I went to work on a Thursday and it was business as usual until I signed onto my emails and received an e-greeting card from Chris. Now, we do send each other greeting cards quite often so I thought it was simply one of our regular cards. Boy was I wrong. The card was drop dead cute with a note attached that upon reading, would change my life forever. He said that he was taking me away for a four-day long weekend getaway and that I shouldn’t worry about having to drop all my work with such short notice because he had already cleared my required time off with my manager. I peeked over at my manager and of course, he was smiling mischievously. Between walking on sunshine, wrapping up everything at work as quickly as possible, and excusing myself from a team meeting I had for school that Saturday, it was a very hectic Thursday. But alas, I got myself ready for a weekend away in Old Montreal.
We took our time heading to Montreal that Friday morning. I definitely knew that the proposal was lurking but I had no idea when or how it was going to happen so the anticipation that it could literally happen at any moment just killed me slowly. When we arrived in Montreal, Chris brought me to a nail salon to get my nails done. God knows that the nails had to be polished to complement the sparkle I’m about to wear on my finger! I got my nails done and we went back to the hotel to get ready for a nice dinner. We headed down to the lobby at 6:45pm and as we walked towards the front door, there it was, a horse carriage parked right outside, ready to take us on a tour around the old city and to our restaurant.
The city lights were dimmed, the weather was absolutely perfect, and romance was in the air. The whole time we were on the carriage, I tried to feel his pockets for a box but had no luck, so I was starting to think that the proposal was not going to happen that evening. But then a part of me still felt that it was going to. We went around the old city with a ton of storytelling from Jacques, our horse carriage driver. I’m usually very fascinated by history and love learning about different cities but I could not pay attention because, as you’d expect, I was completely preoccupied by the anticipated proposal. It’s a good thing that I had been to Montreal before.
45 minutes came and went and the carriage finally pulled over to the sidewalk in front of a dashing restaurant. I was ready to exit the carriage when my knight in shining armour says “hold on, let me help you down.” As he got off the carriage, he pulls out a Canon PowerShot camera, hands it over to Jacques, and gets down on one knee. At that point, my brain froze, my heart exploded, my stomach swarmed with butterflies, and I began to weep tears of joy. There were many spectators on the streets and all I could see were phone cameras pointing at us, while I listened hard to the speech Chris had prepared. I don’t remember much of what he said because the moment was just that overwhelming. I said ‘absolutely yes’ and the crowd cheered.
But that’s not all. The owner of the restaurant came out with two glasses of champagne and made a toast to us. He said he has been happily married for 26 years and wanted to pass that good luck to us. Then Jacques jumps in and says he, too, has been happily married for 45 years and wanted to pass that good luck to us as well. Of course, I cried some more. Chris and I went inside the restaurant to another cheering crowd, who toasted to the engagement and thanked us for a great show. What a night to remember.
And just like that, we’ve started a new chapter. We are sooo damn excited.
