While most girls were growing up and dreaming about every detail surrounding their future wedding, I was dreaming up dramatic plans as to how I would get out of having one.

Marriage? Not in this lifetime. Flowers? Cakes? Dresses? Rings? What a joke.

I think I really started to feel validated in my distasteful feelings toward marriage when the movie Runaway Bride came out. Julia Roberts became my hero! Now there was a girl I could relate to perfectly. She knew when enough was enough. True, she was a bit of a heartbreaker, but who could blame her? Not me.

After 23 years of attempting to brainwash myself into thinking that marriage was out of the question, something terribly unexpected happened — I fell in love! All of a sudden I found myself spending every free moment talking with, talking about and thinking about a certain young man named Scott.

This nonsense went on for several months. And the inevitable teasing began. Whenever I began to talk seriously about my “special friend,” as I nicknamed him (I couldn’t bring myself to use the term “boyfriend”), I would typically hear: “What happened to the girl who said she would never get married?” Then I would almost always mumble something like, “I know, I know … but this one’s different!”

But acknowledging my feelings was only the beginning.

The real shock started when my honey decided to fly me down to Las Vegas to visit him for the last week of Christmas break. This little adventure soon turned into a frightening experience when he suggested I go ring shopping with his mother.

Armed with a camera and enough ring magazines to start a bonfire, his mother showed me the ropes of ring shopping. For five hours! You would think that after 23 years of living on the planet Earth, I would have stepped into a jewelry store at some point. No, this experience was brand new, and it was all I could do to stop hoping that Julia Roberts would ride up on that cool horse and whisk me away.

As we returned to Rexburg at the start of the semester, I started to feel safe. But the safe feelings didn’t last long … on Jan. 7 I was surprised with a scavenger hunt which led me back to my apartment to find a white rose, a ring and a boy on his knee with a huge question to ask me.

The sparkle on my finger confirms my answer, and for the last month I can honestly say I have been thoroughly enjoying life as part of an engaged couple.

A few weekends ago, I did something I never thought I would do — I went wedding dress shopping with my best friend and roommate. Two hours was all I needed to get excited about being a bride and, by some unforeseen miracle, I settled on an amazing dress.

Richard Gere would be proud.