Bling-Bling Photos

It was great to be a part of the crowd when the newly-engaged couple arrived in Royal Oak. Our thanks to Mark for organizing the surprise party and for inviting us. It was fun knowing the news a couple of weeks  before Sara, though it was sometimes nerve wracking for fear of letting the news slip. Judy, Jack, Ken, Peg, Sue, Kim, Maeve and I were there, and Larry arrived shortly before Mark and Sara (prompting false alarms that the happy couple had arrived). 

We are all looking forward to the wedding. With so much time to plan,  I hope Mark and Sara can come up with something to top this. Regardless of how much planning time they have, I'm still bringing my videocamera - just in case.

Bling-bling!

Pre-engagement:Mark decided that we need to have a “date night” every week so for the past few weeks we’ve been dining out around Metro Detroit, having picnics and what not. I was starting to think to myself, “self, if we go to all these places and do all these cute things where will Mark have left to propose!?”

Friday 4/3:Earlier in the week Mark insisted we do our date night on Friday, I was excited and said I wanted him to keep the restaurant a surprise. That lasted 4 days--on Friday he broke down and decided to tell me where we were going. This is an integral part of the story, Mark is NOT (to my prior knowledge) that great at keeping things a surprise/secret. In fact, for Christmas he went online and pulled up a picture of the bracelet he bought me to gauge whether I liked it. The exact bracelet!

OK, back to the story: We drove downtown to Coach Insignia, a restaurant on top of the Renaissance Center with sweeping views of Lake St Clair, Windsor and, of course, Detroit (http://www.mattprenticerg.com/urc/coach.asp). We had some amazing food, lots of laughs and a great view of the water. As we were talking the owner/partner/manager/someone with clout, stopped at the table to pour our wine (this was not something Mark had planned) and since the two of us are so charming and good-looking the mystery man said he wanted to give us, “dessert on the house.” We quickly agreed and marveled at how cool this was. Since our waiter had mentioned before that there were some really neat private booths up in the bar area Mark thought this would be a good place to get our dessert. While I was in the powder room Mark clued in the waiter and made sure we had a booth available to us after dinner.I kept telling Mark we could just have dessert at the table but he was insistent we go up to bar area. The waiter led us back to this amazing, semi-enclosed suede booth; we ordered dessert and sat chatting, after a few minutes Mark asked me if I really thought I’d like to spend the rest of my life with him. Since I almost always fail to keep my sarcasm inside and literally had NO IDEA this was a set-up to the proposal I mockingly took a dramatic sigh and said, “I meannnnnnnnn, I guess so.” One look at his face and I back peddled and said I sure did and wasn’t sure why he would even ask such a thing. He said he was just checking and then said, “Really? You’re sure? You’d be the ‘Ninja Missionary’s’ wife?” (Side note: when Mark was a youngster he wanted to grow up and go around from church to church doing karate and other Ninja things while telling Bible stories to the people). I replied that I was already the Ninja Missionary’s girlfriend and that was working out. Next thing I know he’s down on one knee with a ring box. I was so taken aback that I am unable to retell anything he said from this point on except, “will you marry me?” to which I replied through tears, “yes of course!” Some hugging and ring placement later our dessert showed up and we were too excited to eat it! I had to cram a few bites of the chocolate caramel deliciousness in and he shoveled in some cheesecake before we left in a giddy mood.

Prior to dinner Mark had casually mentioned that his friend Vanessa called to see if we would meet her out at Good Night Gracie’s that night and since she is so radical I agreed right away. We figured rather than call with the news we’d show up and have a great story to tell her. Then, I thought how perfect it was my friends Courtney and Ami were out in Royal Oak too and preceded to try to trick them into joining us there so I could share in person. They texted that they were already back on the East Side. I said, “you should REALLY turnaround,” they declined. I said, no really. They declined, again. I called my parents, they didn’t answer. I was starting to wonder if I’d be able to find ANYONE to share the story with that night. Since we had now arrived and were walking up to the bar Mark said he wanted to cut through D’Amatos to use the restroom. I said, “Gracie’s is only 5 more feet,” (you’d think by now I’d be catching on, I wasn’t). Reluctantly I went into D’Amatos (www.damatos.com) only to be blinded by camera flashes and then saw glimpses of Mark’s family, my great friends and then the ultimate shock: my parents, brother and aunts & uncles were all there!

It was a beautiful, celebratory evening and I feel so lucky to have Mark and am excited to not only join his family but to have him a permanent part of mine!