The Proposal

I only plan to do this once....

It finally happened. I asked the wonderful Noelia to marry me. She accepted. YAY!

So the big question I've been getting from many people is "so so so how'dYouDoIt?" I hope to give the story justice here.

Before leaving Seattle, I spent 4 hours making a pretty reasonable facsimile of a clue from The Amazing Race. They folks at CBS had ignored my attempts to acquire a real clue. My copy looked remarkably close to the real thing. More on the contents of the clue later ;)

It was early morning on Christmas Day, 2004. I went downstairs and assembled a HUGE 4 foot cube of a box. This thing was massive. I then proceeded to fill over 50 balloons with helium, and carefully placed them inside the box. I got 10 red balloons and tied them to red ribbons, attached the clue to the ribbon, and then attached the ribbon to the bottom of the box. I then closed and wrapped the box. It took three rolls of wrapping paper:

The box



The clue on the ribbons

Noelia and her family came over at about 1:30 and we began to open our Christmas gifts. Noelia had an inkling that I had gotten her some sort of exercise machine or something.. what else can be in such a big box? When the time came, she opened the box, and the balloons came rushing out. Then the red balloons came up, with the clue in tow. She opened the clue. It was a detour, and read "A detour is a choice between two tasks, each with its own pros and cons. In this detour, you have to choose between safe and dangerous". Omitting personal details, the two possible tasks were as follows. In safe, she was to close the clue, and have a nice day. In dangerous, I had a nice little declaration of love, concluded by the request to turn around. There was Johnny on one knee with the ring.

The open box, the clue, and the happy couple

Maybe not Hollywood flavour, but it was enjoyed by all, and Noelia loved it.