NY Adventures: Engaged to Mr. Envoy

If you guys have read any of my posts then by now you know that things in my life tend to get crazy, which inevitably leads to my posts being delayed… because reasons. A lot of stuff has happened since I moved to New York, both good and bad, so I sort of disappeared from my blog while I tried to get my life sorted out. I will eventually get to everything that I have in my overflowing list of backlogged posts, but for now I’m going to do things a little out of order and talk about one of two very important things that have happened to me while being out here – I’m going to talk about when I got engaged!

After over 2 years of dating, on March 19, 2015 Mr. Envoy finally proposed to me. Yes you read that right, I said finally (love you sweetie! :P).

I know when it comes to the engagement ring a lot of people care about ‘how much money he spent’ and growing up I always thought that the bigger and more sparkly the diamond the better the ring. When I pictured my engagement ring someday I always pictured something with more… bling, which is not what I got – but that’s okay because the ring he proposed with means more to me than any huge sparkly rock ever could, and that’s because the ring he proposed to me with was my mom’s 50 year old engagement/wedding ring (she had the two rings soldered together years ago, so I treated the whole thing like one ring). My mom had the teeniest, tiniest fingers ever, so all he had to was have it re-sized, replace a few prongs on it, and have it cleaned up and it was good to go!

Mr. Envoy was insanely busy with his job out here as a Recruiter for the Marine Corps, so even though my sister had sent him my mom’s ring back in December, he didn’t have a chance to take care of the re-sizing until early March. The ring cleaned up beautifully, and I seriously couldn’t believe how sparkly the diamond was. As a kid I remember seeing my mom wearing it and honestly I don’t think it ever looked this good. Hell, I’m looking at it right now and it’s still crazy sparkly <3

The proposal we had was perfect for our relationship, even though like my ring, it wasn’t what I had imagined. I had imagined something out of a rom-com – like in The Wedding Planner when Mary (Jennifer Lopez) is proposed to by Massimo, whom she knew as a child. The perfect music plays and he wheels out a dollhouse he built himself with an engagement ring inside it and promises to take care of her and love her more than anyone else could. It was just so sweet and romantic! But instead of putting together a dollhouse, in my dream proposal Mr. Envoy would have put together something nerdy from World of Warcraft representing how we met through the game, and of course we’d both be in our best clothes and there’d be a photographer and that same perfect music would be playing.

But… that didn’t happen. Instead I was teasing him about something silly and walked away to go finish watching a TV show. He followed me into the front room to, I assumed, tease me back. I turned around to say something smart to him, which is when he got down on one knee and asked me to be his player 2. As I said earlier, the proposal fit our relationship because although I may dream about all the fancy things, I don’t need them as long as I have him. So despite the fact that we were in our pajamas (which for Mr. Envoy is just his underwear lol) and absolutely zero perfect music was playing, I of course said yes.

After we snapped some cellphone photos and I updated both of our relationship statuses on Facebook (these things are important! duh!) I went on a hunt for an engagement photographer. Engagement pictures aren’t anything my parents, or even my sisters had done but I was determined that we would. So I googled engagement photographers for Long Island and sent out a slew of e-mails looking for price quotes. I had no clue what to expect price-wise because I had never hired a photographer. I had reached out to probably 12 different photographers, and started receiving quotes back and holy cow were they pricey. Out of all the e-mails I sent only two photographers actually called me to discuss their quote with me. One photographer was someone whose work I had absolutely fallen in love with, but he was very busy and couldn’t get back to me as quickly as I was hoping with a quote. Come to think of it, he never did get back to me with a quote… hrmph. The other photographer was thankfully someone else whose work I loved, and he even took the time to visit my business website and decided to reach out to me because he had read my bio and liked my story, which was really sweet!

Needless to say Mr. Envoy and I ended up hiring him and planned on meeting him for pictures at the Brooklyn Bridge Park on April 26th, with my harp. Yep, with my harp! Some people take their engagement photos with their dogs, I took mine with my harp. Problem? ;)

Hauling my harp down there was super sucky, and because my car is so small it was a long drive to Brooklyn. I mean hey, my car can fit my concert grand pedal harp just fine and it can even kinda sorta fit me but anyone taller than me? Yeah no, not happening. Unfortunately because of how tight the passenger seat is (I have to push both front seats all the way forward to get the harp in), even after it’s pushed back as far as it can go Mr. Envoy wouldn’t be able to fit. So he had to drive, and because he’s just a tad taller than I am it was pretty uncomfortable. Ooops! But let’s focus on how awesome my gas mileage is in my little Toyota Matrix, shall we?

Once we got to Brooklyn and found a parking garage (trying to find street parking on what was one of the first nice days in a while was impossible) we hauled the harp up the steep ramp (yay underground parking garages…) and worked our way over to where our photographer was waiting for us. He took us around and we got some beautiful shots with both the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan Bridge, and I even got to hear people try to figure out what the heck Mr. Envoy was wheeling around. “Is that a… cello? Oh wait no! That’s a harp!” Yep, it sure is! People kept staring at it too when we unpacked it, but it’s no wonder – my harp is freaking gorgeous, just sayin’.

These pictures are something we will always cherish, so even though it was a pain to get the harp down there I’m so glad we did it. Plus an awesome bonus was I got to have some pictures of just the harp and I for my website! Woo!

I think I’ve talked enough though, so without further ado let me share with you all my beautiful engagement photos!

<3 and harp strings,
Kate