I’m here to answer the question that everyone asks after an engagement: “so how did he/she do it?!”.
As a woman, I feel as though we spend a good portion of our romantic lives dreaming and talking about the “perfect proposal”. You hear how others were proposed too, your friends, your parents, that random couple online that went viral and throughout all that, you formulate this idea in your head of your very own “perfect proposal”.
I’ve had a few engagement fantasies in my lifetime. The completely ridiculous movie-like engagement that we all dream of when we’re thirteen years old, the fireworks, roses, all that nauseating stuff – you know the type.
A few years back I used to think I wanted the whole thing on camera. The entire engagement recorded, someone there ready with another camera to take actual pictures, basically a whole damn production – and then more recently, as in the last couple of years, I realized I didn’t want all that. I wanted a sweet, quiet moment with just the two of us so that we could enjoy the moment without the watchful eyes of others. And that’s exactly what I got.
Let me set the scene a little bit for you first.
We were in Europe on vacation – Venice, Italy to be specific. Pretty much everyone I knew had said before we went away “you’re getting engaged on your trip”, so much so that I started to believe it.
The one night just before the trip we were talking about how you had to insure expensive jewellery in case it got stolen, especially when traveling. Peter seemed so genuinely shocked that you had to insure your jewellery for travel that I felt 100% sure that it wasn’t going to happen. I later came to find out that that’s because he actually didn’t know you had to insure jewellery for travel and I was walking around southern Europe with a big uninsured diamond on my finger…
Anyway, so I was convinced it wasn’t going to happen. We’re in Venice, staying in a cute Airbnb with his parents (#romance), and I had found that there was a cute little island a little ways from Venice called Burano. I had been going on about wanting to go to Burano since we planned the trip, so the day after we landed, we hopped on a boat there.
It was so dang cute. I even made sure I dressed cute because I wanted the pics of me there to look cute af (extra, I know). So we’re wandering around, taking pictures, eating little snacks from local bakeries, exploring little alleyways, and we come across a street that looks pretty much exactly like the main street, but isn’t crowded with a bunch of tourists.
So there we are, taking pictures:
and we continue to walk along this street. I turned around at one point and Peter and his parents are all standing there together, their backs towards me. I remember thinking to myself wow look at them all how cute, they’re all taking in the view of the street. So I took a picture.
Little did I know, they were actually exchanging the ring from his mother’s purse, to Peter’s pocket. How naive of me.
Then suddenly, his mum and dad start walking the other way down the street – his mum had to go to the bathroom… again? We had literally spend about 20 minutes trying to find her a washroom less than an hour ago, how much dang coffee did she drink this morning that meant she needed to pee AGAIN?! But I just went with it.
Peter and I went to go and stand on the bridge down the street, and he was insistent that we take a selfie – not usual, he’s not the kinda guy that shys away from the camera, but he seemed to really want it. So there I am selfie stick in hand (because somehow after knowing me for 3 years the boy still doesn’t know my angles) and he goes “so I have a question”.
That’s it, no speech, no sappy admission of his feelings, just “I have a question”. Then he gets down on one knee, opens the ring box (upside down) and pops the question.
I don’t remember how the selfie stick got out of my hand, or actually how the ring even got on my finger. I just remember utter shock, trying not to cry my damn eyes out, and I think nodding a lot.
So the moment is pretty well over, we’ve had our smooch and exchanged a few cute little words, and suddenly we hear this voice from across the bridge, “hi I’m going to need your email, I just got all of that on camera”.
So I actually got the best of both worlds; a quiet, intimate engagement, just us two with seemingly no people around, and pictures of the entire thing.