Engagement Post-mortem: Lessons

Two weeks ago, if you haven’t heard already, I got engaged to my long-time best friend and girlfriend for almost two years, Maffy. What I can tell you right now is the euphoria one feels right after one gets engaged gets washed away just as quickly with the stress and pressures of wedding talks and preparation that follow right after getting engaged.

I would also like to impart some things I learned through the whole engagement ordeal particularly the process of getting an engagement ring which, I’m pretty sure everyone who has proposed before could attest to, is the hardest, most frustrating part of the process.

First of all, although my Ilocano roots make me generally predisposed to hating everything that involves spending superfluous amounts of money in the traditional dating process–giving flowers being a great example; I do not have any aversion towards giving an engagement ring. I mean sure miners in Liberia have perennially and regularly died mining the diamonds set in these rings and that’s horrible but dude, are these things beautiful or what?!

I mean, think about it this way: This is probably the last thing you have to get your girl before you are assured of a life of sex and sandwiches on demand. Not to mention a life of coming home late and hitting your Down syndrome-afflicted kid because he wouldn’t shut the fuck up when all you really want is to drink your beer while you watch a basketball game. But, I digress.

Besides, the engagement ring signifies your true love for your girl and it’s something she’s going to show all her snobbish, judgmental friends when they go out and shit. It’s also something she’s supposed to wear for the rest of her life, or in my case at least, for two years before we get annulled because of a rather petty argument about who the best American Idol judge is (duh, Randy Jackson obviously).

Anyway, how do you go about purchasing the ring? Two options presented themselves for me:

1. 1.) I could go ahead and purchase the ring with my girl. We could, unromantically, hit up known jewelry stores, she could pick a ring she likes and, if my budget agrees with her, I could buy it right then and there. After which, I could drop to my knees and propose to her right in the jewelry store.She would then acquiesce and say yes amid a dozen other shoppers rolling their eyes.
2. 2.) I could buy the ring without her. I could ask my lady friends who are already engaged for tips about getting the perfect ring. This process invariably involves outdoing a certain lady friend’s fiance and going to a jewelry store asking the sales person “How much karats does this shit pack again?” And saying “0.8 Karats you say? Well that’s just perfect! the rock Kenneth gave Melissa was just 0.7 Karats, fuck it! I’m taking this shit! [immediately phones Kenneth to gloat]

I picked option 2. Seriously, isn’t it a little lame for a girl to have an idea in regards to what it’s going to look like? Similarly, how anticlimactic is it to the girl for her to be cornered into a Q&A session about what her perfect engagement ring should be everyday for three weeks only to be proposed to later on? And really, how lame is it for a girl to actually be physically present when her engagement ring is bought, let alone be proposed to in a Jewelry store?

Besides, there is no better feeling in the world like you and your girl drudging through your seemingly eternity-old relationship, until the day you guys go out to eat in an expensive restaurant and instead of you asking her if “she has 500 bucks on her” because you “don’t want to break your 1,000″ when in reality you’re just really short, like you normally do; she finds your thick ass kneeling down in front of her holding out one of those black folds restaurants use to bring you your bill asking you to marry her. (Well initially, she may think that you’ve really hit rock bottom and are asking her to pay for the entire dinner. Until she opens the fold and sees an engagement ring inside. WOW!)

Much like how mine went though, her surprise might prove short-lived being that you didn’t take the time to ask her what sort of ring she likes nor did you take the time to ask for tips from any of her friends–or from anyone at all for that matter; her surpirise may soon turn into repugnance seeing that the ring you bought resembles something one can find in a flea market or one handcrafted by a drunk jeweller from Chinatown using a broken rhum bottle, a copper wire and some glue.

What’s more important than the engagement ring though is what you do right after you propose. Make sure that you pepper her with “I love you so much’s” and, in my case, make sure to apologize profusely about the ring and say that you felt like getting it yourself was the best option because you want to come off a little romantic.

Failing to do these will end up with her crying and telling you that you spend way too much time streaming ebony and ivory porn in your computer. If she does, you probably should just walk away and forget the entire engagement thing.

A good wife should never question your decisions on how to spend your time–free or otherwise–especially if it involves a black man stuffing the brains out of a petite, probably underage, blond girl. Seriously.

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