The Decision (E1)

The decision to ask April to marry me actually came right after our final "serious" talk about it. We were in Napa for our 3 year anniversary and April brought it up for the umpteenth time. I was sort of uncomfortable thinking about it at the time because I wasn't "stable" yet. "Stable" to me as it turns out meant having a satisfying engineering job. After all, I was coming back from a 1.5 year hiatus not just from America, but from my career. All I needed was to feel like I was using what I learned in my 6 years of school. Two weeks before this Napa trip, I had just started an engineering internship with a solar company in San Francisco. So I wasn't exactly stable yet, but I knew that I was close.

That "getting married" conversation felt like a fight, but it was probably THE pivotal moment in my marraige thought process. After that, April stopped trying to talk to me about it and after a couple of days it all sort of just clicked. Of course I wanted to marry her. It was just a matter of when, where, and how...

A while back April listed some criteria for how she wanted me to propose (she didn't say "here's what I want you to do" but every time she mentioned a proposal-related thing I always tried to read between the lines). It really came down to 3 things:

1. Can it be somewhere epic?

2. Please record it

3. You don't have to give me a diamond (I gave her a diamond).

We booked a trip to Iceland (for April 2015) that same weekend and right after the purchase, I just knew I had to do it there. This meant that I had 6 months to transition into a stable full-time position, save money for an engagement ring, plan the proposal, tell the people most important to her, and most importantly keep it a secret. It seemed like a daunting task especially since we live together and she would still tease me about getting married (but the teasing was just that. We didn't have another serious conversation about it). The process was long, arduous, and fun! Here's hoping it all pays off.