In college, my roommate and I used to spend a lot of time watching our favorite channel, TLC (hello, Trading Spaces was THE best show ever!). One of our favorite shows was Perfect Proposal - please tell me someone else out there used to watch this every afternoon? - where perky host Nikki Boyer would help scheme with guys who were wanting to propose to their girlfriends in a very extravagant way. They would plan out these whole plots where they would trick their girlfriends into thinking they had been selected to participate in a television show about something or other (because how else would they explain the camera crew following them around everywhere?) and would lead them along until bam! They dropped down on one knee, pulled out the ring box and asked the big question. The girl’s entire family was usually hiding behind some bushes, watching and waiting to celebrate with them afterwards.
Here's a clip for all those who didn't watch this show every day before lunch, like we did:
Roomie and I loved this show. At the time, she was hoping for a proposal from her then boyfriend so that she could have a candle lighting ceremony at our sorority meeting. We used to joke that Nikki Boyer was always just around the corner, disguised as a waitress at the restaurant or the sales clerk at the Gap, waiting to pull a fast one on her and start the grand proposal into motion. I remember thinking that I wanted to be surprised whenever my engagement came around (at the time, I didn’t even have a boyfriend), but wasn’t exactly keen on being on television for the big moment! (side note: my high school boyfriend asked me to prom on a Jumbotron at the Dallas Mavs game and I was slightly mortified. Public stunts? Not my cup of tea!)
Fast forward to last Spring, Mark and I have been happily dating for almost three years, I’ve started dropping the we-should-get-married hints for at least six months and I’m secretly hoping that every time he’s running late or claiming to be “busy” after work that he is actually plotting his grand proposal plot, with or without Nikki Boyer. Needless to say, my heart sinks after every dinner date, or trip to the mall, or evening at home on the couch when there isn’t a proposal and I continually tell myself to stop expecting it. I didn’t even know if he had bought the ring at this point, so I set myself up to wait it out for at least a few more months.
So when Mark called me one Thursday evening and asked if I wanted to go get dinner on Friday, my heart skipped a tiny beat before I mentally told myself, “No, this isn’t it. You and Mark get dinner all the time. This is nothing new.” And then when he told me to “wear something nice” my heart leaped again, a little bigger this time, but I still shoved any proposal thoughts into the back of my mind. I wasn’t going to get let down again! But just the play it safe, I didn’t ask any questions and just pretended like him planning a nice dinner for us that required any kind of dressing up for no reason whatsoever was totally normal (which, it was not!).
To be continued….
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