“Oh my goodness!” was the only thing I could get out. I was so taken aback, and so happy, but so confused.
“Chip,” I said, kind of giggling and giddy at the whole thing. “Babe, why are we doing this in a hallway?”
Chip got a funny smile on his face, a smile I’d never seen before, and he said, “Well, knock on the door.” We were standing beside an unmarked door in that unmarked hallway, and I could not figure out for the life of me what he was up to. I shook my head and went ahead and knocked—and the door opened.
Behind it stood a man who looked like Geppetto from Pinocchio, wearing a leather apron and a magnifying visor on his head.
“Welcome to my jewelry shop,” the man said. “You’re here to design your ring.”
I just about melted. The shopping center was closed, so we had the whole store to ourselves. The jeweler was a man named Billy Holder, who had gone to high school with Chip’s dad, and they’d worked this whole thing out in advance. The fact that the selection of the ring tied back to Chip’s roots and family history made it all the more special for me.
I couldn’t get over the fact that Chip had arranged all of this just for me. When did he have the time? How did he keep it all a secret? I wondered. I basically got the chance to sit and sift through Billy’s entire inventory of diamonds and settings and pick my engagement ring right there on the spot.
I gave her the pick of any eighty-dollar diamond she wanted.
He’s kidding. His budget was actually quite a bit more than eighty dollars. We joked about that, though, because my dad had only had eighty dollars to spend on my mom’s engagement ring, and she’d loved it anyway. As soon as they could afford it, she upgraded. But I was so happy, I think I would have been happy with an eighty-dollar ring if that was all Chip could afford.
Sure, if you were the one to pick it out! Even back then, I was smart enough to know you were real opinionated. If I’d gone and picked out the ring myself, I could literally have seen you going, “Hey, I really do love you, and you and me are gonna work out fine, but there’s no way that’s the ring I’m gonna wear.”
Oh, and just to clarify about my answer to Chip—at some point after saying, “Oh my goodness,” I did say yes.
Chip said his mom had loaned him some money, so I was able to get something really special. We didn’t have tens of thousands of dollars to spend, and thankfully we weren’t buying diamonds in Beverly Hills. I was able to pick out a nice round diamond and a beautiful, antique-looking platinum setting.
I had a blast sitting there with Billy, designing the perfect ring. Chip just sat there, patiently observing every second of it. After we finished designing, Billy said he would need some time to work on the ring, so he gave me a substitute to wear for the time being, just for fun. It was a great big, gaudy fake diamond that he’d put together so I would have something to show off to my friends and family.
“Your parents are gonna go crazy wondering how much money you spent on this!” Billy said to Chip with a laugh.
There was no private concert that night, but Chip did have more in store for me. From Billy’s shop we drove over to this cute little Archer City hotel for dinner. My parents, my little sister, Chip’s parents, and his sister were all there waiting to celebrate our engagement with us.
There were all sorts of hugs and tears of joy that made that night the most perfect night ever, and of course they were all taken aback by the size of my “diamond.” It’s funny to me that, even way back then, they all seemed to realize that a flashy ring just wasn’t my style. They expected to see me wearing something a little subtler, a little smaller, a little more classic maybe. But we strung them along for a good long while, and we all had a good laugh when Chip finally revealed that the ring was fake.
Twelve years later, we had the opportunity to invite Billy Holder out to the farm for our anniversary party. Chip surprised me that night with a twelve-year anniversary strand of pearls that Billy hand-delivered to me, and we had the cameras there to capture the whole moment. It aired as part of our third season. But what the cameras didn’t show was the moment when we went back to the farm and found Billy sitting on my front porch holding a selection of diamonds on a black velvet tray. “Chip wants you to upgrade,” he said to me.
“My engagement ring?” I said.
“Yes! He knows you love the setting, but he wants you to be able to pick out a better diamond like your mom did.”
That first diamond was beautiful, but it was simple in nature. It was all we could afford back then, but at this point I wanted to do something nicer. Something bigger. So I’d told Billy to bring some options so we could replace it with something else. I thought of it as an investment of sorts, and I wanted it to be perfect.
So Billy showed me all of these beautiful diamonds and told me I could have my pick. That’s supposed to be every girl’s dream, right? But I looked him in the eye, and I said, “I’m sorry, but no. This is the original diamond I picked, and it’s perfect just the way it is.”
It wasn’t a “perfect” diamond, but it was perfect for me. I felt bad that Billy wasn’t going to make the big sale he was hoping for that day, but I don’t ever want to replace that diamond or that ring. To me, my ring is part of our story.
If I looked down at my hand and saw a more expensive diamond in that setting, it somehow wouldn’t fit. I would know that we couldn’t have afforded that diamond back when we first got engaged. The story wouldn’t add up.
But this ring, with this diamond, the one I wear every day—this ring fits. When I look at it, I remember picking out that very diamond on the night of our engagement and looking at it through the little magnifier. I think about the look on Chip’s face when he looked up at me in that hallway. And inevitably, I can’t stop myself from thinking of where it led us six months later: our wedding.
THREE
SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW
Sometimes I think, If I were to do my wedding today, I would do things differently. With everything I’ve learned, the places I’ve gone, the design ideas I’ve seen, I would want to include all sorts of details that I never could have even imagined back then.
But then I flip open our wedding album and see the smiling faces of the people we love all gathered in that place where we chose to celebrate our special day together, and just as with my engagement ring, any desire for something different or fancier melts away. Our wedding was perfect just the way it was. Everything we cared about was exactly the way we wanted. When I look back, I realize I wouldn’t change a single thing.
Chip and I got married here in Waco on May 31, 2003, at the Earle Harrison House, a historic mansion that looks an awful lot like the place where we had our first date—a stately manor with grand pillars and a gorgeous garden. We actually chose the location primarily because of its parklike setting. We wanted an outdoor wedding, and the gardens there were filled with roses.
The place was completely covered in flowers climbing high on grand arbors that our guests would walk under. The setting was so beautiful just the way it was. I didn’t need much of a budget for flowers. I loved magnolias even back then, before the shop came along, so we cut individual magnolia leaves for our guests to use as fans.