Well... If you've been around Jay and I you can tell that we really LOVE each other and have so much fun together that we are always in the "fun pocket!" So we started really thinking about seriously getting married when we came back from Hawaii I'd say. I think I first started to love Jay in May when I got to meet the rest of his family at his cousins wedding and spend time with Lea and Russ (his mom and dad). Then we went to Hawaii for two weeks to stay with his parents and had a BLAST! At one point I think we were getting ahead of ourselves talking about marriage and agreed to start praying seriously about this being God's will.
Now in the beginning of the relationship like Jay tells it, he said he didn't want to say I love you until it was followed with "Will you marry me". I was perfectly fine with this, as well as the no kissing before the altar that he refers to in his story. God had really prepared my heart for all of this and put me totally on the same page.
Recently, it became very fun to ask Jay, "honey, do you love me???" because he could not really answer back if he was not going to ask me to marry him! ;) Marriage started becoming a huge topic of conversation with us. Back in Hawaii we agreed that there would be a "sign of pending engagement" that would let me know that Jay had made the decision that he was going to ask me to marry him. Oddly enough, the sign we thought of was a..... BUGLE! Yes, strange, but that's a whole other story in itself! So Jay gave me a puzzle one day in June with the 4 corners glued on a piece of cardboard, but the rest missing. Gradually he gave me puzzle pieces when we'd go on dates and I'd find notes in my room leading me to little boxes I had on my dressers with puzzle pieces in them. A week before the engagement happened, Jay gave me all the puzzle pieces which made up a bugle(I actually had to find them in my room) and there was only ONE missing. We had agreed though, that when I got all the pieces it would be maybe 4 minutes from engagement or 4 months! So at any rate I was thinking that we might get engaged in September some time or the beginning of October.

Before this engagement story begins you'll need a little background information into our relationship. Before I even started dating Julia the Lord put two major things on my heart one which many of you may have heard about is that I wasn't going to kiss her on the lips until we were standing together at the altar- I do kiss her all the time on the hand though :P. Second was that I wasn't going to tell her I loved her until it was followed with "Will you marry me?"- I read that in a Christian dating book and it really stuck with me. People certainly can say I love you before their engagement and mean it, but also many say it and later may break up.
So with that said we started courting- I say courting because we weren't just dating for the sake of it, but we were both looking for that one person God wills us to be with for the rest of our life. I had been praying- and had others praying for me- that God would make it clear that Julia was the woman I was supposed to marry. God over time made this clear by just giving me a heart that loves her to the point where I have trouble breathing when around her sometimes. With confirmation from God in my heart I decided to start looking for rings and because excitement from Julia makes me excited and is so fun I told her, “I was going somewhere special to look at something special for a special someone”- She had no trouble figuring that out.
So all along she knew I was looking at rings- I'll now spare you and skip through the whole ring buying stage (good story) and go right to the engagement date Saturday, August 19, 2006.
We had planned a fun bike trip to Holmdel Park on our tandem bicycle- complete with a picnic lunch, so I thought a perfect time to do my thing. I had planned to wait a little while, but the ring was burning a hole in my pocket. Setting off on our bike trip with the ring safely tucked into a small bag in my bicycle shorts- haha- we rode the long way to Holmdel Park. When we did finally arrive I was really looking around for a good place to sit, have our lunch, and ask this girl to marry me! I picked a place right next to the big field and with these two guys facing our direction kind of staring at us, so a few minutes after sitting down I decided to move to a more private location a few trees away. We ate our lunch all the while I was a bit nervous and had so many thoughts racing through my brain about how I was going to do this. The Friday night before I had thought about it, but just decided to wing it and pray it would go smoothly- haha.
So here’s how it happened- something I frequently do is ask Julia "Have I told you yet today?" and she'll answer no, maybe, or something else cute and I'll respond with "That I'm so crazy about you" or "You are so beautiful." This day was no exception and I asked her this simple question a few times with different answers such as those above. Finally having mustered up enough courage I asked her this question one last time..."Have I told you yet today?"- with a bit of trembling in my voice… I knew would happen. She responded with "probably" and then I finally said it... "That I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!" Her reaction was priceless and one which I treasure in my heart. She had a surprised expression on her face and proceeded to say "Honey... honey.... honey!" I followed it up with another "I do love you so much," we hugged and then I looked at her and said "Will you Marry Me?" She started out with disbelief and let out a "nooooo,"- not believing what I was doing, but immediately followed it up with an "I mean... of course, YES!" Happiest day ever! We held each other in shock for a while and prayed. Thank You Jesus for Julia Godleski!

From the beginning of our relationship I was courting Julia to determine if the Lord willed me to spend the rest of my life with her.
And the Lord spoke... I caught two wedding garders out of two weddings we attended together- hahaha just kidding.
As Julia said in her engagement preface we were both seeking the Lord and His will for our lives, so my prayer was just that God would give me a love for Julia with which I couldn't do anything else but marry her and spend the rest of my life with her. So the Lord really spoke to me throughout June and July as I really sought His will through prayer and the Word and by early August there was no doubt in my mind that Julia Godleski was the woman I was to spend the rest of my life with.
She was and is everything I could have ever dreamed of in a fiance- soon to be wife!
She loves the Lord with all of her heart, soul, mind, and strength. She wishes to serve Him with her and our lives.
She is loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self controlled. Sound familiar- haha- but it's true!
She is fun, intelligent, and certainly doesn't hurt that she's the most beautiful girl I've ever seen.
She loves fun outdoor activities like riding our tandem bicycle :D and rollerblading.
She has an awesome family and dog :).
And I wouldn't change anything about her!

I decided to write this little story to clarify. Many of you after reading our engagement stories may ask yourself, "Why did they decide not to kiss until the alter?" Well the answer to this is easy, kissing is by no means wrong and all the power to those couples who can kiss and leave it at kissing, but for Julia and I we felt it was the Lord's will that we didn't kiss (on the lips- I kiss her all the time on the hand). It is the best thing for me because I know if I kissed Ms. Julia Godleski before she is Julia Wells I wouldn't want to stop kissing her- an everyone knows where that leads. The decision wasn't made because Julia and I don't want to kiss each other (if you thought that you couldn't have been further from the truth), but the decision was made as protection from sin. The beauty of this decision is now when I am able to kiss Julia I won't have to stop. God calls us to a perfect standard with purity and in an attempt to live by His will we've obstained from kissing eachother on the lips. With that being said I don't want anyone to worry- as soon as Julia and I are married we'll make up for it :P