At Long Last

Drum roll please... Marilyn and I got engaged! Yes, after six and a half years, we are proud to announce our engagement. The magical date was May 31st, 2008 and the location was the Riverwalk in Downtown Naperville. I had been planning the event since my sprig break and had to go into total stealth mode to prevent Mar from knowing my intentions. Anyways, after finagling some time to myself to go shopping, I ended up finding the ring of our dreams at the Diamond Gallery in Naperville. Shopping for the ring was quite the ordeal, I went to several places before I found the right fit, more on that later.

Now that the ring was picked, I had to set up a time and place. Since we live in Naperville and have spent so much of our time here, I decided the Riverwalk would be the perfect place. Well, I went down and scoped out the scene and picked one of the covered bridges to serve as the location. With the place and date picked, I let a couple of people in on the secret so I could have someone in place to take a couple of pictures.

Considering the fact that our schedules are so similar and always seem to be jammed packed, I did not want to make the day appear to be out of the ordinary. Marilyn was under the impression that we would be going out to dinner with some of our friends and I did my best to make it appear like a normal day. After working the morning shift, we came home and got ready for to go out.

We parked a good distance away from the restaurant and she looked at me like I was crazy. I just told her it was a nice day, so lets walk. Well, she started walking towards the restaurant and I started walking away from it. Again, she looked at me like I was nuts and I just said that it was nice so we should enjoy the river. We came to the covered bridge and started to cross it while making small talk. She was wearing sunglasses, so when we reached he end of the bridge I asked her to take them off. Once again, I got crazy looks from her. Initially she said no, so I said, "Mar, can you please take off your sunglasses." By the time she had them off, I had dropped a couple of steps behind her and was on one knee.

She looked at me with total shock and said, "Really?!"

I said,"Yes, will you?"

She said, "Really?!"

I said, "Yes, really."

She said, "Really?!"

I said, "Yes, really. Will you?"

She said, "Of course."

She accepted the ring, which was unfortunately to small due to an error by the jeweler, and I got off my knee. As I mentioned, Marilyn was totally shocked, but in a good way. After we exchanged pleasantries with our friends, we headed back to my car, which had a suitcase in it. Mar was surprised to see it and commented that I must have been planning this for awhile. I explained to her how I got everything ready and we had reservations at the new Westin in Yorktown. We then went to our room to drop our stuff off. The room had a cold bottle of champagne and rose petals spread across the floor. After dropping off our stuff, we had dinner at Harry Caray's.

Well, that's the story. Sorry it took so long to get post up, but we have been very busy. (More details on the things that have been keeping us busy will be coming in the next few days) I could not have imagined a better day. Although there was some drama, it was everything that I wanted it to be. We have a lot of planning to do, but cannot wait for the big day.