we're getting married!

We met when we both decided to do Ethics Bowl during what was Duncan's senior year and my sophomore year. I almost didn't go but decided to try it out at the last minute, and Duncan was doing it for class credit as part of his major. On Day 1 I showed up alone to try to find a group. I thought he was cute, so I made sure that I ended up being part of his team. (I was trying to be diplomatic at first and act as if it didn't matter which group I was in even though secretly I wanted to be in Ariel's group.) After he had already introduced himself, I accidentally called him Dylan and felt so embarrassed! I never mess up names, but of course that time I did. (Of course I always mess up her name by pronouncing it wrong) We hit it off, and ended up seeing each other a few times a week through Ethics Bowl. Before I knew it I was skipping Stats class and he was skipping Astronomy so that we could spend more time together watching Breaking Bad, our first of many TV binges. (She got an A and I got a C. I regret nothing.)

Duncan, being a serial monogamist, asked me if I wanted to be "official" pretty much right off the bat, and I agreed. Since it was so fast, and in typical Duncan style it was super casual, I didn't know if that meant we were "boyfriend and girlfriend". (It did.) So for the next couple of months, whenever anyone would ask if he was my "boyfriend" I would just say I wasn't sure and I didn't know what to call him. Then one night while we were standing on the porch of ZBT, one of his friends asked if I was his girlfriend, and he said yes! (I didn't think anything of it since I wasn't privy to Ariel's thoughts.) That was the first time I heard it, and I immediately texted my roommate, who knew about my internal dilemma about this, letting her know, with about a million smiley faces. (I did not.)

In the beginning of our relationship, I didn't know how serious we were. He would be graduating soon, and I was very hesitant about doing long distance. I knew that I needed to feel out the situation, so I summoned the courage to ask him his thoughts about graduating soon. His response was, "I'm not one to mess up a good thing." I took this to mean that he saw some sort of future for us, so at that point I fully invested myself in the relationship. (Graduation for me meant nothing in terms of our relationship. Whether I was 100 meters away or 100 miles wouldn't change the way I felt about Ariel.) Flash forward to about a month later - Valentine's Day weekend. I had known for a while that I was in love, but decided that I was now ready to tell him, and I wanted to be the one to say it first. I'm nervous and my heart is pounding, and I'm just about to say it when Duncan says, "I know. I feel the same way too." He knew what I was trying to say before I said it. So I smiled and yelled at him for stealing my thunder and then told him I loved him. He said it back. (Of course we waited the day after Valentine's day to make sure we weren't being cliche.)

If you really want to get the full sense of it, ask me sometime to see the video on my phone. (It's pretty much just her nervously laughing the whole time. I kept looking at the camera smiling and then looking back at Ariel.) But here's the story: Duncan and I took a trip to Paris together. We had planned an evening dinner boat cruise along the Seine. Around when the sun was setting, we decided to go on the upper deck to take some pictures and asked a nice couple to take the photos for us. While I was posing for the photos, Duncan pulled out the ring from his jacket pocket. (Unbeknownst to both of us, the couple was actually videoing the whole thing.) In typical Duncan fashion, he pretty much just presented the ring to me, saying, "I don't want it to fall in the water" and asked, "I assume that's a yes?" And it was. (To be fair, I was nervous the entire cruise with the ring in my breast pocket. I thought she would see or accidentally feel it before I took out the ring. I think given the impromptu nature of me "asking" her, I completely forgot that one is supposed to get down on one knee. She hasn't let me forget about it since, but luckily she still agreed to marry me.) - Ariel and (Duncan)