The Greatest Surprise Of My Life

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This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Jewelers Mutual Insurance for IZEA. All opinions are 100% mine.

My husband and I went to the same high school, although we didn’t date in high school. We actually “met” while on our class trip.

It’s like a storybook romance in many ways.

Our class had taken a bus trip to St. Louis, which was about 10 hours away. As we were all piling on the bus to head back for home, of course, nearly all the seats were filled.

As fate would have it, the first empty seat was next to my husband.

“Can I sit here?” And with that, we were nearly inseparable from that point forward. It’s kind of funny because we were probably the most unlikely pair from our high school to actually end up falling in love.

For a while, there were a lot of, “You’re dating who?” when I would see people from my high school.

It was after dating for about two years that I started talking about getting married. I really felt as though our relationship was moving to that level, but my boyfriend (at that time) said he didn’t want to talk about getting married. In fact, he didn’t really know if he would ever be the marrying type.

A couple more months had passed, and his tune really didn’t change. He just didn’t see marriage in our future.

Clearly, we were not in the same relationship.

I felt totally deflated and rejected, and I just wasn’t willing to stay in the relationship any longer with someone who obviously didn’t feel the same way I did.

In my frustration, I shared this with a mutual friend.

On a Friday night in August, I was getting ready for our date and filled with an enormous pit in my stomach.

What he didn’t know was that this would be our last date. I was ready to move on. I just couldn’t put any more into this dead end relationship. And, I felt horrible that he had no idea.

When he picked me up we drove around for a bit and ended up at the playground of my former elementary school. It was really kind of fun. We played on the playground equipment, we went swinging, and we talked and we laughed.

The night was becoming increasingly more difficult for me.

From there we went to a few other of my favorite places from when I was a kid. One was a park that I often went to with my family, and the other was the football field at our former high school where I used to watch him play football when he was just an “arrogant jock,” in my own words. I was having such a good time. But I was so ready for the night to just be over.

From there we went to our favorite spot. It was a wooded pond area on a local college campus. Over the past couple of years, we had spent countless hours there, just talking.

Something seemed a bit off, but I felt awful about what I was about to do so I figured that was it, and it was just time to tell him.

The next thing I knew, my boyfriend was down on one knee, ring in hand, asking me to marry him. I was speechless. Actually, I was convinced that I was in some alternate reality.

You see, what I didn’t know, was that when he had taken me out to casually browse for rings nearly a year earlier, he had paid attention to the one I really liked.

And then, he went back the next day and put that very ring on layaway. Then, when he got paid every Friday, he went back to the jewelry store to pay on that engagement ring.

He had been worried that I was on to it, and he didn’t want me to know what was going on until the ring was paid for. When I shared with our mutual friend about my plans to end the relationship, she told him that he better figure something out – and fast!

As he stood there with this ring in his hand – the one that was exactly what I would have picked out – I didn’t even know what to think. It was beautiful!

After driving around at nearly midnight to show my ring to everyone we could, he finally brought me home.

I went to bed that night engaged to be married when I thought I would be climbing into bed heartbroken and single.

The next day, we drove around and shared our news with the rest of our family and friends. And then, we started doing our homework on getting my ring insured. The last thing I wanted was to find myself without my perfect ring and unable to do anything about it. It had taken my boyfriend nearly an entire year to pay for it, and that was worth protecting.

Beautiful engagement rings like these are more than just a piece of jewelry, they are the beginning of a new chapter in an amazing love story.

As with anything you’re looking to protect, it pays to have the right kind of protection. We all hope that the unthinkable doesn’t happen, but when it does, having the right insurance will end up being one of the best decisions you ever made.

Whether you’re newly engaged or have been married for more than 20 years as I have now, Jewelers Mutual is the expert in jewelry insurance. It pays to have someone who knows jewelry rather than just a more generalized insurance company make sure that your most precious possession is properly protected.

Start by checking out Jewelry Insurance 101

And, it couldn’t be easier to get the process started. Get a free jewelry insurance quote

Learn what brides-to-be want in an engagement ring