I say don't read it, because 'this' guy could make you feel like your own life is seriously lacking in romance, adventure and awesome. On the other hand, it's nice to be happy for a happy person, and it's so beautiful and well written. Pick a side. It can go either way.
This local, ordinary (well actually not ordinary at all) guy proposed to a girl that he really really (really) likes it seems, and this is it. It's the nicest thing I've read in a while. I mean, I can hardly get Graeme to agree to make me tea. I'm sitting on the fence here. Actually it just made me dislike Graeme just for a little while to be honest. That little girl that wants the prince to knock on my door with a glass slipper is still in there somewhere it seems, no matter how much I try to shut her up.
"Due to popular demand, and for posterity’s sake, I’ve decided to blog my proposal to Lize, in minute detail. And minute detail is exactly what you’re going to get. I apologise for the tardiness in getting this on record – getting engaged is a terribly breathless and busy thing.
Planning to propose to Lize was as far form the accurate definition of “easy” as I’ve ever dared venture in my life. It was big boy stuff. Far from the shore, without arm bands, in deep water. This is chiefly due to the fact that Lize is the finest natural detective I have ever met. The woman is impossible to surprise. Add into the mix the fact that she’s quite literally part of the fabric of my being, and you have yourself a specially terrifying cocktail of desire to please, with very little capacity to deliver.
I’m not writing this to piss you off, or be smarmy, or throw into horrifying relief how dull and awful your relationship is, but I think I knew right off the bat that Lize was someone extraordinary. I fell in love with her way, way quicker than is probably appropriate to admit. She rushed in like a flood. The smallest spaces of my life were filled with something so radically different from what I had lived before. She was so exhilarating, and occasionally mind-bendingly offensive (with the effect of being gloriously funny), that I marveled at how such great quantities of personality came out of such a small body.
We bonded over drives in the Midlands, eggs benedict (one day I will write my ode to the egg yolk), secret missions to visit her horse, our shared love of music, books, food, and bad puns (mostly on my part).
She took me horse riding – I was terrified, she was proficient. We went out with her friends – I was terrified, she was proficient. We sang in the car – she was terrified, I was proficient. But what she doesn’t know, and continues to disbelieve, is that she is proficient. I get a thrill when she sings. She’s under the mistaken impression that her voice is faulty, when in actual fact her ear is tuned to a natural third harmony. Whenever she wants, she just belts those babies out, and then cringes in shame. My brain adores harmonies, but can’t compute them. Give me a harmony, and I’ll probably give you a compelling argument to give me back the melody.
Lize K, even your failures are lovely to me.
A great deal of stock is placed in “just knowing” that your partner is the “right” person for you. I didn’t “just know”. The truth wasn’t a lonely, innate, isolated feeling, so much as a premise whose truth was smashed into me on an almost hourly basis, until I lay battered, and thrilled, in submission.
When, after the fifth day 0f seeing us together in the flesh during the Christmas visit, my dad asked when I was planning on marrying Lize, my face split in two with a smile. I already had a ring.
Well I mean, I had purchased a ring. I didn’t actually have it in my possession.
Which brings us back to Lize, and her ability to catch the stench of a secret at five miles on the most demure of breezes.
Having a small fraction of Lize’s sleuthing talent myself, I had managed to deduce that Lize had a slightly unstable obsession with Tiffany & Co, especially in partnership with her friend – and the sunniest person to have ever graced our planet – Nina.
Moreover, this obsession stemmed from Lize and Nina’s mutual love for the actually-rather-good Audrey Hepburn film, Breakfast At Tiffanys. Only a fool could miss the specific implication: Yes, Lize loved Tiffany, but she loved Tiffany from the flagship, historic, in-the-actually-rather-good-film 5th Avenue store. Which was in New York. And I wasn’t going there any time soon.
Enter Khayakazi Ngqula, former schoolmate of Lize’s, high-powered television producer, and resident of New York City’s East Village. Kazi was in New York, and would be returning to South Africa in December of 2012. But there was a problem. I had no real reason to email Kazi at this point in our friendship, and Lize had caught sight of online correspondence between us.
I could, at this point, count on the fact that Lize did know that I wanted to be her husband. We had talked briefly about marriage – about what it meant to each of us. I knew that she wanted to be my wife, eventually.
Despite all of that, I couldn’t risk her having the slightest inkling that when I eventually did propose, that it would be done with a ring from The Jewelry Store Of Jewelry Stores.
I spun the first first threads of what would be an intricate, and widely spread web of deception, ultimately involving two diamond sales consultants, one employer, two siblings, three sets of parents, five friends (including two flatmates), one work colleague, a restauranteur, four bakers, and an illustrator. Take a deep breath. All will be revealed.
The diamond sales consultants: I contacted my dedicated salesperson at the 5th Avenue store, and asked them to mock up a bogus quote, stacked with insanely overinflated prices.
I waited for one of the many typical moments in our relationship (both of us on Lize’s bed, on our laptops), opened the email from Tiffany, and sauntered off to make a strategic cup of tea.
The next day, Liz confided in me that she may have seen an email from a Tiffany saleswoman, and that the Tiffany rings were completely overpriced. She concluded her brief monologue with the insistence that if I did ever propose, I was under no obligation to do so with a Tiffany ring.
Job done.
After making the most exhilarating transnational credit card payment of my life..."
Do click here to read the rest of it. It is rather long and rather beautiful / annoying / wonderful / irritating. It really is freakin awesome what this guy did. Really. I'm sending this link to my guy now, just to you know, hopefully make him feel bad that he doesn't have books illustrated for me. Usual stuff.