My Engagement Abroad in Bruges

As little girls, we dream of who we will marry, and how they will ask. I used to think of the most outrageous scenarios for my engagement, but never an engagement abroad necessarily. I thought of my future husband planting my ring in a box on the bottom of the ocean…At the right time, trained dolphins bring it up to our sailboat. Or a whole flash mob would sing me a song while we were out and about. But, that is far from how it happened.

My boyfriend of 11 years, whom I met on a small Aegean island in Greece, have never really talked about marriage until we got a newsflash that we’re approaching our mid-30s. We never felt pressure from family, friends or ourselves. Could it be a reason why our relationship has been so healthy all these years?

Marriage, to me, is as a luxury and not as a means of life. I don’t think that soul-mates exist purely because there are almost 8 billion people on this planet! That means trillions of scenarios where my life could have taken a different direction and met someone else. But this was the direction my life went, and this is the person I have ultimately chosen based off of his compassion, intellectual value, patience, and logic. I think, for the most part, I found the yang to my ying.

Planning an Engagement Abroad Checklist

The Ring Talk

About 2 months before he popped the question, I started dropping hints about rings I liked. I was mostly looking at floral designs for the main part of the ring, and the band to be a half-eternity style. I remember it was my boyfriend who had mentioned that rose gold would look better on my skin than white gold (OMG, yellow gold is OUT on me). While I know many women go to ring shops, I found the jewelers in Sweden to be ‘lagom,’ which is a Swedish word meaning ‘basic.’ We ultimately went to an online company called Glamira, and found the perfect ring.

 

 

The hardest part was over, except for finding my size, which is harder when you order online because all rings fit differently.

Taking a Trip to Bruges

He stopped talking about the ring once I had left to go back stateside for Christmas. I knew he had ordered it because of his silence! When I saw my present at Christmas was a weekend trip to Bruges, Belgium in early February…I knew this was going to be the place he asked.  We left on a Friday, and had a dinner reservation at a quaint, candle-lit cellar. The food was awesome, the wine was flowing like Niagra falls, and I was thinking “oh man, I hope he doesn’t ask AT dinner…will he have a speech? Get down on one knee? Will the ring come in my champagne glass?” All the cliche things I was a bit nervous about…and curious to see my big manly Greek guy actually go soft about.

After dinner, we wandered around and I urged him to check out the local nightlife. He was hesitant, but I figured since no ring has made an appearance, it must be happening tomorrow. Let’s go clubbing.

When midnight struck, I could tell he wanted to get back. Bruges was utterly cold and windy, and we wanted to get up early for some sightseeing. We stayed at Hotel Monsieur Ernest, which was quite charming, was located on one of the town’s charming canals. We were about to go inside, when Michael asked if I could take a picture of him by the canal. My tipsy mind thought “What a good idea!” He went and sat on the edge, and I backed up to make sure I could get the full surroundings. Of course, I didn’t have my manual settings right, so I used a flash and the picture was totally blown out. So as I sat fiddling with my camera, he had opened up a little box (that actually had a light in it) and asked if this flash worked better.

 

 

There was no speech. There was no getting down on one knee (ok, he was sitting and I was standing, that works, right?), there were no dolphins or flash mobs. Just the crisp night between the ancient brick alleyways and the bubbling canal that flowed below us in the small town of Bruges.