All The Juicy Details

For those of you wanting to know the how and when of my recent engagement (Yeah!), here is the vital information.

Friday, October 14, 2005. 7:30 PM

Brad and I make our way down to Fall for Greenville - a fall festival that stretches the entire length of Main St. and showcases the restaurants and businesses of Greenville. Our first priority: food. We're both starving. The trick is to find something we both want as quickly as possible. There's just so much to choose from.

We rather quickly decide on some Japanese teriaki chicken and rice. We get rather substantial portions (usually these tents give the smallest amounts conceivable) and try to find somewhere to sit and eat. Brad says over his shoulder, "Follow me."

We head towards the Plaza Bergamo - a concrete square area on Main St. with tables and behind which is a grassy area with benches under a long, vine-covered arbor on the left side. He heads towards these benches. He asks me which one is "our" bench. You see, we sat on one on our first date and had our first kiss on the same bench. I tell him it is the third one down.

We sit on the bench and begin to eat. I can't for the life of me understand WHY we are sitting here because it's very windy and chilly and he's shivering so bad he can barely eat his rice. But, sit here we do.

After we finish, we sit for a moment and Brad says to me, "I think your phone's ringing." I listen and hear nothing. "Nope," I say.

We wait a few minutes just sitting together. (I'm still confused as to why, but I'm not complaining)

"I really think your phone is ringing," he repeats.

I check my phone. It hadn't rang, but there was a beep because a picture message was showing as having arrived.

I think this is odd as Brad is the only who sends me pictures messages, and he's sitting right beside me. I open my phone and wait for the picture file to open. The title of the picture is "Honey?"

The picture I see is Brad and Blue (his dog) together. Brad is holding an object in his hand.

Before I realize what the object in his hand is, Brad gets down on one knee in front of me and holds out an object in his hand.

I stare kinda stupidly at the object while holding my opened phone in one of my hands. As I hear the words, "Heather Von Kamp, will you marry me?" I realize what the object is. It's a ring box with a very sparkly thing in it.

I almost drop the phone and my empty hand goes to my mouth. My eyes tear up and I start to chockingly cry. It takes me about a minute before I finally gasp out, "Yes."

Brad smiles. He takes out the ring (white gold band, round diamond), puts it on my finger, and kisses me while still kneeling on the ground.

When I start breathing normally again and can think a clear thought, I review the picture on the phone better and realize that Brad had taken the picture at the very spot we were at. At the bottom Brad had typed, "Will you marry us?" but I hadn't scrolled down far enough to see it before Brad actually proposed. (He kinda jumped the gun, but it was so cute=)

After we talked for a few minutes and I called my parents (who had known for two weeks and never let on), we went back to the festival and joined some friends of ours who knew it was coming and we celebrated long into the night.

Brad said forever ago that he really wanted to surprise me with the proposal. He couldn't have picked a more surprising time. I was totally not expecting it. I had told him not to propose in a big crowd of people. Well, Fall for Greenville draws in 20,000 to Greenville, so I naturally didn't think he'd do it then. Technically, though, he kept to my demands by proposing in a secluded spot away from the 20,000 people, but close enough so we could join them and I could be super excited around them all.

That, my friends, is my proposal. Wasn't it wonderful? (Sigh)