Bride-to-be Blogger Kathleen: The Proposal Story

Kathleen and Christian at Longwood Gardens, moments after getting engaged.

Tuesday morning, December 21st, 2010:

ME: “Where have you been? I have some news for you!”

CO-WORKER: “Oh my god … You’re pregnant?”

ME: “Uh … No, but thanks for noticing the weight gain. I’m just engaged.”

I thought that every once in a while, I would provide you with some direct quotes from my life experiences. This little gem is compliments of a co-worker who had been out of the office my first day back at work after getting engaged. She had missed out on all the lady squawking the day before, so I thought the excitement would end up continuing for one more day: Epic Engagement News Fail.

Moving on to the gushy stuff — here is our ever-so romantical engagement story:

It was a Saturday (December 18th, to be exact), and we had made plans earlier in the week to give ourselves a date day filled with old school winter fun. How it was planned: Christian had known for a while that I had always wanted to go to Longwood Gardens at Christmas time, so after a little bit of whining and feet stomping, he purchased the tickets. The plan was that we would start off the day by breaking our hips ice skating in the afternoon, follow it up with freezing our limbs off at Longwood Gardens at dusk, and then try to repair the frost bite over a nice candle-lit dinner. Magical.

How the day actually went down: Ice skated around in a circle for about 20 minutes, got bored, and decided we should pay a visit to our friends who had just had a baby boy. They weren’t home yet, so we decided to kill some time at Jake’s, our old college stomping ground where they have $5 dollar pitchers and enough smoke to make you feel like you were licking the bottom of an ashtray for about six hours. Forty-five minutes later, we were at our friend’s house. Things were fine — until I realized they have cats. I don’t really know how many they have, but I felt like they had just a few short of 400. After about an hour of being in the house, my eyes had started tearing uncontrollably and swelling and itching like mad —  time to hit the road! On our way to Longwood Gardens, my eyes would not stop leaking. I looked as if we had been in an hour-long sob fest over me dragging him to Longwood Gardens. Walking around in the fresh air helped the allergy attack — but did you know they have indoor displays with deadly pollen-saturated flowers? “I’M HAVING A GREAT TIME,” I screamed through my two-second sneeze break, with tears rolling down my face and some sort of liquid running out of my nose.

We eventually went back outside, and Christian kept saying he wanted to take pictures down by some silly tree made out of green Christmas lights. The walkway to get there was blocked off, so he wanted to find another way to get there. He took me by the hand, and off we went to find the infamous green tree. I noticed that his hand was unusually clammy, so I asked him what his deal was. He mumbled out something that sounded like “ramble rumble bee bop … ice skating.” (Whatever, clammy-handed weirdo.)  I noticed a gate blocking another road, but you could easily walk around it. So, we went down to the green tree and he told me to stand in front of it so he could take a picture. After protesting for a few minutes, I agreed to stand in front of the dang tree. Christian begins to kneel down … and I politely say to him, “Why in the h-e-double hockey sticks would you kneel down to take this picture? It’s a horrible angle! You’ll give me a double chin!” (Insert foot in mouth.) He opened a little box that contained a little light that shone over a ring, and asked if I would marry him, “ya big dummy.” Obviously, I said yes, and with that, we went on to dinner … where I almost threw up … from all the excitement.

Did your proposal end up not going exactly the way your fiancé planned it? What took it off course? Any disaster stories out there? We want to hear your stories, too!

Getting married? Start and end your wedding planning journey with Philadelphia Weddings' guide to the best wedding vendors in the city.