First Engagement Anniversary Quotes

As Marlboro Man slid open the huge barn doors and flipped on the enormous lights mounted to the beams, my heart began beating quickly. I couldn’t wait to smell its puppy breath. “Happy wedding,” he said sweetly, leaning against the wall of the barn and motioning toward the center with his eyes. My eyes adjusted to the light…and slowly focused on what was before me. It wasn’t a pug. It wasn’t a diamond or a horse or a shiny gold bangle…or even a blender. It wasn’t a love seat. It wasn’t a lamp. Sitting before me, surrounded by scattered bunches of hay, was a bright green John Deere riding lawn mower--a very large, very green, very mechanical, and very diesel-fueled John Deere riding lawn mower. Literally and figuratively, crickets chirped in the background of the night. And for the hundredth time since our engagement, the reality of the future for which I’d signed up flashed in front of me. I felt a twinge of panic as I saw the tennis bracelet I thought I didn’t want go poof, disappearing completely into the ether. Would this be how presents on the ranch would always be? Does the world of agriculture have a different chart of wedding anniversary presents? Would the first anniversary be paper…or motor oil? Would the second be cotton or Weed Eater string? I would add this to the growing list of things I still needed to figure out.

These usages are attested in the most formal manner. “I pour upon the earth of the tomb,” says Iphigenia in Euripides, “milk, honey, and wine; for it is with these that we rejoice the dead.”10 Among the Greeks there was in front of every tomb a place destined for the immolation of the victim and the cooking of its flesh.11 The Roman tomb also had its culina, a species of kitchen, of a particular kind, and entirely for the use of the dead.12 Plutarch relates that after the battle of Platæa, the slain having been buried upon the field of battle, the Platæans engaged to offer them the funeral repast every year. Consequently, on each anniversary they went in grand procession, conducted by their first magistrates to the mound under which the dead lay. They offered the departed milk, wine, oil, and perfumes, and sacrificed a victim. When the provisions had been placed upon the tomb, the Platæans pronounced a formula by which they called the dead to come and partake of this repast. This ceremony was still performed in the time of Plutarch, who was enabled to witness the six hundredth anniversary of it.13 A little later, Lucian, ridiculing these opinions and usages, shows how deeply rooted they were in the common mind. “The dead,” says he, “are nourished by the provisions which we place upon their tomb, and drink the wine which we pour out there; so that one of the dead to whom nothing is offered is condemned to perpetual hunger.”14 These are very old forms of belief, and are quite groundless and ridiculous, and yet they exercised empire over man during a great number of generations. They governed men’s minds; we shall soon see that they governed societies even, and that the greater part of the domestic and social institutions of the ancients was derived from this source.

Sometimes Grace wished she could take a poison-tipped lance to the entire wedding industry. Downgrade your average twenty-first-century nuptial extravaganza to quiet vows, taken in the presence of dear friends and family, and half the engaged couples - the right half - would drop the entire notion of marriage on the spot. Persuade couples to save the party for their twenty-fifth anniversary, when his hairline had evaporated and her waist was thick from childbearing, and a whole lot of them would retract in horror. But by the time they came to her, the barn door was bolted and the horse was long gone.

My engagement ring was on top of the same piece of paper I had left it on this morning, sitting in the middle of the bed. I sat on the edge and reached for the paper, letting the ring slide off it onto the comforter. I understand, and I don’t blame you. I’m sorry. I’m here. Always. And I’m never giving up on us. I love you. “So fall when you’re ready, babe . . .” Somehow, impossibly, more tears filled my eyes, and I pressed the paper to my chest as I fell back onto the bed. Grabbing my engagement ring, I held it above me and stared at it through blurred eyes as I replayed yesterday, then replayed the first and second times Logan sang “Fall into Me” by Brantley Gilbert to me. It was after our first time together, and then again as he danced with me in my kitchen last fall on the anniversary of my parents’ death. I loved him. I loved the man that was waiting for me somewhere in the house. I loved the way he loved me, and I loved all his faults. Including his quick reactions based solely on emotions rather than on facts. But