After the go-ahead from Glen, I rip open the first two like a kid on Christmas morning, furiously reading what turns out to be one love letter after the next. Before I can open the third and final letter, I devolve into one of those particularly unhinged meltdowns, the kind where you sob and laugh hysterically at the same time.

By the time we leave for our picnic, I’ve stopped crying. I’m showered and calm. I’ve picked out a cozy knit maxi dress, put on a little makeup, written a whole ass newsletter. I’m ready. Glen hands me a road kombucha, one I’ve never tried before because he knows I love trying new shit, opens the car door for me, then turns on a playlist of our favorite songs we listened to during our first months of dating.

We get to the park and it’s crowded. College girls vaping and sunbathing in bikinis, families with little ones screaming and playing, elaborate quinceañera photo shoots, but we find a shady corner under some trees that’s quiet and out of the way. Glen gets everything set up as I perch comfortably on a pillow. My favorite cheeses, fruits, salads, and crackers get laid out before me—he’s even carefully transported my favorite crystal goblets, inherited from my grandmother.

Everything is going perfectly, but after about 30 minutes of chatting, people watching, and pretending to snack (I’m way too nervous to eat!), Glen gets shifty. His side of the conversation dies down. He starts looking around uncomfortably.

“Hey, uh, everything good?”

He nods.

I whisper to him teasingly, trying to relieve some of the pressure, “Do you want me to, like, do a little song and dance?”

He exhales a laugh. Says nothing. Looks around again.

I can’t take it. “What, is someone about to pop out of the bushes?”

Finally, his eyes come back to mine. Calmly, he says, “Everything’s okay, there’s just one last surprise we’re waiting on.”

Then I see it: A man walking through the bushes, directly toward us. It’s Michael, lovingly known to my friends and family as my “old man neighbor,” (though he’s only in his 70s—he would want me to clarify) with his cane in one hand, camera around his neck, folding chair in the other hand. I go into a state of shock. Up until recently, Michael and I shared two sides of a twin home for nearly five years, seeing each other through illnesses and injuries, walking each other’s dogs, barbequing on Sundays, sharing poetry, taking turns raking the flower beds, identifying the birds congregating around the feeders he always kept full.

Michael is the neighbor that turned into my friend that turned into my family, and now he’s here. In the park. The park where Glen and I had our first date. And he’s unfolding his little chair, lifting his camera, and shouting to us, “Ready when you are, folks!”

Glen stands and offers me his hand. My body liquefies. For all the time I spent excited for this very moment, I suddenly feel wholly and utterly incapable of meeting it. I let out a psychotic laugh and squeal, reaching for Glen’s hand then pulling back, then reaching again, not knowing how to function. He helps me up and leads me a few feet away, in the aim of Michael’s camera.

and then, all at once, it’s happening

He’s kneeling down and I’m whisper-yelling, “Right now, in front of everyone?!” even though there’s like five people who can see us and I am smiling so big I am floating and Glen is looking at me with his big blue-green eyes and his mouth is moving and I don’t know even know what he’s saying, except that it includes “I love you” and suddenly I am acutely aware of my hands which are tensely clasped in front of me and oh my god people are looking at us and wait now he’s reaching into his pocket and now he’s holding a little black box and now he’s opening the box and holy shit IS THAT THE RING and he’s asking me if I’ll marry him of course that’s what he’s asking me and I hear myself saying “Yes!” and of course that’s what I’m saying and I hear people clapping oh god I forgot about the people and now we are kissing and hugging and wait IS THAT MY RING?

I know, I know! It seems like I only care about the ring! The important context here is that last year my mom gave Glen my grandmother’s engagement ring. Then, at the beginning of this year, Glen took me to a jeweler so we could get it redesigned, because much as I loved my grandmother’s ring, the thick prong setting from the 1940s needed an update.

Since leaving it in the hands of our jewelers, I’d been having nightmares that the ring would turn out ugly, that my designs were tacky, and that of all the cousins to have received our family matriarch’s ring, I would be the one to single handedly ruin it.

So when Glen opened the box, it was my first time seeing my grandmother’s ring—my ring—in all its epic, shining, sparkling, 1940s-meets-2020s glory. I hadn’t ruined it; it was the most beautiful ring I’d ever seen. If I had to steal another few glances at that sucker, so be it!

But the proposal wasn’t over.

I rush over to my purse and grab Glen’s ring. That’s right, criers. My man wanted an engagement ring and you better believe I got him one: subtle but gorgeous, classy but contemporary, just like Glen.

I hold the ring between us like a communion wafer, energy buzzing between us, goofy smiles stretched across our faces. I return the question, and he returns the answer. We kiss again, slower this time, and when we pull back I actually feel a little lightheaded, like one of those heart-eyed cartoon characters.

Finally, the rings exchanged and the proposal officially over, we turn our attention to Michael, who’s been snapping photos and “woohoo”ing from the sidelines. Glen pours us some sparkling NA wine, and Michael proceeds to give a toast that leaves us all teary before insisting on heading home.

Just the two of us now, it’s quiet again. We look at each other in quiet disbelief, then lay down and watch the trees sway overhead, listen to their leaves in the breeze, feel the sunlight dappling our faces. And so the rest of the afternoon goes. The two of us breathing together in the park, the park where we had our first date.

a cobwebby evolution

There are many stories I could (and someday will) tell about how I arrived here, peacefully and joyfully engaged. But for now, the simple version is that my experience of partnership has radically changed since meeting Glen. Do I still believe that traditional marriage in our current capitalist heteropatriarchy can be systematically limiting, especially for women? Yes. God, yes. There are some real issues, and I admit I haven’t fully worked them all out yet.

But it doesn’t feel limiting, this particular kind of union Glen and I have been building (that, yes, will now lead to marriage). Being engaged to Glen actually feels surprisingly radical, like a source of abundance, a lesson in devotion, a commitment to loving each other into our highest, most authentic, most generous selves. And not just so Glen and I can heal and grow and thrive. It’s not the two of us against the world. It’s the two of us in and of the world—determined to love in a way that ripples out, so that the world around us can also heal and grow and thrive.

When I think about marrying Glen, I feel the fuzzy, glowing edges of my body expanding outward, I feel my essence getting bigger and bigger, more vibrant, more wild.

When I think about marrying Glen, I feel ready to “shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.”

Take that, Sylvia Plath.

a final word

We don’t know when our wedding will be. We have a lot of other Big Life Stuff to figure out first. But as we balance all the privileges marriage can afford (tax benefits, immigration rights, career advantages, healthcare access, to name a few) with the current reality that gay marriage (and so many other human rights) is under threat, it seems logical to us that we wouldn’t want to get married if not everyone can. None of us are free until we’re all free.

some photos <3

awkward clasping!

fixed my hands

cannot stop staring at the ring lmao

abundant cheesin

TO THE CRIERS 👇🏻

I spent hours trying to write you the simple story of how Glen proposed, I really did. I tried to write it plain and leave it alone. but I physically couldn’t get my fingers to do it. what really happened is not simple, how I really feel isn’t straightforward, and i’d rather send you this messy, evolving attempt with some guts in it than send you something neat and hollow.

so thank you for making it this far. I know it’s a long one, I know it’s imperfect, and I know there’s a lot going on in the world beyond this small story of love. it means so much that you’re here with me. and if you made it this far, you’re invited to the wedding <3

please say hi in the comments, i’d love to hear from you!

also if you know what marriage is please lmk, still in talks with my inner child and inner teenager about that one, we haven’t nailed it down just yet.