For the better part of our relationship, Big Spoon and I have been talking about a future together. Seven months have gone by and I can say now without doubt that we have experienced a whirlwind romance. We had only been dating two weeks before we decided to date exclusively; we had only been dating three months when we booked our trip to New York City and began looking at engagement rings. We were a six-month-old couple when we became engaged.
From the outside, everything seems to have happened fast, but to us ... well, let's just say that we had very few doubts that we had met our match. I can't remember exactly when we began talking about being married and I can barely remember a time in which I wasn't thinking that this man would become my future.
Our engagement began with a "misunderstanding." A few weeks before I met Big Spoon, the Nashville Opera performed Mozart's Don Giovanni. I missed it for a family function and I posted this disappointment online. When Big Spoon read this, he began to form a plan in which he fulfilled my dream of seeing a Mozart opera. What he didn't know at the time is that it wasn't this particular opera I longed to see, but any Mozart opera. In the end, its all very cute and incredibly sweet: he booked a trip around the Metropolitan Opera's opening of Don Giovanni. We spent five nights in New York City (four of which he carried my ring in his pocket).
On Monday, April 13, after days of rain in NYC, we finally made it to Central Park. By this point in the trip, I was off my guard and assumed Big Spoon was waiting for the opera to propose. We had just visited the American Museum of Natural History, and before going back to the hotel to ready ourselves for the opera, we took a stroll through Central Park.
It was a very short stroll. Just down the path and around the bend, there is a lovely spot where weeping willows overlook the water and one can see the skyline far off in the distance. Here, we stopped to take a picture. Big Spoon stopped a couple walking and asked them to take it for us. I went to stand by the fence and smile, but when I looked over, Big Spoon had taken a knee. He actually prefaced that move, but once I figured out what was happening, whatever he said was lost to my memory.
Sort and sweet, he asked me to marry him. And of course, I said yes. It was perfect.
The poor lady he handed the camera to was in more shock than I was and unfortunately, did not record the entire proposal as Big Spoon had intended, but that's okay. I waited until the couple wished us well and left, then I asked Big Spoon to put my ring on for me.
My ring is better than I had imagined; a beautiful solitaire in a white gold, four-pronged, cathedral setting and flat band. It even has bevel set diamonds on the front and back sides.
The opera was long but thrilling. My toe bled on the way back to the hotel. I gave away those shoes ... and we have a fairy-tale engagement story.
