Engagement Story

In reference to my previous post - it went like this… A couple of months ago we just happened to find super cheap tickets to fly to NY for a long weekend, and it worked out perfectly that it was also our one year anniversary. Mark’s long time friend and his fiancé (Danny & Christi) were gracious enough to let us stay with them in their apartment, and for Christmas Mark reserved a hotel room for one night uptown (under the guise of “it’s close to where the Today Show is filmed).

Thursday it looked as if all plans were off though, the blizzard, Nemo was heading straight for NY and almost all flights were cancelled. I wasn’t letting anyone or anything stop me from this vacation though and we switched our cancelled flight to a very early one the very next day. We drove all through the night to get to the airport on time and made it to NY before the blizzard hit. Unfortunately for Christi who was traveling home from a work trip, her plane was delayed a day. Fortunately for Mark, this was his excuse to move our hotel reservation from Sunday night to Saturday because “Christi would be tired from traveling.”

So Saturday Mark and I took a taxi uptown and arrived at our hotel. Checking in we were upgraded to a suite – in my mind it’s because the hotel was empty because of the storm (but really it’s because Mark wanted to propose Saturday night, our one year anniversary). This wasn’t just a suite, this was the penthouse, and it was fancy. After exploring our rooms and our two balconies, I needed a nap badly but Mark was insistent that it had to be quick because he was “so excited to go ice skating.”

After our nap we walked to Rockefeller Center and bought our tickets for the skating rink and to go up to the “top of the Rock” (the top floor of the Rockefeller building). I just could not figure out why Mark wanted to go to the Rock immediately and was also so excited to ice skate when it was because of my bucket list that we were there. Anyway, after convincing him that we could do a little shopping first we went wobbling out onto the ice. We did a couple of laps, Mark basically skating circles around me, when we came up to the Prometheus statue again where a couple was attempting to take a picture of themselves. I told Mark I was going to offer to take their picture so that they would take ours. I took their picture, wobbling around on my skates, and Mark handed his iPhone to the guy.

We stood there forever, and I even said under my breath, how many photos is he taking? I felt Mark shifting next to me so I turned to check on him, and he had turned to face me. I’m not going to lie, this whole next part was a blur because I was in such shock. (Happy shock!) He said “I have something to ask you. You know I love you right?” and he knelt down on his knee. “Will you marry me?” and he opened the ring box. My brain was reeling and my heart was jumping out of my chest and I felt myself laughing and crying and wanted to kiss him and jump on him and scream YES and scream OH MY GOD all at once. It was the most wonderful feeling in all of the world and I was ecstatic and surprised and just overwhelmed with happiness and love.

As we were kissing and hugging and laughing the rest of the world came back into focus and strangers from all around were congratulating us and cheering. The guy that Mark had asked to take pictures had done a wonderful job and gotten the entire thing documented. We skated around the rink one more time before I asked if we could get off that slippery rink so I could call my mother and my friends.

The rest of the night was so epically fantastic. We went to the top of the Rock, went to a fantastic dinner with free champagne and fancy desserts, and I could hardly sleep afterwards - I kept waking up to watch my ring sparkle in the light from the alarm clock.

I just love Mark so much and I can’t even express how happy I am that he wants to spend the rest of his life with me. I feel like the luckiest girl in the world.