Rings and Wonderful Things

I confess myself still overwhelmed. His proposal was a surprise. Even though I knew we were going in that direction, our official foreverness was always in the vaguely distant future, but now it is in the realm of now. I've been engaged for two weeks, and it still hits me as a new thing each morning I wake up. I tell Cameron that he's tricked me into saying yes, because the general concept of marriage always freaked me out, but marriage to Cameron? Why, yes, please! A no brainer. I guess that's a sign I've found the right one.

To quote from e.e. cummings, "It is so quite a new thing." A wonderful new thing. The only thing that could make my morning realization of my happiness any better is if I were waking up next to him.

The real thing I am adjusting to (and battling out) is the super girly element. Rings! Dresses! Colors! Flowers! Little lacy doilies and matching fabric chair covers! Not to mention the squeals of delight from all my girlfriends (I love you!). I was never the girl who had her wedding planned from age five. I decided I should find the right groom first, and then everything else would just fall into place (a wedding is just an expensive party, after all: what really matters is the guy you leave the party with!). Now that I have My Cameron, I guess I better start deciding if I like forest green or royal blue better.

The wedding will likely be anywhere from 1-3 years in the future, do to my volatile graduate school plans (I'm searching for my calling...), which unfortunately, until I abandon academia, have me rooted in Madison. Nevertheless, although we won't have a date for a while, there's no harm in forming ideas and opinions about the girly things. Because I make decisions like an 80 year-old lady (i.e. I waffle back and forth and after an hour of deep deliberation I've chosen what to have for dinner), and because I can't be 100% girly as much as wedding planning demands, I will likely share links, pictures, options, and thoughts here, in part to get it out of my system, in part simply to share, in part to solicit opinions. Feel free to tell me when something is totally hideous.

Thus, without further ado, I present: our final five engagement ring choices:






Note: I absolutely love my solitaire peridot "place holder." Traditional, yet non-traditional. If Cameron hadn't insisted, and if our engagement weren't a long one, we may not be getting another. Yet he is eager to indulge me.

I will be in town this weekend to see my lovely fiance, but while I'm there, I'll be able to see all five of these lovely rings in person (rather than in a magazine). As you can see from the pictures, I'm interested in something unusual. And we're not going with diamonds. Ideally we want a green stone that matches the fire in his eyes (my idea, but not an easy task!). If no green stone works, we'll go with a moissanite or white sapphire.

But really "engagement ring shopping" is just a pretense for me to see him sooner than we normally would. I want to share this euphoric first-few-weeks period together as much as possible. If it weren't for damned Spinoza and Hobbes and the French Revolution (a.k.a. my studies) getting in the way...How can I study when I'm experiencing my own revolution!

Right now I'm off to bed; I look forward to waking up tomorrow, to remembering again the wonderful thing that has past, my present happiness, and the greatest happiness to come.

A Proposal for the Ages

03/26/2009

A proposal for the ages
Couple adds a little extra drama to Baker Shake's 'The Tempest'

BY MIKE WILLIAMS
Rice News staff


J. Cameron Cooper may have felt curs'd in his perpetual wooing of the Lady Haley, but all's well now.

Cooper, a Rice alumnus and an actor in Baker College's production of "The Tempest," won the heart of his intended, Haley Richardson, when he proposed at the conclusion of the penultimate rehearsal of the play.





J. Cameron Cooper '02 proposed to Haley Richardson '08 at the end of the rehearsal for Baker Shakespeare's "The Tempest."


That was on St. Patrick's Day, the one-year anniversary of their relationship, and it was not the first time Cooper had asked Richardson to marry him. The first time, she said "No." And the second, and the third …

"We were in Baker Shakespeare's 'Much Ado About Nothing' a few years ago," recalled Cooper '02, who leads the company as Prospero in the current Baker production, which concludes March 26-28. "She was Beatrice, the lead, and I was Don Pedro, the prince. Everyone in the play is trying to get Benedick and Beatrice to marry, but she's not terribly interested. At one point, Don Pedro makes a different suggestion: 'Lady, will you have me?'

"So I proposed to her every night, on stage, and she turned me down."

"It was always heartbreaking, because we decided to play the proposal very seriously," said Richardson '08, who is studying for her master's in history at the University of Wisconsin. "I've seen productions of 'Much Ado' where the proposal is a joke, but we decided to make it an earnest moment in the show. It was a very hard scene to do."

The real proposal took the young woman quite by surprise.

"I had no clue," she said. "Cameron took the day off from work to celebrate our anniversary. I was there for spring break, and he acted completely normally. I didn't expect anything until the show ended and he called me up on stage."

Few knew what the groom-to-be had planned. "The woman at the ring shop, she knew," said Cooper, who works as systems architect at Connexions, Rice's online repository for educational materials. "I had conspired with our light operator to make sure not to leave us in the dark at the end of the show. And I told a friend in the cast I would be making a special announcement, gave him my camera and said, 'Please photograph this.'" Cooper, with the ring in his costume pocket, called Richardson's parents during a break in Act II to ask for their blessing.

"Cameron is a very romantic person, so I thought he was making an announcement about our anniversary," said Richardson. "He started talking about 'Much Ado,' and that's when it dawned on me where he was going with this. I'm glad I finally got to answer with my own words, instead of Shakespeare's."

The couple will maintain their long-distance relationship with frequent visits over the next year or so while Richardson finishes her master's degree, and possibly a doctorate. Though Richardson is a Dallas native, when they set a date, the wedding will probably be in Houston. "That's where all of our friends are," she said.

They hope to continue acting together, though Richardson's "got the directing bug," said Cooper, who traveled to Wisconsin recently to see her as a nun in "The Sound of Music." Cooper found himself waiting tables so he could view the sold-out dinner theater show.

"Theater is going to be a lifelong hobby," she said. "We hope to someday settle down with a company where we can continue our passion for theater."

Congratulations Haley and Cameron

Engaged March 17, 2009!!