We're Getting Married!

I remember on the first day of our senior year of high school, everybody was talking about the new kid from New York and I had yet to see him. Lo and behold, we ended up having our AP Literature class together and thank god we did! Despite starting dating the day after our high school graduation, Gary and I claim the title of high school sweethearts. Gary quickly became friends with the same friend group as me and rather than expressing his interest in a normal way, he decided throwing grapes at me during lunch was the best way to get my attention. Much to my chagrin, it clearly got my attention. And here we are eight years later! We always joke that if were able to open a vineyard one day we are going to call it "Throwing Grapes". So look out for that in the future!

I moved to California during my senior year of high school and had to make an entirely new set of friends. Through my classes, I got close to a few people who invited the new guy to have lunch with them, luckily for me Emily was part of that group. Coming from an all boys school, I had only a bit of practice talking to women... so I took the age old method of the toddler and decided to throw a grape at her. Incredibly... this worked, and here we are now 8 years later getting married after sharing only one class together senior year of high school: 3000 miles away from where I had spent the rest of my life.

Emily is very tough to surprise (or maybe I just have a bad poker face, who knows!), but I wanted to try and get her. Everyone in both her and my immediate family knew that I was planning on proposing on our anniversary during dinner, but I wasn’t sure at what point I would pop the question. I played it cool throughout dinner without giving Emily any idea of what I was planning (she claims otherwise but she didn’t) but inside I was a nervous wreck. We had been together for 6 years, as of the day of the proposal, and I was still worried about her potentially saying no even though she had been dropping some not so subtle hints that it was past time. At the end of an awesome dinner of steak and shrimp cocktails, I excused myself from the table to psych myself up because I knew it was time. When I returned to the table I told Emily how much I loved her and wanted to spend the rest of my life with her and asked her to be my wife. After saying yes (phew), the waiter came back to our table to take our dessert order and I asked for another round of champagne for the two of us. It was at this point that I realized that I had not given the restaurant a heads up because after congratulating us our waiter sarcastically thanked me for the heads up and said they could have helped arrange something. It would have been great to have Lawry’s help but Emily and I thought it was much more us to do a low-key proposal.

Despite what Gary said above, I knew he was going to propose. He is overall a laidback and confident person, so when he was acting how he was when we first met for an entire day I knew something was up! I remember leaving work the Friday before the proposal and telling my coworkers that I would be engaged when I came to work on Monday (another story Gary denies). Dinner was fabulous, we totally splurged and towards the end of dinner I was looking at my watch thinking, "Okay, when is it happening?" None of the staff were acting suspicious, only Gary. So when he got up to "use the restroom," I knew it was finally time. I put on my best "I truly have no idea what's about to happen” face and as soon as he reached into his pocket I immediately started to cry. I don't think any amount of preparation can get you ready for that moment. After a tear-filled "YES!" we celebrated with some more champagne and Lawrys gifted us several goodies. One of those goodies being a jar of their famous chocolate sauce that I still have in the fridge and I'm sure has gone bad by now! And while I loved being Garys girlfriend and fiancée, I cannot wait to be his wife.