He popped the question!

So after getting off my flight (with free internet in air…awesome…) I was incredibly excited to see Jon standing at the gate…but of course our flight sat on the runway for a good 35 minutes. I was ITCHING to get off the plane…I wanted to give him a hug…and maybe get something shiny? Who knew?

I finally made my way down to baggage claim and gave him the world’s biggest hug and then we waited for my luggage. Hmm. Nothing shiny.

After dating for 5 ½ years, you could say that I was beginning to get a little antsy. Yes, we’re both still very young, but we’ve been dating for SO LONG. Add to that the fact that we’ve been talking about getting married since the age of 16 and well…it’s been a while! Regardless, I had already decided that I wasn’t going to push the issue. Over the last few months I’d already done A LOT of that and decided it was time to cool it. If he had it, great, if not, there was nothing I could do about it. (Besides, I had already thought of about 37 different scenarios of ways that he could propose over the course of my time in New York…there was still PLENTY of time for one of those ;-).)

After getting my luggage we headed out to the car and started to make our way to my house. We chatted about random stuff per usual and I barely gave a ring a second thought (my next “planned proposal” wasn’t until the next day when we would be celebrating Christmas with my family.) As we pulled onto my block I started joking that Jon didn’t even like me that much – he was almost late to the airport, he hadn’t brought me the deli sandwich I’d asked for, and he wasn’t going to be taking too much time off while I was in New York. And then we pulled into my driveway and I saw it – the 9-foot long wooden board with the words “Marry me?” in Christmas lights.

The sign :)

I sat there frozen with my hands covering my wide open mouth as tears came to my eyes and I started to shake. I didn’t know what to do. I stared at the sign (whose lights still weren’t on) then looked at Jon and back to the sign.

Jon: “Open the door.”
Me: “what??” (as I started searching the door for the ring…)
Jon: “You need to open the door – that’s the signal.”

I opened the door and immediately all the Christmas lights on my house illuminated along with the beautifully (home)-made sign. Jon came over to me, box in hand, said “could we please move to a place there’s a little less ice on the ground?” We scooted over a few inches and he said:

“Jessica Amanda Barak, will you make me the happiest man in the world? Will you marry me?”

Still shaking and with tears streaming, I immediately said yes and started hugging him and kissing him as my parents and brothers and Jon’s dad and sister (with his mom and brother on speaker phone in Georgia) came out of the house to congratulate us. In the midst of everything I never even looked at the ring – I was too excited (Jon said later that’s how he could tell that I really love him :).)

Before we went in he slipped the ring on my finger – an incredibly beautiful diamond from Sylvan’s, a jewelry store we had visited together on his last trip to South Carolina last year. We then made our way into the house to celebrate with champagne and family.

My ring!

I had imagined our proposal a million different ways – but none was as perfect as this one :).