How did engagement/marriage talk get initiated? Ring talk too?

[LaurenThePartier]

Let''s see if I can remember that far back.

Kidding! As, I''ve only been with DH for a bit over 7 years now, but it seems like I spent a lot of time in the LIW stage.

My husband works for a small provate software company owned by a Catholic family. Whenever the sales team makes their numbers for the year, the company takes the whole company + spouse on a lavish incentive trip, normally somewhere with a Four Seasons. When we first met, he soon left for the Big Island of Hawaii - alone, because he was not married. Two years later, the same thing, a fabulous trip to the Palmilla One & Only in Cabo, again, alone, because we were not married.

When he came back from the trip to Cabo, he promised me that I would not miss the next Incentive Trip because he had missed me terribly, and it was just not as much fun traveling without me. It was after that trip that we started talking about getting engaged, talking about the future, and eventually it let to talk of how much I loved Asschers.

It was still another 2 years (more like 19 months) before he proposed, but we were married about 3 weeks from the day he proposed with the ring.

And yes, there was another Incentive Trip, and we used it as our honeymoon to Nevis.

 

[elrohwen]

One day he said he could see himself marrying me and asked if I felt the same (of course I did). This was probably around 6 months into things. We knew we wanted to live together before making that decision, so at 1 year we got an apartment together. He told me that he had a family stone that he thought was his, but he wanted to talk to his mom and make sure it was ok if he gave it to me (it was a man's ring and passed down through sons, but his father had passed away and he wanted to make sure his mom and sister didn't want it more). At first he thought it was 5ct (

) and then his mom said it was *only* 3ct (

). Around Thanksgiving of our first year living together his mom brought us the ring and we found out it was 1.5-2ct (phew, much more reasonable, though I was kind of getting excited about a 3ct stone

). We agreed that I would pick out the setting I wanted so I spent some months looking until he was ready to make it happen and we had a local store design the setting for us.

So everything flowed pretty naturally for us. We didn't rush, but we moved at a good pace (I think) and nobody was ever uncomfortable about things.

ETA: We also agreed to get married in the fall of '09, so I told him to propose at least a year in advance. He proposed June of '08.