How I Proposed To My Husband

I've always been a take charge person. So if there's one thing that didn't surprise too many of my family and friends it was my proposing to Aaron, my husband. We'd only known each other for seven months and had been dating for a little over six, but I knew that we were meant to be together. It sounds like something every teenager says to their first puppy love, but for us it was real. We spent three of those months apart, him attending basic training and AIT for the army and me wandering aimlessly around my hometown wondering how I'd let him go. And even though I might not have known how he took his coffee or how long it took him to get ready in the morning or any of those million little things couples know before they get engaged, I didn't need to. I felt something for him that I'd never felt before and for me that was enough. I acted upon those feelings without questioning them. I haven't looked back once and I haven't regretted that decision in the slightest. I was nineteen when I proposed to Aaron and now, more than a year later, I still believe it was one of the best decisions I've ever made.

I had originally tried to join the army under Sergeant Cook, the same recruiter who'd signed my sister up. Unfortunately I was disqualified the day before going to basic training in July of 2009. Later that year in December I decided I wanted to give the army another go, but by then Sergeant Cook had deployed and I was recruited by somebody else. I'd known him since my original recruitment and because of that he told me that the next day when I was going to MEPS, the in-processing center for the military, I would be travelling with Sergeant Cook's step-son. I told my best friend about it and we joked about how alike he'd be to his step-father, but when I met Aaron I had no trouble telling him apart from his recruiter step-dad.

Aaron was shy. We rode the shuttle for an hour and a half to MEPS with several other guys and the entire time he sat quietly in the back. He didn't have his step-father's gift for gab, yet that night at the hotel we were to stay at before in-processing the next day I stayed close to him. We were tied together by our having come from the same recruiting station and while we didn't converse too much, something about him caused me to come home and look him up on Myspace. Over the next couple weeks we got to know one another through late night conversations on various social networks and just after the new year we went on our first date.

On Valentine's Day I told him I loved him for the first time. Our relationship has, since the very beginning, always been fast-tracked. From our meeting to our first date, from our first date to our deciding to go steady, we'd always done things quickly. So exchanging "I love you's" just a mere month and a half after we got together didn't feel rushed, especially when it was said out of honesty and not the heat of the moment. Five weeks later we were separated by our going to different basic training sites. Should I have stayed in the military I'm not sure where we'd be right now, but as fate would have it I got discharged and sent home.

I decided in June of 2010 that I wanted to marry Aaron. Because he only got to call me on Sundays we wrote letters to each other every day, so I tried to hint at the idea to see how he felt about it. I didn't want to propose to a man who thought we weren't ready for that step in our relationship. Even so I started planning how I would do it. My first thought was to go big or go home. I wanted it to be memorable. The proposal took many shapes in the beginning, but finally I settled on a scavenger hunt. I had seven friends who would help with the project. One would drive him around the city, picking up clues that were cleverly written into cute poems, the others would be at the sites of where the clues led him. Each was a place where we'd shared a memory: the place we first met, the park we went to on our first date, all culminating to end at the place we shared our first slow dance. I planned to recreate that moment, but to the song 'Question' by Old 97's.

Everything was in place when I got a call the weekend before he was supposed to come home telling me that he was staying for another month. It wasn't his choice and I didn't blame him, but I was crushed. I thought I could post-pone the plan, but then I found out that I wasn't alone in proposal preparations. As it turned out he was talking to my best friend about asking me to marry him. While my plan spoke volumes of genius to me, I knew that I would have to step down and let him take the reigns on this one. We were going to get engaged either way. Did it matter who did it?

Aaron finally got to California on the first of August, the day before his twentieth birthday. I had been told he was going to propose in the airport, but when he didn't drop to one knee the minute he saw me, I knew it wasn't going to happen. Had he changed his mind? Did he no longer want to get married? I found out later it was because he didn't have a chance to get a ring. He'd gone to see his mom before visiting me and the day he planned to go out and buy one she took him to the beach. But at that time all I had to go on was my friend telling me to be patient, it would happen before his leave was over. Unfortunately, no matter how virtuous it is to be patient, it was a skill I had never learned.

The morning of his birthday I was running around town with my mom buying balloons and a card for him. We were liberally talking about Aaron and I getting engaged and when it would happen. As I thought about how long I would have to wait I realized that I didn't want to. I loved him and I wanted to be with him. And even though people were encouraging me to sit tight and give him a chance at proposing, I just couldn't force myself to do so. Within minutes I hatched a plan and set it into motion. It didn't have the brilliance of my first idea, but it had the emotional attachment.

Before he'd gone off to basic we'd fallen in love with a bakery in McHenry Village. We'd gone there one rainy afternoon and bought cupcakes, soon after I quickly dubbed them the best cupcakes I'd ever had. So over the course of our time together before he left we went to Village Bakery several times. As we checked out at the store we were at, still buying balloons and other various things we needed, I called them and asked if they could make me a dozen cupcakes with blue lettering. Because what I wanted was a simple request it was easy for them to do. It took no longer than an hour and before I went to pick Aaron up to spend the day with him, my mom and I picked up the cupcakes and brought them back home with us.

My mom, in typical mom fashion, took pictures of the cupcakes and wished me luck as I headed out. Balloons filled the backseat and two birthday cards sat atop the white box, one from me and one from my mom. When I reached where he was staying, his brother's place, my best friend was with me and carrying the proposal. We knocked on his door and waited. As he opened he smiled at the display before him, but not nearly as much as when I told him to open the box. 'Marry me Aaron' sat in fancy print before him and his smile grew. He said yes, hugging and kissing me as he did so.

We got married a little over two weeks later, just a couple days before he was sent to his first duty station in Kansas. We were apart for three weeks, long enough for me to give my boss two weeks notice and ship whatever I could to our new apartment off-post before flying out. It's been thirteen months since we tied the knot in a little courthouse wedding and I love him more now than the day I said 'I do'. We're less than two months away from the birth of our first child, a boy, and we're as happy as we've ever been.

Here's to the rest of our lives, may they be as full of love and laughter as these last thirteen months.