On Asking.

OK!  So, here's the deal, people:
Ryan and I have a wedding date but he hasn't asked me yet!  Mom is all worried about my having a ring and his parents told him to quit doing everything backwards.  I don't really care so much about the ring.  I just really want him to ask me.  That's a pretty big deal!  You have to say, "Hey, I'm ready!  Are you?"  Guess we just have to do things our way.  Hopefully something will be progressing in the next couple of week...right, Ryan?  I know you're reading this, Ryan.  We ALL do.

lol

Basically, how this came about was I was expecting a proposal before the end of the year.  Why, you ask?  I'll tell you.  Because I overheard a conversation he was having on the phone in which he said that "something" was happening before the end of the year.  And that was the only thing he could have been talking about because of how sketchy he was acting about the phone call and how he ran to the back of the house when he said it.  So, I looked at the calendar and, HOLY CRAP, the anniversary of the awful day that we met falls on a Saturday in 2014.  How perfect would that be if we tied the knot on that date three years later?!  Exactly.  A little cheesy but I LOVED the idea!!  But nothing happened.  Finally, a little over a month ago after a sort of 'come to Jesus meeting' that we had, I mentioned again about the date while we were at the dog park.
"This date would be perfect but I need to know...is this going to happen or what?!  Cuz if we want that date, we kinda have to start putting things together.  Now."
"Yeah," he said after thinking a few moments, "That sounds good!"
"So...we have a date," I asked for clarification purposes?
"Um.  Yeah, lets do it," he said.
So, we have been busy looking a few venues and figuring our invitation lists.  Its all very exciting and very stressful all at the same time.  I just wish he would ask me.

I wonder if we, as women, just have this idea of the order of things.  Like, how everything is supposed to go down up to the wedding night.  It all is supposed to happen in a certain way at a certain time and it will all be perfect.  I don't like that.  I mean, yeah, I want to be formally and traditionally engaged but we are technically engaged and planning making a public, permanent commitment to one another.  Isn't that really what an engagement means anyway?  Furthermore, there is no perfect relationship and there is no perfect marriage.  So, why do we have this ideal of a laid out, orderly engagement and then a perfect wedding where we are supposed to do things a certain way, as well..  A perfect wedding does not a solid marriage make.  I know we all want the Hollywood wedding of our dreams, but why exactly is that our goal?  Wouldn't it be better to have an out of order relationship that is solid and honest and have a wedding that's more focused on the people and families coming together than to have the tradionality of what's expected of the wedding day and have it all in order and...perfect?
I bought my wedding dress about a year ago.  I bought shoes that match it perfectly and were marked down to $17.95 from $150 because it was too good to pass up-true story.  But when I told people about it out of excitement I've gotten some weird responses.  Mostly people that are excited with me and very positive.  However, I had two people ask, "Well, are you engaged?"  Well, we have a wedding date.  But of course they were asking in the traditional sense of things--they were asking about the ring.  I don't care about the ring.  I mean, its lovely and special and something that Ryan is working on. I'm excited to get that from him as a symbol of our coming commitment.  However, I don't need a ring to know how he feels.  I need for him to tell me.  This is just something on my mind and needed to put out there.

Hopefully, I will have an update on this topic very soon.
Until then....