Amanda and I had been dating a year and half when I proposed. We already knew that we were going to get married, and I had been planning for about two months. She had always told me that she was more excited about a good proposal than the ring or the money spent, she wanted to have a great story. So I knew that I had to go all out.
The proposal began Friday October 5, 2007, at 5 a.m. when I tried to wake her up to go on a surprise road trip that I had planned that night because I couldn’t “sleepâ€; she told me to go away and let her sleep. She is not a morning person so this was a problem that I had foreseen. Eventually, she finally, though unhappily, agreed and we set off in the car after two blatant lies that we would not be taking many pictures and I promised that I would not propose.
After five hours in the car we arrived at a boat dock in Thousand Islands, N.Y. We took a ferry across the St. Lawrence River to Boldt Castle on Heart Island. This was not unusual for us, since we have quite frequently road tripped to random places, and had visited castles before since she has a love affair with castles. That previous year, for Valentine’s Day, I had taken her to the Biltmore Estate, which is quite close to a castle. Unfortunately she found out about that which taught how sneaky I would have to be for the proposal. Anyways, at this point she still had no idea the proposal was coming; she just assumed we were on a very cool date though she was still upset about having to get up so early.
Well, there we took tons of pictures and she thought that this castle was the culmination of the trip and that we were going home, but little did she know that we were not rushing to go home. Instead, there was surprise stop number two! We went back to the boat dock and I ran to the car to get some pre-packed duffel bags. She kept asking me questions about why we had bags and where we were going. The boat captain then came up and said hello to Robert by name, a small mistake, I think this is where she began to put the pieces together because she found it very odd. He led us to a private yacht that we boarded. She was getting nervous now because she had no idea where we going yet again. After almost an hour boat ride, we began approaching Singer Castle on Dark Island. As we got closer, we saw a sign on the side of the entrance that read “closed for today.†This was when she really started putting the pieces together and realized we had brought bags because we were staying there. I had rented the entire castle, and its island, for the night for us.
We were then taken to the “Royal Suite.†We had a few minutes to get relaxed and get ready for a tour and dinner. Throughout this time I kept having to dodge questions and lie constantly that I was not going to propose. Since the castle was literally ours for the day, we had a three hour personal tour in places guests can never usually dream of going. We got to sit in chairs hundreds of years old and go in secret passageways. We were treated like a king and queen for the day. It was beyond amazing.
Then we went upstairs to wait for dinner. We got dressed up slightly; however, we looked horrible a little off because, in my hurry and nervousness, I forgot to pack some of her clothes and MY SHOES! (I ate a fancy dinner in a suit, at a castle, while wearing flip-flops) But we made due and ate a fancy dinner in the one of the grand dining rooms. After this, we were “supposed†to take pictures in the various rooms of the castle and do our own touring, but when we went upstairs to change, she noticed that there was an extra door in our suite, which had been locked and shut before, but was now slightly open. I was trying to get her to take a picture with me in front of the door and, in theory, nonchalantly turn on the video recording of the camera.
However, she ran over to see what was in it before I had a chance to set it up and found that it was another bedroom. The room was covered with flowers, a thousand yellow and pink daisies. This had special meaning to her because in her favorite episode of “Gilmore Girls,” Max proposed to Lorelai with a thousand yellow daisies. At this point she knew, and I got down on one knee and told her how much I loved her and asked her to marry me.
She excitedly accepted and then we proceeded to call everyone we knew, at 11pm. We were so busy calling people we never took pictures till the next morning. In the morning, we got up early, once again around five, and we took tons of pictures to remember our castle experience, we ate breakfast in the dining hall and went home where her family had a surprise engagement party waiting for us!
- Robert W., Lynchburg, Virginia