We got the ring!

Where?

The Newport Beach temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is relatively new, dedicated in August 2005. It is a beautiful building on the outside, but the inside is really the wonderful part: that is where we will be sealed for time and for eternity.

Addresses

Please leave your name and address here if you would like a wedding invitation.

Engaged

If you're reading this you probably already know, but this is the official announcement that we're engaged. Yes, after 2 years, 1 month and 23 days of pleading, Rachel finally accepted a marriage proposal. Here's how it went down:

On December 27th, after months of careful and nervous planning, we went on an excursion to Los Angeles. I didn't tell Rachel where specifically we were going, just that we would be in Los Angeles the whole day. I had prepared a list of Frank Lloyd Wright (her favorite architect) buildings in the Hollywood area that we would visit together.

Our first stop would be the Hollyhock house, located on a hilltop in view of the famous Hollywood sign and the Los Angeles coast. According to my plan, we would go on a tour of the house, then visit the remaining sites before returning to Hollyhock. Then, overlooking the Los Angeles skyline and out to the ocean as the sun dipped into the Pacific, next to one of the most beautiful homes in the world, it would be the perfect moment to propose; to ask Rachel to let me be a part of the beautiful home she will one day build.


It was a flawless plan. I had accounted for everything. Everything except the possibility of Rachel feeling ill. Sure enough, as soon as we had completed the tour, Rachel started complaining of a headache. "No problem," I thought, "we'll get her some ibuprofen, and in 30 minutes (just in time for sunset) she'll be good to go."
30 minutes later Rachel, after taking the medicine, was writhing in pain on my passenger seat. It didn't seem that she would be better any time soon. Full abort. There was nothing to do but drop all my carefully crafted plans and take her home immediately. So we departed home through the mess of LA rush hour traffic, my dreams crushed.
Only as we neared Corona 90 minutes later did Rachel start to perk up. Then, right before we got to her house, she declared that her headache was gone. Perfect timing. It was like she was trying to prevent me from popping the question.

We bypassed Rachel's house and I took her to get some food at a local restaurant. Only as we ate and I became convinced of the veracity of her recovery did I start again to consider going through with my terrible plan. But how? It was already dark and returning to LA was out of the question. Wait until another day? Not realistic considering we would be leaving for Palm Springs that weekend. To wait any longer would mean proposing only days before our return to school. The wooden ring in my back pocket was getting heavier and heavier as we left the restaurant and drove across town to Rachel's house. I made up my mind: prudence required immediate action.

As we walked up Rachel's porch, I steered her from the front door and toward an adjacent bench where we sat and talked. I tried and tried to transition our conversation to a topic from which to spring my proposal, but, as I am prone to do in critical situations, I lost all cognitive abilities. I couldn't even complete a coherent sentence, to say nothing of crafting the most important petition in my life. Exasperated at my inability to communicate and having decided that the physical gesture would be more effective than anything I could say, I stood up from the bench and took a step forward in order to swing around and kneel in front of Rachel. When I turned around, however, she was standing in front of me, trying to find a reason for my irrational behavior. Once again I tried to say something appropriate but my leg must have given out because I found myself on one knee in front of her. At this point there was nothing to do but ask her to marry me.

Normally a direct question like "Will you marry me?" would elicit an equally direct answer (usually either "yes," or "no.") Neither of those two came from Rachel, but something more along the lines of "Are you serious!?!?!?!" Instead of responding verbally (by this point I had completely lost all powers of speech) I took the wooden ring from my pocket and placed it on my open palm to assure her of my intentions. Evidently, this wasn't enough to convince her because she kept repeating her previous question, each time more emphatically than the last.
She must have been nervous about her family observing this scene from the house because she alternated between looking frantically into the house and trying to cover me (keep in mind that I am still kneeling on the ground) from the view of the house.
As luck would have it, nobody could be seen inside the house. Rachel, who still hadn't found it requisite to answer me, would not be pacified. She grabbed my arm and tried to pull me away from the porch to another, less evident location. I, however, would not move without an answer. I did not budge (even though my knee was throbbing at this point) and repeated my question. Rachel's fear at being seen must have finally overcome her good judgement because there escaped from her mouth "okay fine," all the while trying to move me away from the house. Finally placated, I agreed to move to safer quarters where we could hash out the details of her resolution.

For your whole life you dream about your proposal.
You imagine the perfect situation in which you will hear the perfect the response of your bride-to-be, which will sound something like an ecstatic "yes!" or "of course!" On December 27th a lifetime of dreaming came to an end as I finally asked the much-anticipated question. I certainly hadn't envisioned it happening on a front porch and, while the response of "okay fine," was not one I had expected, the wonderful character and amazing qualities of Rachel Martin have far exceeded my wildest dreams of the person from whose mouth the response would come. Her perfection makes up for the many flaws of my plans. "Okay fine," was the best response imaginable.