CLICK ON THE ABOVE PHOTO/MONTAGE
November 6, 2010. Almost a year ago. A day I had been waiting for for nearly 3 years. As a girlfriend who micro-manages and controls everything, it was maddening not to know when and where and how he was going to do it ... and moreover, IF he was going to do it at all. The Proposal. In wanting to produce it and plan everything, I nearly ruined everything. In fact, as the years went by, my girlfriends developed The Escape Plan AKA The Exit Strategy should he choose NOT to pop the question and I would therefore, have my answer. I became THAT girl - she full of ultimatums, reeking with the offensive fragrance of insecure bullshit that would have dulled any diamond let alone any man's desire to propose. I was the girlfriend that pushed and shoved her man literally and figuratively between The Rock and the proverbial Hard Place.
Ironically, we had started the week on a road trip up the Coast to volunteer with friends at a Brides Against Breast Cancer event in San Francisco. Our birthdays are days apart - November 1st and November 4th - so we decided our birthday trip would start with a San Fran visit and be followed by a tour through Napa wine country with his parents. At the SF event, we were surrounded by a ballroom full of wedding gowns, brides-to-be and their excited friends and family members. Helping carry and display armfuls of wedding dresses, Andrew made it clear to my own friends that he "wasn't there yet but would propose ... some day." He so convinced my friends he wasn't anywhere near ready that I was warned to not put any more pressure on him, especially around our birthdays. Basically, time to ease up on The Crazy. I had no idea that "some day" would be less than a week later.
On my birthday, he took me to a beautiful waterfront restaurant in Sausalito where we ate oysters and drank Chardonnay at sunset. He gave me two jewelry boxes which contained a beautiful pearl and onyx earrings-necklace set. With a gift such as this, receiving a ring anytime soon didn't seem likely. On his birthday, we went on a whirlwind Napa wine tour at secluded, private estates/wineries and had an incredible dinner at a romantic, exclusive restaurant. It was the perfect ending to another amazing road trip with the man I loved and knew I would marry ... "some day."
It seemed fitting that Andrew wanted to end the road trip with a stop in Big Sur on the way home down to L.A. After all, Big Sur was one of the first trips we had taken together - the first time we went camping together and spent days driving, taking photographs, chasing sunsets, eating good food, drinking better wine and gazing at the stars. One of our favorite places was McWay Falls at Julia Pfeiffer State Park. We had been together only a few months when he first took me there and we had an intense conversation about what a great wedding spot it would be and how wonderful it would be to take our kids there one day to see the view.
Still, I suspected nothing as we drove down PCH - he in his jeans and fleece, me in my sweatshirt and yoga pants. Everything was routine - I had to stop at Starbucks, then I had to stop 2x to pee. I didn't understand why he was anxious about getting to this waterfall on time. Ever the DP/gaffer, he kept telling me "we're losing light" - a term we hear too often at work. I wondered why he was driving like a bat out of hell and so fixated at photographing this waterfall at magic hour, when he had shot shitloads of sunset photos there on our last Big Sur trip. I had been his camera assistant/companion on photo expeditions many times prior so this urgency was nothing new to me.
Must take picture. Must take it now. Point. Shoot. Repeat.
Except this time -- he was nervous ... and scattered ... and fidgety ... and shaking. And if there's one thing about Andrew when he's taking photographs - he is steady and in his element and focused - in every sense of the word. And that's why when we finally made it out to the vista with the Falls in the background and he told me to "just stand there" while he lined up the camera on a tripod, that's when I sensed something was up.
His hands trembled as he set up the equipment -- which I knew he could do backwards with his eyes closed upside down in the dark if he had to -- and then I heard the timer being tested, the shutter snapping every few seconds. I stood there, puzzled, you can see the expression on my face in the early photos in the sequence, before he comes over to join me. It was somewhere right after "Are you shooting a time lapse??" and "What the F is wrong with you?!" that he kissed me, hugged me, and said "I'm about to ask you to marry me."
My eyes bugged out of my head (it's hard to tell by the small size of the image at the top of this posting, but you can see that if you click on the photo montage too) and he dropped to one knee. That's when I remember everything going silent and everything else disappearing -- except him. It's what I had always been waiting for and he pulled off the unthinkable -- he was able to surprise ME.
The sunset did not fail to disappoint. As if on cue, the sky burst into color as soon as I said "YES." He smiled at me in the fading sunlight, both of us glowing warmly well into the hours when darkness fell, and he whispered "I told you I'd do it." We said "I do" six months later.
