Clint Bowyer popped the question...now what?

Clint Bowyer is marrying his girlfriend of five years, Lorra Podsiadlo, but he's easing into, or at least wants to ease into it.

Asked about his marital plans during Friday night€™'s NASCAR Sprint Cup banquet, Bowyer broke into laughter. "What a big...What the hell?" said Bowyer. "I was like, 'What have I done?'"

Bowyer was just getting warmed up.

"It gets real," he said. "And the funniest thing is, you know, you don't notice it, you don't know what you've done and the magnitude of the situation until you get back to your room and you see a bridesmaid's magazine on the bed and I was like, 'Oh, God. This is real.'"

Then, to Bowyer's horror, he learned people actually expected the couple to set a date for their wedding.

"The other thing I didn'€™t understand when you propose to somebody is you have to have a date," said Bowyer. "Because that'€™s your question. 'Oh, congratulations.' You congratulate and then you ask when you're getting married. And I'm like, 'Wait a minute.' That was a big step for me. Step 2 is a bigger step."

And then, Bowyer summed up his situation thusly: "Nonetheless, man, like I said up there, I bought the ticket, I'm going to take the ride."