Our Engagement Story!

I can honestly say that December 2nd, 2017 was the happiest night of my life ❤️ As I’m sure most of you have heard by now, WE’RE ENGAGED! 💍 Dillon surprised me with the most thoughtful proposal l ever could have hoped for and then we celebrated all night with over 50 of our family and friends. There was so much that went into planning this (I’m still finding out about secrets I was unaware of for months!), so I thought it would be fun to tell “Our Engagement Story” here on the blog.  A friend joked with me at the end of the night, “I just hope this was 347 worthy!”. It absolutely was. I’m also throwing in photos from our christmas card/engagement announcement shoot. I’ve been itching for a reason to send out holiday cards and Dillon finally agreed that getting engaged was reason enough. Score! Here’e the scoop on the night that I said yes (FINALLY!) 👏🏻💖

The Morning (from my perspective):

I woke up that Saturday morning and went into work for a couple of hours. I decided to run a few errands afterwards and called my mom to see if I could stop by and get a package that delivered to her house. She said “Yeah, I’ll leave it on the porch because I’m going to go for a walk.” After being really indecisive, I shopped for 2 hours longer than expected and called Dillon to see if he had eaten. He said no, so I stopped at Jimmy Johns and grabbed us some dinner. My mom called and asked if I had decided to not come for the package. I told her I was running late and that I would head right over there. She sounded weird. I convinced myself that she was mad at me because I put a foil plate in her new microwave on Thanksgiving and started it on fire. (Classic Amanda)

The Morning (from everyone else’s perspective):

My oldest friend Alyx flew in from Minneapolis that morning for the engagement. Melissa picked her up from the airport, and the two of them eventually went to grab a late lunch at Jimmy Johns. Melissa joked that it would be terrible if we accidentally ran into each other, and Alyx remembered that I had shared my location with her at a concert last summer. They tracked me down on her iPhone, and realized that I was less than a block away shopping. They followed me for the rest of the day and later judged me hard for spending two hours inside of Hobby Lobby (I told you, indecisive!). They also freaked out a little when they saw my little dot head into Jimmy Johns right after they left.

My mom had apparently been avoiding me all week on purpose because she was so nervous about ruining the surprise, which explains why she panicked and said she had to go for a walk when I mentioned stopping over. When I actually did stop by much later than expected, she was acting standoffish so that she wouldn’t let anything slip (not because of the infamous Thanksgiving microwave fire of 2017 🔥).

The Evening (from my perspective):

I headed home, ate the Jimmy Johns with Dillon, and complained when he mentioned that we were meeting his cousin at a bar at 10pm. “That’s so late! That means we’ll for sure be out until bar close. I have stuff to do tomorrow.” (I’m so fun). Half because I was feeling lazy, and half because I was not excited about going out so late, I kept putting off getting ready. 10pm rolled around and Dillon kept coming in to push me along. I was like “They’re sitting at bar! Who cares. It’s not going to go anywhere. Let me live.” (Nice, Amanda).

The Evening (from everyone else’s perspective):

My girlfriends had been at one of our favorite bars, The Buzz (right downstairs from our apartment) setting things up and getting ready for the surprise. Other family and friends showed up around 9, and were expecting the whole thing to go down at 10.

Melissa texted Dillon every two minutes asking our status, and he was giving her the play-by-play on what I was doing. “Packing her purse.” “Putting her shoes on.” “Spraying hairspray.” “Spraying hairspray, again.” Which Melissa would announce to the crowd after every text (grrrreat). Melissa actually sent me screenshots of her and Dillon’s texts after the fact and my two favorites were Meliss saying “Wow, how rude if you guys were actually meeting people” and Dillon replying “Are you really surprised? I don’t think we’ve been on time to anything in our entire relationship.” …I’m super punctual 😂

The Proposal

Once I was (finally) ready, we started heading down the stairs and I turned to go out the back door (which we always take to leave). Dillon babbled a bunch of nonsense about why it made more sense to go out the front and I shrugged and followed. We walked around the corner, and I saw two of my aunts standing outside of the door. I was like “Hey! What are you guys doing here?” And I turned around to have Dillon grab my hands and say a bunch of really sweet things that neither of us remember anymore because we were both completely freaking out.

He got down on one knee, showed me the most perfect ring, and as I said “YES!!!” I heard a bunch of cheering from inside. I turned around to all of our family and friends watching through the window. We walked into the bar and I seriously could not believe it. There were people who drove hours from out of town, my friend Alyx who flew in from Minnesota for less than 24 hours, Dillon’s brother RJ and his husband Richard who flew in all the way from Maine. Glasses of champagne were poured for everyone, toasts were made, and there were even appetizers that the chef made based off of my recipes from 347!  I walked around with a glass of champagne in hand all night doe-eyed, shocked, blissful, and overwhelmed in the best way possible.

I don’t even know where to start. I just feel so lucky and thankful for all of the thought and effort that went into that night. Being surrounded by all of my favorite people, at my favorite place, celebrating the happiest thing that’s happened to me. I think the only day that could possibly top this is our wedding day 😉👰🏻

Here are the three most common questions I’ve been asked:

Did you see it coming? I thought it was coming sometime this year, yes. But that night, I was legitimately clueless. I always figured Dillon would want to involve our families in the proposal and the fact that we were going out at 10pm totally threw me off.

What is your stone? It’s an oval Peach Sapphire set in Rose Gold with Diamonds around the halo and band. 😍💍

When’s the big day? 2019! That’s the only for sure thing I can say as of now. I am way too detail-oriented to plan a wedding in under a year, so we ruled out 2018 right away. We are pretty open to dates, we really just want nice weather, so summer/early fall 2019 is the plan. After the holidays we will start touring venues, so I will have more details in January! Once we nail down a location, I plan to do a post talking a little about our wedding inspiration and plans.

Thank you guys so much for reading along! If you know me at all you know that I have been SO excited to be engaged. Number one, because I smile the HUGEST smile when I get to call Dillon my fiancé. ☺️ And number two, because I GET TO PLAN THE BIGGEST PARTY OF MY LIFE. 🎉 I am so stoked guys, I can’t even believe it. And I can’t wait to share progress here along the way! This is going to be such a fun year. 💖💍👰🏻

Xo Amanda *The Future Mrs. Martinez*

(….so weird! 😱)