Thanks for the Announcement, Ledger

To our immediate friends and family, it's no secret that TLM and I are engaged to be married. We want to do the right things at the right times, and we told people like my parents the next day or as soon as we could. There is of course the traditional and more formal announcement, complete with an engagement picture, usually published in a local newspaper.

Now I'm trying to be as educated a groom-to-be as I can (I'm even reading books like "The Everything Groom Book" to prove it) and I know that this initial engagement announcement is a big deal. How we look in the picture has to be just right, the details about who we are and what we do should be honest and modest, and the timing of when it gets printed is important...a rule of thumb is 3 to 4 months before the wedding.

(Before I continue...no, we haven't set a date yet. I can tell you it will be a lot more than 3 or 4 months away.)

In step the Red Sox. They win the World Series, and TLM and I go out the next day to buy commemorative shirts and hats, remembering what a challenge they were to find in 2004. As we're shuffling around our local Sports Authority, apparel in hand, a soft-spoken man with glasses stops us, mumbles something as he takes out a notepad, and starts asking me questions. I thought he worked for the store and was worried we were going to make off with the goods (why that was my first reaction is telling...), so I gladly supplied him some answers with a smile. He asked my name, where I lived, why I was there, and then he asked the same of TLM.


It was after the fourth or fifth question that I realized he may not be affiliated with the store at all, and asked him if he was an employee there. It turns out he was a reporter from the Patriot Ledger, and was there to cover...you guessed it...people buying Red Sox World Series stuff. We even had some photos taken of us holding up our new shirts.

In retrospect I don't even remember mentioning that TLM was my fiancée (though I am not surprised seeing as how proud I am of the fact), though surely enough that fact was made clear in the next day's paper as TLM and I were the first people quoted and featured in an article about the scene at the store.

So the question is: does this count as an engagement announcement, albeit an indirect one?

TLM says no, and so do I...I mean, they didn't even print our picture.