I kept this one quiet, didn’t I! By Friday night I’d bought the ring, booked the extremely fancy restaurant and thought about exactly the best way to ask (I’d decided against ‘down on one knee’ as too generic and settled on ‘ring at the bottom of a champagne glass’ as the best approach).
As it turned out, this was all a waste of time (apart form the ring of course!); Helena has been feeling bad all week, and took a turn for the worse on Friday. We had to abandon the restaurant and go to the doctors instead, where she was diagnosed with acute bronchitis. Probably a side effect from the cold weather in Lithuania last week, and the whole restaurant idea has to be abandoned.
I have news for the guys: proposing might be romantic to a woman, but to a guy it’s nothing but endless stress and anxiety until the rings on her finger. I’m off to Germany for three weeks tomorrow, and there is no way on earth I was going to wait another three weeks with that ring in my pocket, anxiety building. You can never be sure what the answer’s going to be, and it plays on the mind! I had to come up with another plan.
But what can you do when your girls really ill? It eventually came to me: I lit out apartment with candles, gave her Helena a foot massage and slipped the ring onto her little toe. After about five or ten seconds of total confusion she said yes! Certainly a unique way of proposing, it was very us and very personal, so I think it worked.
We’re not sure when the wedding will be, maybe a year or so (or more) away, as Helena has to finish her Masters before concentrating on anything else. We’re thinking we’d like it to be a small ceremony somewhere beautiful in the south of Spain, just a couple of dozen people.
As I’m sure you can imagine I’m over the moon!
James x