| | It's Official! I Am Engaged …to the most beautiful girl in the world.
So, as
many of you may have heard by now, Rachael and I are official engaged.
We were waiting to go public with this announcement until now because
she wanted to announce it Wednesday night to the youth at Belle Aire
Baptist (Murfreesboro, TN) first
This weekend marked one of the
biggest chapters in our story. It was months in the making, and I
really was surprised and thankful that nothing got back to her
throughout the planning stages.
If you do not
know our story, it is a great one… patiently waiting for God's timing
in all this. We have both followed His heart in all this even when I
suddenly moved to New York City to help plant a new church in SoHo.
Leaving her behind in Murfreesboro was one of the hardest things I have
ever done, despite the fact that we were not even dating at that time.
That's right… mark it up, a little under three months and we are
engaged, but the story goes much further back than that. Both of us
have known for a while that we were meant to be together. That is
another story for another night. This story is our engagement
night.
So, I decided to fly Rachael
to New York to visit for several days. She flew into the city last
Wednesday night (special thanks to Ellie and Maria for letting Rachael
stay with them). We got to spend several days together *fast forwarding
sound*
So then came Saturday night, the big
night.
I rented a private car service (you gotta
get the private car service…). We went to dinner at a trendy place in
Union Square called The Lemon. It was excellent. It was fun looking at
and talking to my future fiancée right across the table from me. We had
to rush through dinner because we were running a bit late (thanks to my
driver for helping me find a florist on the way to pick Rachael
up)…
After dinner, I had our driver drop us off
at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. Now, it was cold and wet on
Saturday night, but I was determined to propose on the Brooklyn Bridge.
You see, the bridge is one of the places that Rachael and I went on our
first official date when she was here a few months ago… The same bridge
that on the night of our first date, while playing the "I like you more
than…" game back and forth, I accidentally slipped, "I love
you more than the Brooklyn Bridge…" Funny slip on the
first date, and it was actually a couple months later that we started
saying this on a regular basis, even though we both knew it was
true.
So, we walked the first portion of the
Brooklyn Bridge. A couple yards from the first platform, we started
seeing rose petals sprinkled about. As we approached the platform that
overlooks the cityscape, the rose petals increased in number until we
were standing in a bed of rose petals (I had some help having this
arranged). The twinkling lights from the cityscape created a nice
backdrop.
At this point, she started to
know something was up. I nervously fumbled my way through several lines
that probably did not make any sense and then pulled the ring box from
my messenger bag. You can imagine the rest… I got down on one knee and
asked Rachael to marry me… making me the happiest guy in the world. She
accepted immediately (after repeating "Oh my gosh" about 57 times)…
So now, we were
officially engaged. We made the appropriate phone calls and headed back
to the foot of the bridge… we had to go to our next location.
We arrived at 72nd Street some
time later. This is the building in which I work. We took the elevator
up to the third floor and as we exited, people were standing on either
side, tossing rose petals in our direction.
I had arranged a special after
party/reception for us to celebrate (which really would not have worked
out too well if she had said, "no"). Thanks to Maria, Susan, and Ellie,
the third floor looked amazing… The room was covered in rose petals…
all over the floor, the window sills, the tables. Christmas lights
strung from the ceiling and candles in the windows and on the table lit
the room. It was perfect, though the original plan was to have it on
the roof. It worked out nicely and the room looked amazing.
We mingled for a few minutes and then proceeded with
one last surprise… I blindfolded her and sat her down in a chair. I
then sat next to her, awaiting the next event. The next thing she knew,
the first chords of our song, "Bigger Than Us" were being played. I
took off the blindfold and there, sitting before us, was Andy Davis.
Andy Davis is from Nashville and her favorite artist ever. And it
worked out nicely that he also wrote what we consider "our song." So
there it was. Andy Davis gave us and the others at the party a special
private party. It was amazing.
So that wrapped up the surreal
night. It still does not feel like it really happened. I tried to
completely make it the best night of her life and think I came pretty
close. She deserves a lot more than what I could accomplish though.
So now the next step is the
wedding. I still cannot believe that we are actually engaged. I would
not rather share this moment with anyone else.
Make sure you check out all the
photos in my photo box on my PhuseBox and on her PhuseBox site. Also, make
sure you check out Andy Davis at http://www.andydavisonline.com.
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| | Posted 10/26/2005 11:08 PM - 59 Views - 12 eProps - 6 comments
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