Engaged

My road to matrimony was a longer one than most. I met Bev at thirty-five and we were married just before I turned forty. This was my first long-term relationship. Prior to this, I was a long-suffering bachelor.

We did not have a lavish, expensive wedding. We’d bought a house instead and had sunk most of our money into it and its trappings and furnishings. We invited very few people, just immediate family and a few of our closest friends, thirty people all told. Had we begun to open up the guest list, there would have been no end to it and we would have been up to three-hundred people in no time, something we could not afford. But we could afford thirty people. We only needed to rent the glassed-in rear room at Cedar Meadows. It was small, intimate. But that’s getting ahead of myself.

Bev and I had been dating for about a year before we bought the house. Then we set about setting it up. I must say it was very much an empty building at first. We’d purchased a fair amount of the prior owners’ furnishings with the house, so that helped. We bought a lot of stuff on sale. We bought a lot of what we thought of as starter stuff from Canadian Tire, saying we’d upgrade once we were able.
Throughout all this I shopped rings, all the while listening to my future father-in-law talking about my putting the cart before the house and such things. I didn’t buy the first ring that I saw; I shopped around. I calculated what I could afford and when. I was under the thumb of weekly house payments, my savings erased and only inching back up since the purchase. In short, I waited. I didn’t want to buy a cheap ring. And I wanted to buy a set, you know, engagement and wedding.

Meanwhile, Bev and I had discussions about what the future held. We discussed actual marriage (with me listening very carefully for clues as to whether she’d accept should I pop the question), and we talked about children (I talked about children all the time; I wanted them; just about everyone I knew had them and I always thought that having them was the logical progression of any relationship—and I was getting on in years, thinking that were we to have them, we ought to have them soon or risk putting off retirement until death). Bev usually said the same thing during these discussions, about tying the knot, about having kids: “It’s a big step.”

A Big Step? I spent a great deal of time trying to decipher that statement. We’d been living together for more than three months, so as far as I was concerned, that “big” step had already come and gone. It had as far as the courts were concerned. That “big” step was only a piece of paper by then. Whenever Bev brought up her parents and what they thought, I told her that I wouldn’t be marrying her parents.

In time I thought I had it all figured out (that shows you how naïve I was) and bought the engagement ring. I’d even made a few payments.

But where to pop the question? And how? Traditionally, on one knee? Romantically, over champagne? I thought not. Champagne was not in the budget then; and ordering champagne would have spoiled the surprise, wouldn’t it? And what if she said no?

In the end, I proposed while we were out for dinner. I asked her where she’d like to go; she said East Side Mario’s. I fumbled with the box in my pocket, my palms clammy. I’d been fumbling with it almost continuously, fearing that I’d lose it, forever touching it to reassure myself that it was still there. I wondered if I should wait until she left the table and have it presented before her when she returned. But she usually never left the table until after the meal was done and I didn’t think that displaying the ring amid dirty dishes and the bill made for romantic presentation. In the end, I decided to get on with it after we’d ordered.

The restaurant was loud, clashing, clanging, the volume flowing here and there, the gaggle of conversation bouncing about, an undulating roar punctuated by the clatter of cutlery. I brought the box out in a fist, then offering it up between both hands in hope that neither would betray my nervousness. They did not tremble. Or at least I think they did not tremble.

I popped the question. Maybe I mumbled the question. Bev smiled when she received the box. The smile grew broader after opening the box and seeing the stones catch what meager light there was to catch.

I’m not sure if she said yes just then. I’ll admit that my memory is a little sketchy on the moment. I might have been in a mild state of shock. Fight or flight may have risen up as I waited for a response.
She did say yes, though.

I know. Not terribly romantic. But what do you expect from an old bachelor with limited experience in such endeavours? I suppose most proposals are fumbled affairs, fraught with trepidation, if not panic and terror. Hollywood has set the bar higher than most of us mere mortals can aspire to.

Her acceptance prompted more shopping. The wedding rings had to be chosen. The plans made. We set the date for later that same year. What was the point in waiting?

I proposed September 19th. Bev’s and my birthdays were on a 19th, so I thought I would never forget the date if it too were on a 19th. We were not married on a 19th, or September. Father Pat told us we had to compete a Catholic ritual of a Retreat first, to learn about what it was like to live together, on how to budget, on how to bring Christ into our lives and marriage. That was well and good for the twenty-year-olds, I said; they hadn’t had our years of experience, and they (some of them, anyway) hadn’t already been living together for years. I also told Father Pat I planned to be married that year, before I turned forty, whether I was married by the Church or by the Justice of the Peace. Father Pat said he would talk to the Bishop. The Bishop waived our need to do the Couple’s retreat, owing to our age and circumstance.

In the end, Father Pat agreed to a series of meetings at his house to accommodate us. We’d already set a tentative date in October, after all. We booked the church and discovered that we were to be the final couple married in Nativity before it closed.

Father Pat forgot about our first meeting. We were waiting at his residence when he pulled into his driveway, a puzzled look on his face when he saw us waiting there. Then he discovered that McDonalds had given him the wrong meal. He was conflicted. He wanted to return to get what he had ordered. But he was already late for our first meeting, with barely enough time to complete the curriculum as laid out by the Church. He stayed. We began the course.

I asked my sister to be my “best man,” and Bev asked her brother to be her “matron of honour.”
We booked the “hall” and the decorator; we ordered the cake. It was easy. No waiting. The wedding season had passed and everyone was free. We even got discounts on almost every service rendered. We finalized what needed finalizing.

I, we, were getting married.