He says:
Being obsessive as I am, and with Lela being as good at ruining surprises as she is, I knew I had to come up with a clever plan to fool her…
SO IT STARTED a very long time before the actual day (January 7, 2006)…I started looking into rings based on what I knew: 1) She didn’t want something that would “get in the way” when she wore it. 2) She didn’t want a gold ring. 3) (The most vague) She wanted something “pretty.” 1) was decently easy, 2) was easier, and 3) was pretty tough — a judgment call of mine that would (hopefully) be worn on her finger for the rest of her life — that she wasn’t going to pick out. I looked at a lot of ring designs online before looking at stores. I eventually settled on one that was unique (two teardrop-shaped loops facing towards a single inset diamond).
FINDING HER RING SIZE without her knowing was not something I was looking forward to…so I enlisted the help of her friends, figuring they’d probably talked about it or measured their fingers at some point. No dice. So I had them ask her parents…still no dice. All this talk about getting engaged…it being a surprise, and she doesn’t even know her *own* ring size! PLAN B: Greer Raggio (to whom I am indebted for doing this) went shopping with her to look at jewelry…as they tried on rings (innocently!), she noted which one fit lela’s ring finger, then tried it on her fingers until she found a match. Then, on another day (without Lela there), Greer had her finger measured (at a jeweler!) and reported back to me. I verified that the ring I wanted to get was available in that size (it was!) and sent pictures to Greer, who also verified that she loved the ring and thought it’d be perfect for Lela.
THE FAKE-OUT was not entirely intentional. I found a pretty bracelet by the same designer that had two teardrops on it, and thought it’d make a nice gift. So I wrapped it up and put it under the Christmas tree at my parents’ house. When she opened the gift (the last one under the tree) and saw it was a jewelry box, you could see the excitement and terror in her face that I might have just proposed in front of my parents and sister. However, it was a perfect precursor (and emotion-spike) for her, along with a slight let-down…which would only last for two weeks.
LEADING UP TO THE PROPOSAL was the scary part for me — how to put it together so she wouldn’t suspect. We were going to a Bed and Breakfast for our fifth-year-of-dating-anniversary, and I had planned to propose then. Needless to say (but hopefully invisible-to-her) I was an emotional wreck on Friday, January 6. We went to a nice dinner and went back to our room. Remember that I am obsessive…so I remember what time our first kiss was…so that figures into my plan to propose at approximately five years *to the minute* of our first kiss. But dinner got us home too early…so I took out “When Harry Met Sally” and suggested that we watch it. But the movie itself was too long, so I suggested some of the outtakes (including the interviews of couples who have been married for 50+ years). Nervously sitting through these, I was trying to gauge the time properly. Thankfully, the bonus features of the movie ended at the perfect time, allowing me to reach into my suitcase and pull out the ring. “You didn’t have to get me a gift,” said Lela. “I got you something small, but I hope you’ll still wear it,” I said. We both laughed. I had put the ring box in seven circular nesting boxes I had bought (eight months earlier for this purpose), so I handed her a circular box much larger than the ring box. I thought it might have given it away, but she didn’t seem to register the strangeness of boxes decreasing in size. While she was opening the boxes, I knelt down next to where she was sitting on the bed (though she couldn’t see that I was kneeling at the time). Once she saw the ring box, I told her to open it…and the rest, they say, is history…