Yesterday, I shipped an engagement ring

Hey everyone, sorry I missed standup yesterday.

“Yesterday I shipped an engagement ring. Today getting started on merging Morgan’s PR to change her last name.”

This weekend has been unbelievably special. Morgan and I went to Denver for my 30th birthday, little did I know that some of our best friends from SF would be surprising me to celebrate with us, and little did she know that I was going to ask her to marry me :).

She said yes!

Morgan and I got engaged last night! If you’ve seen me absent from work here and there the last couple weeks it’s because I was scrambling to get a ring made and engagement planned in another state. We’re here in Colorado at a friend’s house outside of Denver, the place where we had our first date.

Things started a little bumpy: flight delayed an hour, more than an hour to get the rental car, missed freeway exits, settling on Taco Bell to go from the airport, and all of these delays culminating in us getting hit with the storm that was rolling in (and that I was hoping to avoid and do the proposal before the rain started).

Once we got to the cabin I was insistent we go outside to slow dance — two of my friends were outside waiting in the trees with the camera getting pelted with rain. Morgan thought I was out of my mind, but later told me she knew my birthday was coming up and I was trying to be sweet so she eventually agreed.

Finally getting to share everything behind the scenes

After the proposal, everyone was in a good bit of shock. Morgan’s first question was “omg how long have you been planning this”? I had a few photos of a secret trip I made to Baltimore to talk to her dad and to see her best friend.

Technology has made hiding an engagement planning near impossible, and I was more than relieved to not have to hide anymore. iMessage is syndicated across everything so I used WhatsApp, Find My Friends got switched to report from my iPad and I had to purposely leave it at home, emails ding and chirp and display notifications, Siri shows recent apps that you’ve used, web history is everywhere. It’s incredibly hard.

Little surprises with the ring

This was the most fun part by far. A friend of mine had used a woman he knew to do a custom ring for his engagement a few months ago, and I was incredibly fortunate to have her available on such a short timeline. Front to back I think it was 3 weeks.

The elements of the ring tell the story of our relationship and major events that happened along the way, and it was a treat to be able to show this to Morgan for the first time.

And then the power went out…

So the storm rolled through and all of a sudden things go dark. We hadn’t even made the first call to our family, so it was time to improvise. This picture is actually in pitch black (but good camera flash), with one iPhone on FaceTime and the other acting as a flashlight.

Time to party

So the power was out, still running on adrenaline, it was time to have a few glasses of wine and get weird. I had bought a new DSLR and shipped it to my friends, and what a treat it was to have around.

With the delays from earlier, we didn’t have time to go get food since everything was closed. All that was in the house was tortilla chips and a lot of wine. So…that’s what happened.

Waking up in Narnia

The storm dumped a good bit of snow last night, and it was so peaceful to wake up to such breathtaking nature. I miss Colorado a lot, and it filled my heart to get a little piece of it back the morning after my best friend and I told each other we wanted to be husband and wife :)