The weeks leading up to the weekend of May 16, 2008 were full of anticipation and excitement and nerves, but not on my behalf. I was just looking forward to heading down to Wildwood for the weekend; sleeping with the ocean a block away and waking up to fresh, salty air can really do something for a person trapped in an office five days a week.

Meanwhile, back in the proverbial kitchen, Dave was plotting and scheming and tying up last-minute loose ends. Unbeknownst to me, he had gone to talk to my parents, twice [the first time my Mom was unavailable for a chat], about marrying moi, their third daughter. He had also planned out exactly where, when, and how he was going to do this proposing thing. I, on the other hand, was living in a happy oblivion, dutifully finishing up my remaining work so I could leave for the weekend knowing I had no loose ends of my own to come back to on Monday morning.

Friday finally came after an excruciatingly long week, and neither one of us could've been happier to finally get moving with our weekend away. We left shortly after I arrived at his house, not wanting to waste a single minute in between. To Dave's credit, he did not let on at all that anything big was going to happen that weekend. No little glimmer in those green eyes I love so much, no mischevious smiles that he busts out so often, no word anvils hitting me square on the head, nothing. Just a calm demeanor, a few tossed-out comments about how nice and relaxing the weekend was going to be, and regular, easy smiles.

Time for some honesty: I knew he had the ring. He was disappearing every Friday night for weeks in a row for at least an hour, and just about when I was sure he was leading a double-Life as a spy, he let on that what he was actually doing was making payments on the ring he had picked out for me. Out went my suspicions of codebreaking, satellite photography and bowler hats, and in came my exhiliration over the fact that we were inching ever closer to our ultimate "goal", for lack of a better term.

Time for some more honesty: he is really bad at keeping secrets. I love him and I fully plan on being with him until we're too old and wrinkly to do much but sit and kind of squint/stare at each other because we'll be completely deaf and partially blind with age by then, but for the Life of him he has so much trouble keeping things from me. That said, a few months before it was time to go to Wildwood for "the" weekend, he was doing exactly what he was not doing on our way there: mischeviously smiling, getting all glimmery-eyed on me, even saying things with too much meaning every now and again. So, naturally, I started to suspect this weekend would be "the" weekend. However, about a month or two before the date approached, everything stopped. He stopped with the secret smiles, with the twinkly eyes, with the underlying meaning in his "it's going to be a really good weekend" comments. As a result of this, doubt started to creep in. He had gotten wind that I had my suspicions, that much I knew, and by the time the week of the weekend rolled around, I was utterly convinced he'd completely changed his mind on the proposal date.

So there we were, riding down the shore in somewhat-excited, somewhat-mellowed out bliss, when a thought occured to me: If he doesn't propose to me this weekend, I'll die. I know, right? I mean, I always knew I had a flair for the dramatic, but this was beyond any flair I had ever... flaired. It was true, though. It was like a bottomless, devastating pit had suddenly sprouted open beneath me, and I was waiting on the edge to be pushed in by the lack of proposal over the weekend. In fact, I had gotten myself into such a morose state just thinking about it, Dave did a double take at me and said, not unalarmed, "Are you okay?!" Of course I said yes. How could I respond, "No. I'm not. You're not proposing to me this weekend because you found out I was suspicious and the cruel lips of Despair are sucking the Life right out of me." The answer? I couldn't. So instead I put on my fakiest of fake smiles, and hoped that when I got out of the car I wouldn't be a loud, rattling mess due to the lack of marrow in my bones.

The weekend progressed as such: Friday night we checked in, went food shopping, ate dinner and went to bed. Saturday we went to Stone Harbor, played mini-golf, and went into Cape May to check out Ferry-ticket prices. The previous year on one of our many daytrips to Cape May, we mutually decided we were going to do the Ferry "next year" since it was pretty much the only thing we hadn't done. Staying true to our word, on Saturday, May 17, 2008, we found ourselves at the Cape May-Lewes Ferry port, checking out times and ticket prices. Deciding on the 4:30pm Ferry and still having hours and hours to kill, we went back to our hotel room and ate lunch. My hopelessness grew. He hadn't batted an eye, hadn't tried to hide his weekend bag, hadn't even paid any attention to it. I was convinced he had changed his mind and I was waiting for the ocean to wave up into our hotel room and sweep me out to sea. See what I mean? Talk about dramatic. Around three we got ready to go the Ferry and I kept an eagle eye on him as I got ready to go. Nothing. He didn't make one singular move towards his bag, nor did he glance at it. At one point I even gave him a hug and ever-so-subtley, I'm sure, grazed his pockets. He didn't even flinch. That sealed it for me: the engagement was off. Begrudgingly I took a bathroom break before we left, and we headed back out to the Ferry.

We boarded the boat, and it was magnificent. I had ridden on it once, when I was about seven years old, but had no memory of how big it was back then. This time, however, I was in awe. We watched the Ferry pull out of port, and off we went on our way to Lewes. On the Ferry, we had a really lovely time. We had some drinks, walked around the boat, sat up in the mezzanine section, had some more drinks, and walked around some more. When we docked in Lewes we ran into port to tap out money and use the facilities, and got back on the return boat to Cape May right before it departed again. Once we'd gotten on, we ordered up some more drinks [and surprisingly we were barely affected by all this drinkage.. I can only assume my utter, all-encompassing depression was preventing even the alcohol from letting me enjoy myself] and sat in the lounge until the sun started to set. Once it had, Dave asked if I wanted to walk around some more. I said yes, maybe in the hopes the boat would tilt and I would fall overboard, only to be eaten by a whale [my greatest fear, but let's not talk about it], and off we went. When we had arrived on Deck Three, we stood there looking out over the water and talking about how utterly breathtaking it was. And it really was. It was gorgeous — the sky was a beautiful pinkish orange color, the water was a navy blue/dark green, and the waves were just right [if you don't believe me, please take this moment to feast your eyes on the accompanying picture]. I felt Dave staring at me and when I turned to look at him, he said "I love you." My boy is a romantic, so this came as no surprise. I smiled at him and said, "I love you too", to which he responded, "Really?" To which I laughed and responded yes. I was noticing, however, that he was not letting my gaze drop. Slowly, he said "Well then I guess I only have one question" and right before my eyes, got down on one knee and pulled the most gorgeous ring I have ever seen out of his pocket. "Will you marry me?" I don't think I have to tell you that I must have said yes a thousand times, and I also don't think I have to tell you that I completely lost it and burst into tears, but I did both of those things. I immediately called my parents, who could barely hear me because A: I was crying, and B: my reception was cutting out. They heard enough though, and congratulated us. They also made fun of me for crying, of course, because they wouldn't be my parents if they hadn't. They told us they would tell my sister and brother-in-law, for whom they were babysitting my baby nephew Kai, and we hung up after getting disconnected three times. I then called my sister Meredith and shared the news with her, who also made fun of me for crying and wanted to know all the details. Once I had finished with my phone calls, I took a cell phone picture of my ring and sent it to literally everyone in my phone. Our boat docked in Cape May, he kissed me, and we got off the boat to go have a celebratory dinner at The Ugly Mug.

Needless to say, I was blind-sided. Dave had completely succeeded in making the proposal a complete surprise for me, despite my suspicions otherwise. And now here we are, MARRIED!!!!!, and I still absolutely cannot stop staring at my ring(s). Or my husband.