The Proposal

So, I’m getting married. Eeek!

I knew within the first 2 weeks of meeting my guy he was the one and I have been waiting about 4 and a half years till he finally popped the question.  It felt like such a long time but still so soon as well. I don’t know how long honey moon periods are supposed to last in relationships but I feel like we have been in ours since day one. We very rarely argue; we laugh every day; we tell each other we love each other every day; we fish out compliments left right and centre; we hold hands when we walk and we always look deeply in each other’s eyes when we are looking at one another. Yes we are most likely one of those annoying couples you see on the bus who are giggling secretly away at something and make you feel uncomfortable. We have more inside jokes than Chuck Norris. I cannot apologise. I am truly, madly, deeply in love and it is amazing.  I have had the biggest blessing of my life by meeting this man; he is one of those people that walk into your life and makes everything seem better and suddenly more interesting, just because he is there with you.

He did make me wait about 4 and half years, but boy did he make our proposal story an amazing fairy-tale one.  

I have to point out, that the beginning of our fairy-tale moment did not start off too well. We were laughing about the whole situation the following day but at the time, the beginning of our trip did not go too well at all, we were both nearly in tears! I did really feel bad for my fiance Mark...

But despite it all...

It was one of the most romantic moments of my life and I tell you what, it was the first time I was ever completely shocked to my core when he asked me to marry him. I always thought as a woman you would have a female intuition about when they were going to ask you, mine had clearly gone to sleep! 

My birthday was in April, he told me for my birthday that he was taking me to Paris for a couple of days before we travelled to Northern Ireland (where his family lives and where he is from), I was completely over the moon. It was such an amazing surprise! I have always said to him that I found Paris to be one of the most romantic cities in the world, I had visited it when I was seventeen with my parents and had fell in love with it.

We arrived in Paris at about 11.30pm, our flight was delayed so we arrived much later than we had anticipated so looking at the time, and not fancying walking around a foreign country that late at night with suitcases and money in our wallets we decided it did not seem as appealing as hopping in one of the taxis that were luring you in at the door of the airport.  We opted for a taxi to the hotel. It is quite hard trying to speak French when you have had very little sleep but somehow we managed to explain where we were going by just basically doing the English thing of pointing to a map and saying “Ici si vous plais”. 

We arrived at the hotel at about 12:15am only to find that our room had been double booked. WTF? We kept our cool and gave the man opportunity to try and find a hotel room, in Paris, on Easter Weekend, at now 12:30am. The poor man, give him his due, spent about 45minutes ringing around various hotels in the area, the longer the time went on the more we were willing to compromise on things due to sheer tiredness. "Don’t worry if it doesn’t have a bathroom with it", "don’t worry if it’s a single bed". I don’t even remember what time it was because at this point I was a walking zombie, we both were.  It was only because the man made a noise that made me jump out of my skin to realise that he had found us a room, finally. He said it was around the corner from this hotel and was easy to find, it had no bathroom, no problem, we both just wanted to sleep. So, the tourists wanting to avoid walking around a foreign town at night with their suitcases and wallets did not last long. The worst thing about this already quite scary circumstance is that our suitcases were attracting all sorts of attention because of their loud wheels on the very cobbly pavements.   

We reached our ‘temporary’ hotel which was thankfully quite near. I’m not being rude to the owner or the hotel, for it did do the job, sort of. But. Oh my goodness. When we walked through the door I knew we were in for bad times. I am in no way shape or form a snob, I can and have been able to ‘rough’ it, but this place was a hell hole. And that is putting it nicely.  

There was a manky pram in the porch way, an either dark or really dirty carpet, the most unsafe set of stairs I have ever seen and a woman who looked like borat’s grandmother there to greet us. I don’t know if it was her or the unsafe stairs that put me on edge as we walked up the stairs to our room. The hallway she led us through I think a very obese person would actually struggle to walk through. It was claustrophobic for me as a size 8 and it stank of damp! Me and my partner looked at each other. If this was this bad, what on earth is our room going to be like? We walked in and were both very nearly in tears. The room was an absolute health hazard. 

There were cables loosely hanging from the ceiling that attached to a portable TV (which didn’t work by the way in case you were wondering) which was balanced on the most unstable looking table ever. 

There was a towel on the floor covering god knows what, we weren’t brave enough to look under it, for a start, because the towel had brown splodges and neither of us wanted to touch it for obvious reasons. 

The sink was actually sellotaped together with bright orange tape. 

The room stank of damp even more so. There was like pink goo coming out from beneath the sink. 

I think you get the idea. It was bad times.  We got to sleep only to be awakened at the crack of dawn to builders drilling outside our window, we were on the first floor and they were on scaffolding right outside our window.  It was a welcome wake up call though, we wanted out. We went to our other hotel and from there things became much better! Much, much better!

So on to the proposal! (And the most perfect/amazing night of my life!).

It was on the 4^th April 2012 that he officially popped the question.  We had a brilliant day and had seen most of the biggest monuments in Paris by this point; we had a delicious meal right next to the river that we had previously walked along in the daylight. 

You could see the Eiffel tower in the distance and he had suggested that we ate a nice meal near the same spot so we could see it properly in the night time after the meal, all lit up.  A man walked past our table selling roses and Mark bought me one. 

After our delicious meal, posing with the rose he bought me :)

The day from start to finish couldn’t have gone more perfect. We paid for our meal and then walked over to the same spot by the river. The Eiffel tower is absolutely stunning at night, I was mesmerised.  Mark took this opportunity, while I was fixated on it sparkling, to ask me to turn around, I did and he was on one knee holding a beautiful silver diamond ring in his hand. He said something along the lines of “these past four and a half years have been the best years of my life and its all because of you, I love you, will you marry me?”. 

I say along the lines of because in all honesty I was in that much shock I couldn’t hear anything it was like time stood still! I only heard will you marry me at which I blurted yes! It was so romantic and even more special was that just at that moment we looked over at the Eiffel tower and it started to sparkle. There were some kind of illuminations going on throughout Paris at the time were all of the monuments were lit up and sparkling. 

Shortly after he popped the question, crying obviously :)

It was perfect. After the disaster start to our trip, he had given me a Hollywood movie proposal. He has truly given me one of the best proposal stories ever, I could tell it every day to anyone who will listen! I'm so happy to be marrying the love of my life :)