The day Mr. Ly proposed to me was by far the happiest day of my life, to date. I'm not going to lie, I had my strong suspicions, and maybe had already told a bunch of people that I had these strong suspicions that Mr. Ly was going to propose to me on a specific date, at a specific place, and they better be ready for my phone call.
Here's the story of how I figured out what was going down, before he got down on one knee:
Teachers in NJ get a long weekend in November for a teacher's convention in Atlantic City. It's always on a Thursday and Friday, making a nice 4-day weekend, and last year it happened to coincide with Veteran's Day. Mr. Ly works for the government and gets Veteran's Day off anyway, so we had been toying with the idea of going away for the weekend. One thought was to go visit his family in Arkansas, but flights were a bit steep and we didn't really want to waste 2 of our 4 days traveling. Another idea was to visit my sister in Boston, but my mom had already claimed that (she's a teacher, too). Last year on Veteran's Day, we went to NYC just for the day, as part of Mr. Ly's birthday present. Mr. Ly has never been a huge fan of the city, but I was certain if I could show him the city I know and love (read: NOT Times Square), he would be a fan too. Maybe not to ever live there, but at least being okay for a day/weekend trip every now and then. We went to the "touristy" stops first on our trip (I was taking to him to see Avenue Q - so midtown was truly unavoidable), In keeping with the birthday themed surprise, I took Mr. Ly to FAO Schwartz to build him his own "whatnot" (a puppet that you can customize to look like someone).
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| At FAO Schwartz with Mr. Ly and his "Whatnot." Success! / Personal Photo |
Once that decision was made, the clues start rolling in that the proposal was going to happen THAT weekend:
Clue #1: My mom canceled her trip to visit my sister in Boston.
My sister at the time was 9 months pregnant with her first child (my mom's first grandchild), and my mom was taking EVERY opportunity to visit her both before and after the baby arrived, so when she told me she was no longer going to visit her that weekend, I was immediately suspicious. I didn't voice my suspicions to anyone, it just sparked something in my mind, and if that had been the only clue, I probably wouldn't have figured it out.
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| Mom, Me, & pregnant Liz at her baby shower / Personal Photo |
Mr. Ly is a planner, and something as big as a proposal, he wasn't going to go in cold. He had never been to the Brooklyn Bridge before, but knew it was one of my favorite NYC landmarks. He casually brought it up when were talking about our trip, "I think we should go to the Brooklyn Bridge while we are the city for our trip." Not suspicious yet. Agreeing, of course, and dropping it, I didn't think much about it. Until he got a little more specific. "So I was thinking Friday would be a good day to go to the bridge." Sure, whatever you want to do, Mr. Ly, I didn't think we really needed a schedule to visit the bridge, we weren't really scheduling our weekend there. But the waiting-bride-to-be in me got thinking about what day Friday was, it's 11/11/11, wouldn't that be an awesome date to get engaged? I never said that outloud, just thought it in my head. Then, Mr Ly asked me two very strange questions about the bridge that further solidified my suspicions - he asked me Are there places you can stop when you're on the bridge? and Can you talk while you're on the bridge, like have a conversation? Hmm.. Yes. to both, but why would you need to stop and talk? Flags raised.
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| Image via Brooklyn History |
He wanted to save having dinner at my favorite restaurant for Friday night. Joya is my all-time-favorite restaurant in Brooklyn, and I eat there every single time I am in the city, if I can. I usually go with two of my Brooklyn besties, and when I asked if one of my friends could join us, he said no. We don't ever exclude people from dinners unless it's like a special occasion. This wasn't a special occasion dinner, so why couldn't my friend join?
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| Mr. Ly experience JOYA for the first time, exactly one year before he will have it again at our "special occasion" dinner/personal photo |
Clue #4: Mr. Ly wanted to come home from NYC on Saturday.
Since we had a 4 day weekend, well I wanted to stay in the city through Sunday. It would give me more time to see my friends and enjoy the city. Plus we were booking our weekend through AirBnB (see Miss. Fox's review of AirBnB - I fully agree with how wonderful it is!) and a lot of places want to rent out their apartments for the entire weekend, not just Thursday - Saturday. I found the perfect place, it was in the same building where one of my best friends lives, and was available from Thursday-Sunday. I told Mr. Ly this, and how excited I was about the place, but he was ADAMENT about coming home on Saturday. Why, I persisted, we didn't have ANY plans that weekend. Why can't we just stay the extra day? No budging from him. We were coming home on Saturday. This isn't a huge clue, but added with the other clues about the weekend, knowing my mom was going to be around that weekend, made me think we all needed to be there for a reason.
The-Nail-in-the-Coffin-Clue #5: A friend congratulated us the week before it happened.
Here's the scene: BM Linda and GM Kevin (FSIL & FBIL) were hosting their annual fall party. Lots of friends we haven't seen in a while were there, lots of people were catching up, and lots of hushed conversations were going on that I wasn't a part of. No biggie. Mr. Ly and I were in the kitchen, chatting with a large group of friends, when one of Linda's friends came into the kitchen, saw us, and shouted across the room, "Oh my god, CONGRATULATIONS!" The room went silent. Seriously, I don't know how long it was quiet, but I looked at Mr. Ly, expectantly. And he said something, I have no idea what, but something that he seems to think was a really good cover. All I was thinking was OHMYGOD someone just congratulated us for being engaged, it is SO happening next week. I snuck off somewhere a few minutes later and texted my best friend that exact thing too. Needless to say, the friend was mortified, and we have all laughed about after the fact, but it was that moment that told me for sure, I only had another week (longest week of my life) to wait.
In hindsight, if it hadn't happened when I thought it was going to, I probably would have been very upset the rest of the weekend. Possibly even angry at Mr. Ly, but for something that I couldn't explain to him or even have any justification to be angry. And have to eat a lot of humble-pie to all those people I told I was so sure it was going to happen. I probably should have just kept all these suspicions to myself, but I was far too excited about the possibility.
Thankfully I didn't have to worry about any of that, because this happened, right when I thought it would:
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| Image courtesy of Parker Lane Photography |
What do you think of my detective skills? I am sure I'm not the only bride who has ruined the surprise for herself!
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