This whole “how did you get engaged” thing feels like a lot, in part because I’ve told the story multiple times and it seems to take longer every time, despite my attempts to shorten. It also feels like a lot because I am keenly aware that I don’t want to be That Person. That Person talks about her wedding nonstop and forgets to ask about other people’s lives, which is annoying and hurtful. So I’m going to tell our proposal story in stages and hope you won’t get bored.

A couple of days after Christmas (2017), Tyler and I watched a movie (I can’t remember which one) at his apartment in the glow of Christmas lights. When the movie ended, he got up to play with the Lego’s he’d given me for Christmas and I stayed where I was. He covered me in several blankets and a small mountain of pillows, just to be cute, and I happily dozed off.

Tyler woke me to show me the tiny car he built for the tiny street with tiny road cones redirecting traffic around the tiny garbage truck that had toppled over. I oooh’d over it and fell asleep again. Later, he woke me to show me the tiny garage he built for the tiny car that had finally navigated the accident and made it home. By this time, it was around 1am, and he sat on the floor beside me to tell me that it was late and I should probably go home. I agreed and began unburying myself.

“Before you go, though,” he said, his back to me as I tossed pillows into the far corner of the sectional, “I want your opinion on something.”

Interesting, I thought. “Okay. What is it?” I balled up one blanket and pulled the remaining one more closely around me as I sat up. Tyler stood and slid open the end table—which he almost never keeps things in—and pulled out a Reed’s jewelry catalog, cover tinged with the blue and red of the pulsing Christmas lights.

“I want to know what kind of engagement ring you’d like.”

I wasn’t very sleepy anymore.

I looked through the catalog, which didn’t much impress me, to be honest, while he opened his laptop and pulled up a few sites. For the next hour and a half, I declared judgement on the rings we saw, and we found a site that let us build a custom ring. We knew we wanted to see an investment like this in person before we bought it, but it was fun to customize and wonder. The only thing I knew going in was I wanted a diamond and I wanted white gold, as I mostly wore silver jewelry.

Tyler asked me, “Do you like princess cut or round better?” as he clicked on the various toggles.

“Round,” I’d answer, not knowing the answer until I saw them both, like choosing “one or two” at the optometrist’s office.

“Do you want a colored diamond?”

“No.”

“Not even a chocolate one?”

“Not even a little bit. Those things are hideous.”

“I’m so shocked.”

(He wasn’t shocked.)

“What about this one?” he asked of an x-shaped monstrosity that I thought looked like an alien space ship and he thought looked like a shrunken chandelier.

At some point, when we had a design I basically liked, he said something like, “You like color. What about sapphires?” And clicked on a button that sent alternating cascades of sapphires and diamonds down the band of the virtual ring.

“It’s too much,” I told him.

“The sapphires?”

“No. The band like that.” He clicked around for other options.

I had heard of sapphires on a wedding ring, because of Princess Diana. I used to watch made-for-TV documentaries and biographies about her. After one show pointed out the details of her large sapphire ring, the central gem surrounded by diamonds, which is now Princess Katherine’s engagement ring, I asked my Mom why Prince Charles had picked a sapphire. “Engagement rings are supposed to have diamonds, aren’t they?”

My mom, whose gorgeous yellow gold set with round solitaire was my baseline for that statement, answered that sapphires are a traditional stone to use, but diamonds are more common.

I might have been eight at this time, so I’ve had a couple of decades to get use to the idea of sapphires in an engagement ring. But I had never thought about them being on mine.

Tyler adjusted the virtual ring so a diamond sat in the center, flanked by two decently sized sapphires. I liked it, but I wasn’t convinced. The idea was new to me and I definitely wanted to try something like this on. I went home, went to bed, and met him for lunch at Zoe’s Kitchen. I remember nothing about that meal, but I remember walking out of the restaurant toward the center of the outdoor mall where three large, name-brand jewelry stores dominated three of the four corners, including Reed’s, provider of the catalog in Tyler’s apartment.

As we walked, though, we passed Forever Diamonds, a smaller jewelry store we’d both forgotten about. Tyler hadn’t visited them during his research trip earlier that week, but we were there, so we went inside.

Debra and Ryan were amazing. Debra helped us primarily, listening very carefully to what I wanted, pulling ring after ring for me to try on. We talked stone cut, size, setting style. I was horrified by anything 1.25 carets or higher. Tyler, of course, was devastated that I wanted something smaller.

The night before, I’d asked him about budget. “Just pick a band you like and I’ll get a stone I can afford. Okay?”

He’s so very reasonable.

I found a gorgeous ring that was the sort of thing I would have imagined as a child, if I’d ever let myself do so. It was a white gold band with a round solitaire setting and three tiny diamonds, in descending size, set on in the midst of mill grain tear drop. I loved it. It’s the ring I would have chosen ten or five or even two years ago, before Tyler and I started dating. Which is why I ultimately didn’t pick it.

We still hadn’t seen a ring with a setting like the one we’d built online, and when we explained this, Ryan suggested that they could order a band to our specifications and build us a custom ring. This idea made me, at least, nervous, so he took a round .9 caret diamond from the safe along with two triangular sapphires, carefully arranging them between my fingers so I could get an idea of what it would look like. And it was gorgeous. But I couldn’t think straight any more and I wanted to be sure it wouldn’t sit up too high (the other ring did, though I was willing to ignore it because it was that gorgeous), so we thanked them profusely, took up our coats, and walked to the next jewelry store, where we were half ignored. In the next store, the sales associate didn’t know her stock well and complained to us about her coworker, who could hear her doing so. In the third store, the associate was experiencing severe back pain and had to lean heavily on the display cases to stay upright. I nearly ran out of the store just so she could sit back down and take a little relief.

We went back to Forever Diamonds. As Tyler talked with Ryan about what ordering a custom ring would entail, I asked Debra to let me see that other ring again. I wore it, and stared at it, and then gave it back.

It took me less than 24 hours to decide that I wanted a ring that reflected Tyler and I, not just me. We love Lego’s and cooking together. We like to make things together. The night after we went shopping, New Year’s Eve, I sat Tyler down during the party at my house and told him I’d decided. I think he was really surprised that I had already decided and didn’t need more time. He’d taken 2 months to buy a new truck and 8 months and counting to pick a new mattress. He suggested, wisely but unnecessarily, that we wait until the end of the week before going back to Forever Diamonds so that I would have plenty of time to change my mind, with assurances that it would be fine if I did.

The following Monday, we made an appointment with Debra and Ryan and went in to order my ring. Once again, they were incredibly patient and kind as we asked questions and pondered all the options. Tyler had been told that day that he would be put on leave without pay at his new job for an indefinite period of time. I suggested we wait until things grew more steady at work, but he wanted to go ahead and order it. He’d been saving and had good credit for financing options. Brenda sized my ring finger and, afterwards, I ran a couple more errands while Tyler went to Publix and cooked for us. I arrived at his apartment just in time to eat.

I didn’t see the ring completed until Tyler pulled it from his pocket on the beach in my hometown eleven days ago. I don’t remember this, but I took it out of his hand. I held it on the tip of my thumb while I said “Yes” and through our hug afterwards.

In the intervening weeks, I had noticed that I’d been wearing a lot more yellow gold and had begun to question whether I’d chosen well to want white gold. When I saw it, though, I knew I’d chosen right to have asked for white gold. And I am endlessly thrilled with it, even if I do sometimes forget and slide it onto my right hand instead of my left.