The proposal

The short story of how the Boy proposed is that, yes it was as awesome as the rollercoaster proposal above. And a proposal that awesome, well it deserves a blog post.
Here’s the long story. We’d both talked about getting married many times and we’d been together coming up for seven years, so to say the proposal was a suprise would be a lie. However, despite the fact I had an inkling he might propose, he managed to throughly blind side and amaze me.
The day before
The Boy proposed during what I like to call the dead zone. The period between Christmas and New Year where you aren’t back at work but you’re starting to get antsy from all the drinking and stuffing your face. Most of our time had been spent catching up with friends and family over the holidays. So we really wanted to spend some time relaxing together, just the two of us. We  planned to go for a walk on the Wednesday and see my family the next day. But my mum called, they were busy on the Thursday, could we meet on the Wednesday instead? I asked him. ‘That’s fine,’ he said through gritted teeth. At the time I wondered why he was getting so upset.
So that Wednesday, his car broke and he had to get it fixed, as we were walking up to mum and dad’s house he had a work emergency so I went ahead.  I had no idea that on top of getting his car fixed and dealing with work he was actually doing top secret preparation for the proposal with the help of his Dad.
Later that evening, he had to pick his car up from the garage and he really wanted to wake my dad who was napping to ask for lift. As anybody knows waking Daddy January during his a) nap b) when he has bronchistis c) to ask for a lift; is the kind of mistake you only make once. Capishe?
So I convinced a rather worried looking Boy to get a lift with my sister into town. Apparently when he told her he was going to propose, she slammed on the breaks and started screaming. Despite the fact that he had told Lauren to keep it a secret she spent the rest of the evening winking at him in a subtle way. Thankfully I didn’t noticed. Later that night my Dad texted the Boy saying he was very excited and he had put champagne on ice if we wanted to pop round afterwards. Luckily, although I had been playing on his phone earlier I was out of the room so he deleted the text message.
They are either the worst spies or they are playing an intricate double bluff game 🙂 You decide.
The proposal
I woke Thursday morning, feeling like crap. I was coming down with the flu and all I wanted to do was snuggle in bed. But I’d promised I’d go geocaching with the Boy. Geocaching is like a modern day scavenger hunt, where with the help of GPS coordinates you follow clues left by strangers to find hidden caches. Mostly these caches just contain logs (a list of dates and names) but some have toys or coordinates to other hidden caches. He wanted to go geocaching at Waverley Abbey, the ruins of a Cisterian abbey (and my favourite place).

I’ve been going to Waverley Abbey since I was a child. The first time he came to stay in Farnham, I took him there and we’ve been many times since. We’d talked about getting married there, but the logistics and the great British summer would have made it very difficult. Knowing how much I loved it, he had chosen it as where he wanted to propose.
But that morning, I didn’t fancy going to the Abbey, which was weird as I always wanted to go there. I tried to persuade him to change the location not realising that he had spent hours the night before hiding caches in the dark, tripping over mud and sheep. But he was insistent, so a little suspiciously I agreed.
However, when we got to the carpark and I saw the (faked) webpages, I felt really disappointed. We were actually going geocaching.

Looks pretty real, huh? What I didn’t notice at the time was that the username was the Roos which sounds like the ruse. Very cunning boyfriend.
It took ages to find the first geocache hidden near a pillbox. Afterwards, I thought it was great acting on my beloved part, but as it had been so dark he couldn’t remember where he had hidden it. Inside he had even using different handwriting and pens faked a log with other people’s name. Although he did turn white when I remarked the handwriting was similar to his.

The second geocache we ‘found’ by the bridge.

The third geocache was inside a ruined wall next to an old yew tree.

He climbed the wall reached inside a hole and pulled out the film canister. Opening it, he shook something out into his hand (a ring) and then handed the cannister to me. As I unfurled the roll of paper, he got down on one knee. On the paper was written the words ‘Will you marry me?’

I realised halfway through what it was. I started shaking and crying and dropped everying I was holding on the floor. He held up the ring and made a very heartfelt speech of which I remembered not a word because I was crying so hard. I hugged, we kissed, he slid the placeholder ring on my finger, I said YES!
As we walked back to the car, he told me the story of how he managed to keep it a secret. I was amazed. We saw my family, we hugged, we drank champagne, we cried. We saw his family, we hugged, we drank champagne, we cried.
All I could think for the rest of the day was how lucky I was to have met somebody so thoughtful. It was the perfect proposal for me.
ETA, 24/05/11: This proposal in a photobooth is so cute (see below). I love her smile in the third picture. And as for the guy, well timed my friend. Very well timed.

ETA, 26/05/11: via Rock n Roll Bride this video proposal was so sweet. When video his girlfriends return from Paris this guy decided he was going to proposal to her.  He spent the next six months planning this video proposal and filming the footage. I cried, a lot.
ETA, 03/06/11: via the Weddingnator this stop motion mural proposal complete with Scrabble tiles (my little geek heart is singing) must have taken ages. I love this!