Happy Halloween 2009!

Since Halloween is one of my favorite holidays and since Katelyn and I decided to get pumpkins to carve from a local farm, we sat down on Thursday night to carve our own designs for the holiday season.  I had suggested to Katelyn that she might want to do an engagement-related design, and since I'm a Mainer and had the taller pumpkin, I decided to do a lighthouse to fit the geographic theme.

Do-It-Ourselves Engagement Photos

Even with finally being able to lock in our wedding venue for next year, Katelyn and I have somehow managed to continue leading busy lives.  One of my friends had offered to shoot professional-quality photographs of us as a couple for our engagement photos, and we've yet to have a Saturday free to be able to meet up and get that taken care of.

Feeling the season slipping away and not wanting to stay inside on a beautiful October Sunday, Katelyn and I went back out to our "engagement rock" in Blue Hill Bay to see if we could set up her camera to take a picture of the two of us where I proposed to her just over two months ago.  The results, when you consider the difficulty of trying to take self-photos, weren't too shabby.

House-Groom-to-Be

There is one major aspect of my relationship with Katelyn that is a concern to me as things are right now, and that is the fact that I do not make anywhere near as much money as Katelyn does through my work.  As a person who went through high school and college always working and always having enough money to take care of things, this is a new position for me to be in, and it is a somewhat embarrassing position to be in as Katelyn's fiancé and supposed provider.  I wonder how people feel when they look at this relationship from the outside, because from a traditional standpoint (and a gender-biased standpoint), the man is supposed to be the main provider for his family.  I know that Katelyn's family loves and accepts me, but I still fear sometimes that an outsider might view my current relationship with Katelyn as parasitic because while I contribute love and happiness, I am unable to contribute financially.

This is what it means to be a House-Groom-to-Be.

The Proposal Story

Now that introductions have been made, I can move on to the event that has turned me into a Groom-to-Be.

On a few occasions during the summer of 2009, Katelyn and I had discussed the potential possibility of eventually getting married to one another.  On two separate occasions, we actually asked each other to marry (me first, her second), but without a ring or a sense of reality to these proposals, we just carried on as always.

As the month of August began approaching and our impending trip together to South Carolina got closer and closer, I began to think seriously about proposing with a real ring: my grandmother's engagement ring from my dad's side of the family.  I didn't want to propose while we were in South Carolina because we were down there for a wedding already: the marriage between Katelyn's cousin Ryan and his wife Cheryl.  I thought it would be tacky and vain to propose while we were on vacation for that purpose, so I waited.