She Said Yes
The story of our engagement
The Plan
Planning this engagement turned out to be more of a task than I had imagined. I knew it would be very hard to get anything by Holly as she is very keen on her routines and anything out of the ordinary. Thus, I had to plan strategically, in depth, and way ahead of time. I wanted to get her to the beach (she loves the beach) and propose right before sunset down by the ocean on some random, unpredictable day. I also thought she would probably want to immediately call her family and tell them all the details so I figured why not just have everyone there. I would have my family and her family there on the pier, hiding, watching the whole thing unravel from an aerial view. Oh, and my friend Jason (who just happens to be a photographer) would be there to capture it all!
Football season provided just enough time away from her to be able to make some in depth plans when I wasn’t around her and so I started. I bought a truck early on during football season and I knew it would make Holly think that I had no money to be buying an engagement ring. The timing was perfect as I wanted to surprised her. Getting the ring took me long enough and much of it was due to my lack of knowledge. More goes into getting a ring than I ever imagined.
The Ring
When I first decided that I was going to ask Holly to marry me I knew I needed to get a quality, unique ring. I started researching and quickly realized that most jewelry/ring web sites are difficult to navigate and understand unless you know a lot about rings. So I started Google image searching for unique designs. I did this for a while and finally I came across a design that stood out. I ended up traveling to an unknown jeweler’s web site. After looking at the site and seeing the designs on it, I knew that I was going to be dealing with this organization regardless of where they were simply because I wanted a specific design style that I saw.
I had landed on Diana Vincent Jewelry Designs (www.DianaVincent.com). Feel free to go and see the gallery of rings (and other jewelry) that she offers as they are all really neat. I submitted my information and situation via the web site and 2 days later, Judy Weber gave me a call. This was the first of what would turn out to be many conversations over the phone and email that we would have. Judy took really good care of me and was curious as to how I ended up on their site. Long-story-short, she guided me through all the steps of the process and within a month and a half she had delivered on all her promises. Big Frank thought I was crazy to send money up the road to someone I had never met before. I endured my own idiosy and Judy reassured me that my dad would have a new appreciation for the internet after he saw the ring!
One week Holly was out of town on business and so I stole every ring she had in her jewelry box and went down to some ring store in Rock Hill with the sole purpose of finding out what size ring she wears. So for 30 minutes I acted interested in the rings in this store only so that I could get the lady to tell me what size she was. True, the store had some nice rings, but they didn’t have anything that I saw that would compare to the unique design that Diana Vincent’s site had. I found out the size and then the next steps of the process took place. The cut, the clarity, the color, the carat etc. I didn’t know anything about all of this, but Judy walked me through it and we ended up with a nice ring.
The ring was overnighted to Pageland and I had insurance on it the next day. The whole experience dealing with Judy and the Diana Vincent organization was a very pleasant and worthwhile journey. I originally had no idea about diamonds or rings, but I’m glad I went with this company as the end product was awesome. See below for yourself.
The Plan Continued
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During the time that I was getting the ring taken care of, I was also covering ground on other fronts. I had formulated a plan and got buy in from a few friends to help me pull this thing off. Mario & Amanda were excited to be part of this “undercover operation”. Since Holly would throw major red flags at a last minute urgent trip to the beach, I had both Mario and Amanda slowly start prodding her about wanting to go to the beach some time. Mario wrote vague ambiguous emails at odd intervals (because I was strategically staggering his communications) and slowly a random trip to the beach (during football season of all times) started becoming evident to Holly. A glimmer of success was showing up on the horizon. Though, on the back end of all this I had to answer for Mario’s obvious inability to efficiently plan a “Beach trip for Amanda’s Birthday … a month after her real birthday” lol! Defending Mario’s “plan” to Holly was a weekly task with which I found it hard not to laugh or giggle in front of her. Sometimes I even had to bury my face in a pillow not to crack in front of her. Though, I constantly reassured her to let Mario take the reins because this was their trip and after all… we were just along for the ride!
So Mario and Amanda were mentioning something about a trip to the beach in the fall to celebrate Amanda’s birthday a month after the fact and the whole time the ring was getting made in Pennsylvania. Things were moving along as planned and it would soon be time to go and have “the talk” with Holly’s dad. I waited out the next few days and weeks and kept track of what was going on. Though, I didn’t have her father’s phone number. I had to steal her phone some time and get the number out of it while she wasn’t looking. There was always another little side operation that I had to do in order to get this done. She doesn’t get too far away from her phone and I was watching her closely just waiting for the right moment. If I got caught, the plan would either be foiled or I would be in major trouble for snooping in her phone. So, one night while she was watching her trash TV reality shows I noticed that she left her phone upstairs. I suddenly felt the urge to go to the bath room (lol!) She was glued to the TV and I got the phone number while she thought I was in the bathroom. A flush of the toilet and that part was done. And I did save his number in my phone under an incorrect name.
I wanted to minimize the window of time from when I asked her dad until it actually happened. So, one day during the week I made the call and got him on the phone. I told him that Holly was going out of town and that I wanted to come and talk to him about some things one day on that specific weekend. I asked him when he was available and he said “Well I’m _____________(phone was cracking and breaking up”. I said “Hello, can you hear me?” and he said “Yes I can” and I asked him to repeat again. He said “Yeah, just come on down _______________(phone breaking up, muffled sporadic garble on the other end). I thought this was a bad sign for things to come. I hung up and called back. Finally we were able to get a connection established and seal the deal. I was to go down there and talk to him the following day and he said he would be awake until midnight.
So I went down the next night and told Holly that I was going to bed early, but really I was in her house! I was there for about an hour and a half and I made it out alive so things were right on track. Mr. Tolson said that he could have his troops at the pier the following Saturday and that the secret could be kept for a whole week, but he said it would be tough on her mom.
I left their house and called Mario and said “Eagle1 has landed, I repeat Eagle1 has landed. The operation is a go”. Two days later we booked the hotel room on a 3-way call and had to do it under Mario’s name since it was “his and Amanda’s trip” and to stick with the plan. Mario then turned the heat up on the emails and communications with Holly. Everything seemed to be falling in place.
The Proposal
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On the day of the proposal, I snuck the ring from my house into Mario’s suitcase while Holly was eating breakfast and we were set to leave. We left Pageland around 10 on Saturday morning. We also came up with the idea that Mario needed to shop at the outlets, but the real reason was simply to stall time. So we shopped and shopped and shopped at the Outlets before we even saw an ocean. I felt bad for putting Mario and myself through our year’s limit of shopping in one day. Amanda and Mario played the role perfectly as neither one of them cracked or even hinted and Amanda was all excited about her birthday trip. She reminded us ever-so-often in the car. We kept acting like we were trying to make concrete plans, but nothing ever really got set. Something funny happened on the way too. We were talking about Lance crackers and I told Mario and Amanda that Holly had some of the coaches at Central wanting to marry her because she was giving them crackers and Holly just blurted out loud “Well at least somebody is”. She’d never said anything of this nature before, so it was perfect timing for her remark. I looked at Mario and he just grinned and bit his teeth. Since she started it, when we rode by Chapel By The Sea, I told her that we should just pull over and get it done right then and there. It was pretty funny and she wasn’t having that either!
We finally got to the hotel around 3:45. Mario had to go and check us in since he had the “hookup” with this hotel. We finally got up to our room and got semi-settled in. It was about 4:15. The plan was for all the families to be on the pier at 5 and then some time after 5, Holly’s mom was going to call her just to say hey. The call would be my queue that everything was ready. Though, in Holly’s mind we were just going to lie down for a while until we went out to eat for Amanda’s birthday. The fictional dinner was set for 6. Everything timed out perfectly. We were awake and her mother finally called. When she called, I jetted to Mario’s room to get the ring out of his suit case. So now, I had this huge ring box in my pocket that was sticking out. I thought this would blow my cover so for the next 15 minutes I kept my left hand in my pocket. The story was that Mario would all of a sudden get an upset stomach and need some time, thus delaying our dinner trip. So I told Holly that while Mario was sick that we should go walk on the beach. Well this brought on a whole different set of “What should I wear / You can’t wear that on the beach” decisions. I changed shoes twice and almost had to change shirts, but everyone on the pier expected me to be wearing a light blue shirt. And thank goodness it wasn’t raining because I had no legit back-up plan. Laying this entire thing out was taxing enough and having a back up to the real-but-fake plan was just mentally undoable for me. So, I convinced her to go walking on the beach with the now free time that we had. Jason (the photographer) had texted me telling me how to position Holly for the best pictures. I had to get her near the water, near the pier, and have her facing the pier. So we exited the room and I beat on Mario’s door covertly giving them the signal to exit in 5 minutes. We got down to the sand and starting walking toward the pier. Left hand was still in the pocket the whole time and she never noticed or at least paid attention to it. We started walking and I started aiming closer and closer to the water and oh did she ever fight walking near the “cold sand”. She couldn’t understand why I was pulling her that way. We were about 3 blocks north of the pier (Google maps had helped me select the hotel 2 months ago for that very reason). So we had to walk about 300 yards to get to the pier. Holly was trying to talk to me on the way, but I had her zoned out as I was looking for my hidden camera man and other family members on the pier mixing in with other people. Holly grew frustrated with my inability to pay her attention. I wanted to get her as close as possible to the pier. We got about 100 yards from the pier and I saw Jason kneeling down hiding near the restaurant/gift-shop on the pier. It was about to happen. I got her about 15 yards from the pier and then spun her around. We were close to the water and she was avoiding the cold, wet sand, but then I started talking. I went down on my knee and she thought I was joking. I reassured her that this wasn’t a joke and she started to cry. Hands covering her face and shaking and she said “Are you sure” and I said “yes mam I am, now will you take this ring!” and she said YES! and then I slid it on her finger. Since she was totally caught off guard it took her a bit to process everything which ended up in a delayed response, but in the end it was all fine by me ;) I told her that it wasn’t a joke and that all these people wouldn’t be on the pier if it was a joke. I turned her and pointed up to our families and then she started crying even more and buried her head into my chest. I just held her and then our families made their way down to the beach. Random people were stopping on the pier and beach to see the spectacle. It was pretty neat and the weather was just right. Not too hot and not too cold. Though, I will tell you that as the families got down to start the hug-a-thon, 2 old guys were running on the beach and they yelled over to us saying “ DON’T DO IT, DON’T DO IT” and quickly Holly and a few others (especially Jason) turned and informed the old guys of the bad timing and I think they shifted a gear as they accelerated down the beach. So that was how it all went down! Mario miraculously cured himself and he and Amanda were trailing us from behind and they made it just in time as well. We all then took some pictures and went out to eat.
Having to self-censor myself, deleting phone call and text message histories, and getting 10 people secretly to a pier for three months proved to be difficult. I had 3 to 4 different versions of stories going on in my head at any given time and I always felt like I was going to let the secret slip or like Holly was going to bust me in a fabricated story. It was mentally tiring, but in the end it was worth it!
The Pictures
I have posted pictures that my friend Jason Fararooei of Yellow Cape Communications (www.YellowCapeCommunications.com) took. Click on them below to see the high resolution versions. To contact Jason, send him an email at Jason@YellowCapeCommunications.com