Weddingbee Blog

I’ve just realised that I haven’t talked about the proposal yet!

Moments after the engagement!

We’d been together for five years but had never really been on a vacation together.

We’d never been on a plane together! He’s been to my parents’ house a couple of times, but we flew out there separately. In 2010, we decided that this was the year. We found the one week in the whole entire year that we had off at the same time. Yes, just the one week, in a year. Theatre is funny like that.

We decided to wait until close to the date to see what seat sales came up, and that would decide where we’d go! We ended up booking five days and four nights in San Francisco.

The day after we arrived, we decided to explore Golden Gate Park. We went to many of the attractions, including the Japanese tea gardens, where Cinnamon Buns was being very affectionate, I thought. The tea gardens were quite crowded.

Cinnamon Buns in the Japanese Tea Gardens

Then he said he’d seen this cool lake and island on a map somewhere, and we should totally go there. I hadn’t really researched the park, so I said sure! We walked to Stowe Lake, and P was adamant that we climb up the hill in the middle of the lake, called Strawberry Hill. Aparently there was a pond at the top. The pond looked more like a reservoir, and he seemed overly disappointed at this.

MINUTES before proposing! I’m so glad I took this photo.

We started heading back down a path near a waterfall, which was very pretty. We stopped to cuddle on one of the little outlooks. He told me that I was a good person for “putting up with him.” I told him that I wanted to be with him, so it wasn’t “putting up with.” He asked if I’d put up with him for a long time, and when I looked at him, he was holding a ring! I nodded and burst into tears.

No, he didn’t get down on one knee, and I’m fine with that because he had an arm around my shoulder the whole time.

“Our” waterfall

After that, we went to the California Academy of Sciences in the park—we walked through a rainforest thingy, saw an albino alligator, and watched an IMAX movie about space, but I don’t remember too much of any of that stuff! Then we decided to go to a fancy restaurant we’d heard about, called The Cliff House. I think we got there around five or so. There weren’t many other people in the dining room, so we got a table by the giant windows looking out at the ocean. It was also “50% off bottles of wine” night! Could it have been more perfect? So we got a bottle of wine to go with our meal to celebrate. It’s worth noting that we’d already booked a wine tour of Napa and Sonoma for the next day. Winos.

The view from our table

As we were on vacation, we decided not to tell anyone until we got back home. We didn’t want our first vacation ever to be full of phone calls and e-mails, even if it was about something happy. We just wanted to take the time for us, and I am so happy we did.

He’d been terrified about how to get the ring to San Francisco. He knew (rightly) that if it was in the suitcase I’d find it because I’d be the one to unpack. He stowed it in his wallet and just hoped that security wouldn’t search him, or at least not while I was nearby.

I asked where he’d got the ring, and he said, “Remember that mystery package that arrived back in March that I wouldn’t let you see?” He proposed in June! Apparently I have a bad memory. In my defense, the mystery package did arrive a week before my birthday, so I assumed it was a present. When he told me this, though, I thought back to my birthday presents and realised that nothing that he gave me was mail order.

I guess I’m a little slow sometimes.

Did you take any time to wallow in being engaged before telling anyone?