The Proposal

Thank you to everyone for your outpouring of sweet thoughts and well wishes. I am truly touched. I have finally calmed down to the point where I can post our proposal story without crying.

I knew we were getting engaged on this trip, but I didn't know when. My second to last day in England was a Saturday and we went to London for the night. TLS has platinum status at Sheraton and called ahead to let them know that he'd be proposing so we got an insane upgrade to a three-room suite. Our room was bigger than my apartment! He got us tickets to Phantom of the Opera on the West End and we went to dinner at an Italian place before the show. Yours truly brilliantly left the tickets at the hotel so we had to skip dessert, take a cab to the hotel, have the driver wait, and go back to the theater two blocks from the restaurant where we originally were. Since I am pretty much obsessed with Phantom of the Opera, TLS's plan was to propose during intermission. I accidentally put the kibosh on that by asking him why he looked so nervous during the show. He knew how it ends. Whoops. After the show, we walked along the park back to our hotel. At the hotel, we decided to go to their bar/lounge area where they do afternoon teas there during the day. They had these gorgeous Japanese-inspired murals on the walls and I love Japanese art, so he asked an elderly couple to take a few pictures of us. After the man took the last one, TLS said "just one more," took the ring out of his jacket pocket, got down on one knee, and said "Masha will you marry me?" I covered my face with my hands and started half laughing half crying hysterically. Then there was about three straight minutes of me going "Oh my G-d, oh my G-d." When I had calmed down enough, he put the ring on my finger. Right finger, wrong hand. I switched the ring to the correct hand, put my arms around him, and started kissing him. As we walked back to our table he went "you did say yes, right?"