The first thing that I had to do when figuring out when to
propose to Mary Brannan was determine when I should propose. I have known for
some time that I wanted to marry this intricate being that I have been learning
so much about and falling in love with while dating. So, a proposal was
inevitable as I had to marry the person that I loved with all of my heart and
couldn’t live without. A part that played into when I would propose was based
off of Mary Brannan. If you have known Mary Brannan for any amount of time you
know that she LOVES Christmas. Her love for the holiday is thus the reason and
the season, no pun intended, for picking Christmas to propose. That and her
father informed me that I couldn’t propose to her until she graduated. With
those two objectives agreeing quite nicely I had a perfect time frame to
propose.
Next, I had to figure out somewhere to propose that would
show Mary Brannan that I care about what she cares about and that I want to
explore the world with her. After all, exploring the world with each other is
one of the reasons for us getting married. There have been countless phone
calls at night of us talking about places we want to visit. When we have
dropped each other off at the airport on different occasions we always comment
that we can’t wait to board a plane together. So my incessant desire to do
something that she wanted and to take a nice journey together led me to decide on
going to New York City.
Also, New York City
was a story that I had never heard before and that’s what I want our marriage
to be, a story that no one has ever heard before. That to me is a big challenge
because it is easy to settle for the normal and mundane because it is easy.
However, both of us know that there is something much more important than the
here and now that must shape how we, as a married couple, love each other and
others for the rest of our lives. Consequently in order to write a great love
story to my future wife, I figured New
York is the place to be during the Christmas
holidays. Also, there is something that Mary Brannan once told me that always
stuck out. This was that the last time she went to New York City no one went to the Metropolitan
Museum of Art with her. I felt this was totally unacceptable. Being that I love
her and that she loves art, I felt that she should have that opportunity. So we
have a time, Christmas, we have a place, New
York City, and now we need an actual proposal.
So what did I do, I did what any modern man does who has
little understanding of art dating a woman with an interest in art. I figured I
should propose to her in front of a piece of art. I figured a piece of art by
her favorite artist would be great, so I Googled “Sargent Metropolitan Museum
of Art”. This returned a series of paintings that spoke nothing of love and
passion for a woman. It returned a series of nude paintings of men and other
paintings that I do not yet have the artistic palette to appreciate. Sargent’s series
of paintings totally didn’t work. That led me to Google “Love and Marriage at
the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” This too did not return too much in the way of
amazingly romantic paintings to propose to her in front of, but there was one
special painting. I knew that this would be the perfect scene. So, in August I
booked our flights and out separate hotel rooms. I had the time, the place, the
setting to propose, the tickets to get us there, and plenty of time to stew
over the coming adventure.
I had to keep the secret of where I was taking Mary Brannan
for over four months. This proved to be quite difficult because of how excited
I was. I told my family in passing what I was thinking, but didn’t mention that
it was a secret. Someone mentioned our trip to New York one day in passing, but they were
able to recover without her figuring it out. Then after four months of her not
knowing anything someone let it slip that we had to take a flight to get there.
However, she still didn’t put it all together and I was able to surprise her.
I’m really glad it worked out, because she was honestly elated to be going. The
month leading up to our trip she even showed me how they put the tree up in the
Rockefeller center. I had to bite my tongue and even act disinterested to not
hint that we were going to be able see it. Keeping the trip a secret was fun in
and of itself.
The entire trip wasn’t planned until she knew where we were
going. I did this because I wanted her to play a part in making our adventure.
That meant once we got to our hotel we had to plan what we wanted to do. We got
a map from the front desk, marked all of the things we wanted to see, then we
made a route and times that we wanted to be at places by. This allowed us to
walk and see the Empire State Building,
the Rockefeller center, Times Square, and
Grand Central Station all within a three hour span. Then we went to China town for
Chinese food for lunch. We then proceeded to walk ALL around the financial
district trying to find the NYSE
Building before the bell
sounded. We couldn’t find the building, but were able to look out across the harbor
and barely see the Statue of Liberty before the sun set. We grabbed some coffee
from a Starbucks in down town and walked around until our time to go to the
9-11 memorial. The memorial is free, but they suggest a donation and require
you to schedule a time to visit. Despite the Freedom Tower
being under construction as well as other buildings that will be incorporated
into the memorial, there was still a lot to take in. It was sobering knowing
what once stood where I was standing. After our walk around the memorial, we
went back to the hotel to sit down for a second and plan the evening and print
off our tickets to go to the “Top of the Rock.”
Following our quick break we headed out for our evening
adventure. We ran to the Rockefeller center to make sure we could get tickets
to go to the top and we were able to get the last lift at 11pm. We then
proceeded to walk around the center and found a shorter than expected line for
ice skating. We could hardly contain ourselves. Here we are in New York City, at Christmas time, and we have
the chance to ice skate like you see in the movies. It was fantastic, at least
mostly fantastic. The exception for the moment was the three people who got
engaged on the ice rink while we were standing in line to get our rentals and
the one guy who was able to skate around alone on the ice with his girlfriend
for an entire song before he popped the question. Needless to say, my wonderful
girlfriend who thought I would have already proposed by now was not too
impressed. I knew I wanted to wait until the second day so that we could enjoy
the museum and enjoy the moment after being engaged without feeling like we
needed to go do something else. My plan seemed to make sense, but all Mary
Brannan knew was that there were several newly engaged women in New York City at that
moment and she was not one. It worked out well though because she had to rest
assured that I had it under control. After a wonderful hour of talking and
hanging out on the observation deck, at the top of the Rockefeller center, we
grabbed a hot dog from a stand and made our way back to the hotel, with Mary
Brannan unengaged and slightly wondering.
We were able to wake up the next day and get to the morning
show before it was over. We grabbed some breakfast at a Chinese place (the
first Chinese breakfast for Mary Brannan) and then we were off to the museum.
We found ourselves disappointed that some of her favorite American artists were
not on display, but still managed to see a few Matisse paintings and some other
really cool exhibits. One included furniture and silver, which we have both
begun to enjoy looking at when we go to museums. The other really neat one was
the armory and weapons exhibit. There we found entire suits of armor, knights
mounted atop horses with man and horse garbed in armor, and several different
nations and regions represented. We found it quite humorous how large the
European knights were compared to the Japanese samurai. Another neat thing that
I noticed was the style of armor and the period it was made in was reflected in
some of the Renaissance paintings that we later saw. This small correlation is
what Mary Brannan explained as one of the reasons she loves art. Art is often
times strongly influenced by the culture in which it is developed and therefore
is a gateway into history itself.
With only hours to spend in the museum and not days, as what
would be needed to really get everything out of the museum that you would want,
the clock began to quickly run out on our time. The museum exhibits are not
contiguous and are mainly exhibits off of corridors. Thus the exhibits really
don’t connect as they may appear on a map. We found ourselves very lost and
only moments to find the exhibit that contained the painting that I wanted to
ask this amazing woman to marry me. Finally, we found the exhibit and I began
to try to spot the painting and to prepare myself mentally. I had a good idea
of what I wanted to say, but was still getting nervous. We got to the room with
the painting and unfortunately the room really didn’t have much to offer for
her to look at so I had to figure out how to get her to hang around. I finally
got her to come back to the painting and look at the piece I had “found.” I cut
the camera on hoping that someone would come walking into the room. Finally,
someone came walking by and I asked him to take our picture. I proceeded to
explain that the picture was based off of Esther 2:17 and how Esther won grace
and favor of the king. I told her that I loved her and had grown to love her
while we had been dating and I asked if she would marry me. She said yes, even
though I didn’t get on a knee. We walked to the next room found a bench where
we sat and talked for a moment. Then went and grabbed a small bottle of wine in
the cafeteria and enjoyed the moment more. It was a great moment proposing to
her, even though she didn’t cry and even though I didn’t get to say everything
I had meant to say while not on one knee. We talked about how it was surprise
for her and how she couldn’t believe that I could wait so long. We discussed
all that was coming and how exciting it was going to be to be married soon. Our
time in New York
was coming to a close so we had to quickly get to the airport.
That wasn’t the end of the surprises though and I knew that
we needed to make sure we got back to Raleigh
on time. To our dismay though we only left two hours to cross town to get to
LaGuardia to catch our flight. We got to the subway, took the wrong train at
one point, only had 45 minutes to get to the gate, and I still hadn’t told
everyone that we were engaged. Luckily, another guy on our train was heading to
the airport too so we were able to share the cab fair and he told the cabbie
what he needed to know to get us there. That allowed us to get to the terminal
in enough time to let everyone know that we got engaged and were going to be on
the flight back.
When we got back into Raleigh
the last surprise was waiting for us in the terminal. Our family and friends
were there to meet us to congratulate us. It was really sweet seeing Mary
Brannan and her mom crying together and knowing that her parents approve of us
getting married. Also, the airport was the first time our families had met. The
dinner was a wonderful time for catching up on our fun trip and getting our families
acquainted. It was an amazing trip and planning out all of it was a lot of fun
too. I was so excited to be able to propose the way I did to Mary Brannan and
cast a vision of our future in far off lands with fun adventures.