Ok, so I know (because you’ve told me) that some of you are at this point are saying “Hey! Get on with it already!”

And in response to that some of you are probably going “What? What’s she on about?”

That, my friends, is a unique, custom made wedding ring set. It’s a rose gold band with a rose cut chocolate diamond (I know, it sounds like a delicious, extravagant truffle, right?). It was created by the awesome (and, importantly, local) Kate Szabone (the picture is hers by the way).

And it’s all mine.

Yeah, I’m engaged.

(I’ll pause here for the chattering and cheers…)

…So how did this happen?

Well folks, we’ve been together (and living together for) 6 years. Those of you who know us well are, in fact, probably not all that surprised. In fact, you’ve probably been treating us like we were married for the last 5 of those years.

So there was no big surprise proposal. I’m personally not a big fan of them, and neither is Liam. So sorry, there’s no cutesy story there.

Instead, we made a mutual decision to do this. Together. It’s the right time for us, we’re really settled, stable at the moment. While we’re in one place long enough to catch our breaths, we figured it might be a good idea to make this thing official – and throwing a party for all our friends and family seems like a good idea too.

I, personally, think that making a mutual decision is respectful, modern and, actually pretty romantic. We love each other, and we don’t like keeping secrets from each other, and we make all our decisions together. So that’s how we got engaged. We made the decision together.

Actually, that’s how we chose that gorgeous ring up there. We designed it together. It took waaaaaay longer than just popping in to Tiffany’s and grabbing a solitaire. It took 2 months, actually (yeah, we’ve known for at least that long – but we wanted to at least have a ring before we told anyone, and while we don’t like keeping secrets from each other, we kinda like having secrets from the world that we share together).

But have you ever seen a more gorgeous ring? I doubt it. We actually got to sit in front of a pile of coloured diamonds and pick out the exact right one together – how awesome is that? Which means my ring is super unique and rare – and matches my hair, and my eyes and my skin. I’ve actually become kinda a vain bride, and spend a lot of time staring at it. Since I got it from a small, local, artisan jeweler who works with conflict free, ethical diamonds, I don’t feel guilty about appreciating my little bit of bling. I’ve never really had nice jewelery before (certainly nothing gold), but I’m glad I waited for the exact right piece. And for all that, it cost way less than you’d think which means we’ve got plenty left for the important stuff in life (which for the record, I happen to think isn’t jewelery).

What else should you know?

Well, we’re aiming for late September. That’s our dating anniversary, and we thought it would be nice to not have to change it.

We’re staying right here in Toronto, probably right here on the east side, likely right on a nearby streetcar line (and how cute and Torontonian would it be to take the streetcar to our own wedding, right?).

And we want all our friends help. If you have a talent we want to exploit it. That’s going to make things much more special for us, and for you too. That might mean we have a half dozen semi-professional photographers wandering around (man, there are a lot of you who are great photographers), but we greatly prefer that to having some stranger involved in our day, and that goes for pretty much everything. If you’re a great DJ, musician, seamstress, artist, chef, writer or crafter extraordinaire (and I know all of you are so creative and talented) consider yourself conscripted to the cause.

Oh, and yeah I’ll be blogging the whole thing. It’s going to be too much fun not to!