I put these in chronological order… Johnny, my mom, and my sister had the most incredible photographer, Daria, of @verolastudios, capture the moment (we barely knew she was there!) and I’ll treasure these photos forever.

Outfit Details: dress: Revolve {similar here} // headband: Zara {from two years ago, similar here} // earrings: Amazon // bracelets: Annabelle’s Collection // later on my mom gave me these heels to wear too!

Before I share more, I just want to preface with my belief that there is a perfect person for everyone, and you ultimately find that person in God’s perfect timing for you. I hope our story reflects that, and proves that love can be messy, emotional, joyful, and even result in scream-sobbing on the beach. And if you haven’t found it yet, know that it’s coming, and just start preparing yourself for that. I dreamed about my perfect match long before Johnny came along, and that was half of the battle to get to where I am now.

It only takes that one person for YOU!!!

The Lead Up

I cannot even believe I’m writing this, but the best, most heartfelt and overwhelmingly incredible day of my life happened a week and a half ago. I tried to sum up the events in these Instagram stories, but I’ll go more in depth here as well.

We’ve spent Thanksgiving at our home in Vero Beach, FL the past few years, and planned to do so this year as well. If you’re new around here, my fiancé’s family also has a home in Vero Beach, just a few miles down the road from ours. We are lucky to be so close with each other’s families, so we decided to all have Thanksgiving together this year.

Johnny and I are coming up on our seventh year anniversary in February, and have talked about getting married since pretty early on in our relationship (in all honesty I knew I was going to marry him two weeks into dating). We had talked about wanting to get engaged before the end of 2021, but that was pretty much the beginning and end of our conversations about the engagement logistics (other than the times I had a few drinks and tried, unsuccessfully, to play 20 questions with him about it).

I would definitely have thought that it was going to happen over Thanksgiving, since our families would be together then (in our favorite place!), but there was one caveat– I knew his brother and his brother’s wife wouldn’t be there because they had a wedding they were going to the weekend after Thanksgiving.

So I talked myself into thinking that it wasn’t going to happen over our time together in Vero Beach. I told myself to just relax and enjoy what could possibly be our last family vacation without any wedding hype (jokes on me).

But then… the Wednesday before Thanksgiving I woke up and had pretty much reached a breaking point with how badly I wanted to get engaged. There was really no reason at all for said ‘breaking point,’ as I had been tuned in to see if anything was ‘off’ or suspicious about our time in Vero thus far and there were no clear signs.

Except for that I had been having nightmares about getting engaged and had the worst one yet that night (which now I know was literally the night before the engagement). I remember waking up and talking myself down, telling myself that it wasn’t happening anytime soon and to chill.

Then, as has happened right before any of my biggest life-altering moments have occurred (I should have known!!) I totally gave it up to God. I let Him take the unknown off of my mind, and went about my day. Besides, I remember thinking, Johnny’s brother isn’t here and Johnny wouldn’t do it without him being there to celebrate.

The Proposal

After I got up Johnny invited me to have lunch with him and his dad after they played golf in the morning (I later found out that this was to get me out of the house so my mom and sister could go set up for the after party!! More on that next week…). Everything was fine, and then I spent the afternoon doing some work and getting ready to take our Christmas card pictures, which we do every Thanksgiving.

We had planned to go with a pink and white Christmas card theme this year (naturally) and Jacqueline and I were pulling out outfits to look through. She had a white dress she said was too short on her so she laid that out and I didn’t think twice about putting it on (I wore all-white in our Christmas card last year so it didn’t even register to me that I was putting on a bridal-looking outfit).

We were also going to meet friends of ours, as well as Johnny, at the beach for a cocktail, so I packed a change of clothes and waited for Johnny to pick me up to drive over. My family left a few minutes before us to “meet their friends who were already there.” I had talked myself down SO much about it happening over Thanksgiving vacation and was really trying not to get my hopes up until we got back to New York.

We drove over to the beach, saw my mom’s car there, and walked onto the sand. I didn’t see my family and our friends sitting anywhere along the beach, and immediately I got butterflies in my stomach. I started asking Johnny if we were in the wrong spot and he told me to just walk with him.

Then I glanced to the left and saw a photographer in the dunes, and you guys, I just knew. Johnny didn’t even say one word to indicate that it was happening but all of a sudden it hit me. That thankfully gave me about a few second head start (which I used to start hyperventilating). Johnny started talking to me and IT WAS ALL HAPPENING.

I’ll keep everything he said private as it was so personal, but he summed up our past, spoke to our relationship now, and talked about what we wanted for our future. Later on he gave me a card where he had written down what he said, because for some reason he had a hunch there would be some freaking out (who? me??!).

I think the photos of my facial expressions (and the mascara on Johnny’s shirt) describe it best… I was a kind of giddy-overwhelmed-happy-ecstatic that I’ve truly never been before. After he put the ring on me, we took photos and then sat on the beach for about ten minutes by ourselves to sip champagne and watch the sky change colors. Then he told me that we had to head to go meet our families… which I’ll share about in another blog post soon! Now THAT was a party.

You can see some more candid videos from the proposal here!!

The Ring

When I asked you all for questions about the engagement, 98% of them were about the ring. You’re like ‘yeah yeah we know you’re in love but what about the RING.’ 😂 I get it. I wondered about what the ring would be like too (show me a newly engaged girl who hasn’t), though I wasn’t part of the process at all (ok maybe that’s WHY I couldn’t take my mind off of it!).

A few years ago I was scrolling through @overthemoon (my favorite wedding Instagram account) and saw a ring that made my stomach flip. I got butterflies when I saw it, which had never happened to me before over a ring (who’s supposed to have an emotional reaction to a ring like that?!). Well, I never quite got it out of my head and found out who the owner was, where it was from, and then sent Johnny, my mom, and sister a photo of said ring on a quarterly basis. It was tunnel vision of this ring from there on out.

BUT that’s where my involvement stopped. I had always kind of assumed that Johnny and I would pick out or design a ring together (as so many couples do and it seems like such a fun process!), but he told me, maybe a year ago, that he wanted to do it all himself, so I backed off (minus sending him quarterly DMs/texts with the ring I had fallen in love with… I cannot be THAT hands-off).

Turns out, he knew exactly what he was doing and connected with Croghan’s Jewel Box, a family-owned hundred-year-old boutique jewelry store in Charleston, and asked them if they knew anything about this ring I had said came from their store.

He told me that they happened to know of a similar ring (it’s a Victorian era design) from an affiliate jeweler in London. After seeing some photos and videos of it, Johnny confirmed that it was exactly what I wanted and had them ship it to Maine this past June, so he could show it to my parents and sister (of course without me knowing… they said I was sleeping when this happened, classic).

He knew my ring size (again, I wasn’t subtle with such important information!!) and sent it back to Croghan’s to get resized. He decided to have the store hold on to it to keep it out of our apartment for four months (smart man). Then it was shipped to Florida, where his parents got to see it and keep it safe until Thanksgiving.

The care and consideration he took in choosing it to purchase, showing it to our parents, and getting it fitted to perfection is not beyond me. It’s even better than if I had picked it out myself and I cannot help but feel that it’s exactly where it’s supposed to be.

In summary, I would say if you ever see a ring (or anything for that matter!) that makes your stomach flip and you think can represent something really special in your life (like a lifelong commitment to your significant other!) take note. You never know when you’ll need to start sending it to someone on a quarterly basis. 😉

THANK YOU!

Thank you all for your sweet (and enthusiastic, we are all kindred spirits like that!!) congratulations since we announced our engagement. Getting to include all of you in the fun (and craziness!) will no doubt be one of the very brightest highlights of our engagement and wedding. I’m so beyond grateful that you love our love and don’t judge all of my scream-sobbing. Now, who’s ready to start planning a wedding?!