Special Day Essay

"What do you mean not all of the money is there?" I couldn't believe it, I was standing in front of my future wife, an engagement ring on her finger, and a student loan officer who had no way of knowing what was going through my mind. I could only react to the rage I felt, the utter embarassment of trying to make something out of the nothing that I had created. I knew at that moment that I had to make sure that my wife understood everything that was happening so that our 'beginning' would be built on a foundation of honesty and not on a facade of lies.

My wife and I had always been honest in our relationship. It was a magical relationship to begin with and here I was screwing up the one completely right thing in my life. When I first met my wife I knew that she would be the one. It was one of those moments in your life when you just understand where everything is headed after that. We met purely by chance, a fraternity/sorority 'raid' on a monday night, January 27, 1992. Neither one of us agreed to go to the party at all, we were coereced into going by friends. We both had classes in the morning and we both had exams coming up that we needed to study for. The party itself was moved three times because other fraternities and sororities had already booked the places we were just showing up at. It was fate that brought us together.

That fate blossomed into love very quickly. Within two weeks (Valentines Day) we had said I love you. Within two months we were living together. By the end of six months we had decided to get married. I wanted to make sure that she had the proper ring on her finger but money was always tight in my world. I was putting myself through school by working full time and a series of student loans and grants. There wasn't enough money just lying around to by an engagement ring. The end of that summer I had put a ring on layaway, paying it off $50 a week (the ring was $3000), just so I knew I was making progress. The wait was killing me, I wanted to pop the question, I wanted the special feeling that comes along with announcing your lifetime promise to someone. I knew what I had to do and I knew just how to do it.

When you make a lifetime committment to someone you want it to be perfect. You plan every detail to such a degree that you actually cannot sleep until you see it through. My master plan was to take my last check (I was working full time and it was a good size check) and supplement that with the 'leftover' amount from my financial aid package. Financial aid is always more then a student needs to pay for classes and books, it is also supposed to help you pay for the living expenses that you encur along the way. I was set. I was impaitent. I went to the jewlers the weekend before I would get the financial aid and bought the ring. I wrote a check that would bounce higher then a superball dropped off of the Empire State Buliding if I did not get my financial aid. I was confident (cocky) that my plan was perfect. I took my girlfriend, soon to be fiancee, out on to the beach at sunset and proposed just the way I had planned. It was perfect, or so I thought. When I got to the financial aid office on Monday, my fiancee's ring shining in the sun, I found out that I would only get half of the amount now and the other half would come in six weeks. I threw up in my mouth a little and tried to figure it all out on the spot.

No matter how sick a feeling you get in certain situations it is always better to have someone there to bolster your spirits. I had to swallow my pride (and bile) and tell my wife what was going on with her engagement ring. She understood. She consoled me. She told me that it did not matter to her if she had the ring or not. I was dumbfounded, shocked and confused. She did not blame me for it she just wanted to help. It was something that I always knew I could count on during our marriage. It solidified every thought I had about her and what a could person she was all the way to her core. It always made me think twice about whether the planning of the gesture was as important as making sure you could pull off the gesture in the first place. In the end, she was able to keep the ring. My fiancee calmly took out her checkbook and wrote a check to cover the rest of the payment. I've been trying to repay her ever since.