In the interest of keeping your attention and not writing a novel here, I will skip ahead to the events immediately prior to the engagement.

For about a week or two I had been sending out requests to friends and family to write little notes of encouragement and support for Maggie so that we could involve our family and friends while also keeping the actual event fairly private. I had also been in touch with Anna Kreise about doing some secret photography to document the event and with the staff at the Cafe to serve a specific dessert that night. I had it all timed out to arrive and eat our dinner leisurely, get dessert, and then head out to the garden. Well as you know from reading Maggie’s account, that didn’t really happen. Haha, best laid plans and all.

Maggie and I arrive at the cafe and my plans immediately start unraveling. Since we were late, the waitress that I had coordinated with was busy with another group of diners and we were paired with another server instead. That meant that the letters wouldn’t be getting placed in the prearranged places in the garden and my ring was still sitting in the car. I had to improvise, all the while keeping track of the setting sun and trying to keep Maggie from noticing anything amiss. So I did what any sane person would do, I went to the restroom.

At least it looked that way. Maggie was seated with her back to the restrooms so I went over and pretended to go inside. Now I had to hurry, if I took too long Maggie would think something was wrong or suspect that I was up to something. I flagged down the nearest staffer and had them make sure no one else went in while I was supposedly using the facilities. Luckily this staffer has talked with my original server and knew what was going on. I then ran out the back, through the kitchen, and out to my car. I grabbed the letter and the ring and ran to the garden where Anna was supposed to be waiting. When I got to the garden I couldn’t find Anna at all and was about to risk calling her name when she suddenly appeared next to me to see what was up. If I didn’t know better I would believe that her photography business was just a cover for her real activities as a ninja. We didn’t see her at all after that, she is good. Anyways, Anna gets caught up on the new timeline and agrees to hide the letters for me. At this point nearly four minutes have gone by and I need to get back to dinner and the woman I am doing all of this for. I run back inside (again through the kitchen. Got a few glares from the cooks, sorry) and quietly slip into the bathroom I have supposedly been in the whole time. I flush the toilet and actually wash my hands just to make it look authentic and head back out to our table.

It turns out that I probably didn’t need to go to such lengths to hide my activities of the past few minutes since it seemed that Maggie was more interested in the food than anything else. The rest of the time that we were eating I was trying to get her outside before it got dark, but without raising suspicion. I finally managed to get her to agree to taking our desserts to go and we headed out into the dusk.

When we arrive at the garden it is later than I had planned but I figured that everything would proceed to plan from there. Wrong. Since Anna agreed to hide the letters, they weren’t hidden in the places I had originally planned them to be. (All credit to Anna though, her spots were better than my first plan!). So now I had to hunt for the first letter to start things off without making it totally obvious that I was looking for something. Thankfully the first letter was close and I brought it to Maggie’s attention. From there my memory kind of blurs into a mix of nervousness, excitement, and a vague notion that the light was fading quickly. By the time we arrived at the last letter, we barely had enough light to read it. The important part is though that we did have enough. God timed it perfectly! As Maggie read the last letter, I guided her over to the bench that the trail of letters was leading to (much like the question that our entire relationship thus far was leading up to) and had her sit down on the bench. My knee hit the ground and I asked her the most terrifying and exciting question I have ever asked before. Then she said yes!

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