Best Saturday Yet

Now don't jump to any conclusions, and don't get too excited (I'm talking mainly to myself here), but...

Blake took me ring shopping on Saturday!!!!!!!!!

I will try to relay the afternoon's events with as much calm and decorum as I can manage, but just know that on the inside I am giddy, absolutely GOOFY with excitement.  After all, Blake and I have been talking about getting married for a long time now.  As my father puts it, it has never been a question of "if" but of "when".  Blake has been trying to pay off all his debts from his previous marriage, which I respect, before starting our new life together as man and wife, and he didn't want to ask me until that debt-free day was closer at hand.  So I've been uncharacteristically waiting patiently, concentrating on the other exciting things going on in our lives and trying very hard not to picture myself in a flowy white dress gliding down an aisle on my father's arm to my rock star of a boyfriend so that I can call him husband...

I digress.  All this talk of wedding makes me think of dresses and quite frankly I can't wait to try on every dress in the state.

So anyway, ring shopping.  We had one failed attempt on Valentine's Day to look at engagement rings.  What started out as a romantic gesture quickly became a disaster as we pulled into the Galleria parking lot only to realize that it was NBA All Star Weekend and most of the "stars" were shopping at the Galleria.  Which meant half of Dallas was there NOT shopping but star-gazing.  After fighting our way through the crowd the one store Blake was looking for turned out to be out of business.  Not the best way to start out.

Then on the way to dinner we passed this 3 story building with a giant diamond ring in the window.  I pointed it out to Blake and laughed, saying, "That's where we should have gone!" while inside I'm thinking "Three stories of diamond rings?  Are you kidding me?  I bite my nails.  They won't let me try on rings in a store like that."

Turns out a store like that not only will let little old me try on diamond rings by the score, they will serve you coffee and water while you ogle their shiny shiny goods.

The store was Robbins Bros., and my advice is that if you are going to shop for an engagement ring this is the only place you should go.  You can make an appointment with a personal shopper (which, of course, Blake did, ours was named Susie), and she meets you at the giant diamond ring with offers of coffee and water.  Blake had emailed a list ahead of time of rings he thought I might like, and she immediately took us to the case that housed the most likely candidates.

And then she let me try on every ring in every one of the 20+ cases in the store.  Big rings, little rings, wedding bands, three stone, pave, vintage, modern, classic, solitaire-you name it, they had it.  When we finally settled on one-wait.  We didn't settle.  We-and by we I mean I-fell in love with a ring.  So Susie shuttled us over to the "diamond education room" where we learned about cut, color, clarity, and something else c-related (I was in oooo shiny shiny mode, so this is the part where Blake was paying attention).  THEN they ushered me out of the room so Blake could talk to her about his plans without me listening.  Later he told me some of what they discussed, and Robbins Bros. helps with everything related to the wedding, even offering "proposal specialists" to help the less creative male propose in style.

All in all I left with diamond dreams in my eyes and head, and now I'm afraid Blake has no choice but to ask me soon or else watch me slowly slip into a wedding dream coma.  When I conveyed this to him his response was, "You just have to forget about the ring.  It won't be hard.  As soon as we close on the house, poof! you'll forget you ever had diamonds on your hand."

It is safe to say that he still has some things to learn about me.