I proposed to beloved Rose over the weekend, and she accepted! We’re now engaged. This is her gorgeous ring, a rainbow of 23 princess cut, ethically mined sapphires in different colours, two strands entwined. We can’t actually get married here in Australia, but I felt that we needed to rebalance all the forms, paperwork, lawyers, and bureaucracy that has become part of putting our lives together… we needed some heartfelt romance and rituals of love too.

I’ve been quietly asking little questions and gathering her feelings about rings, proposals, and relationships for months. I was able to put together a good idea of what she’d love – a surprise proposal, somewhere private but beautiful, a story to be able to tell the kids (or grandkids!), a non-traditional looking engagement ring chosen for her, with no diamonds and lots of meaning. I’ve been using my month of recovering from surgery to sneakily put it all together and keep it secret and hide the ring in the house where she won’t find it and I won’t forget it (tip – tell a friend!), and get over the weird ‘worms wriggling in my guts’ feeling of spinning a whole web of plausible lies to keep the surprise, and asked for help and input from various friends. Plans unravelled more than once and needed to be completely rethought, and I was nearly overcome by emotion on several particularly moving nights before the big event and wrecked it all by giving her the ring on the spot, but somehow we kept it all together, and it worked!

She loved it. She said yes. We cried. We made happy memories of the most wonderful weekend. When I can get my photos off my camera I’ll tell you the story. She headed off to work this morning and kissed me goodbye and wished her fiancée a good day. I don’t think that’s getting old for awhile. She’s so gorgeous, and I’m so happy to make her light up like this. I’m humbled. I’m so lucky that she loves me.

I’m engaged!