10 Years, 4 flats, 2 lockdowns, 1 lodge in a Royal Park and 1 house later...

2024: The Proposal

By Ciarán

Planning a surprise proposal for Amber when we spend basically all of our free time together proved a challenge! Perhaps I can use that as an excuse for taking 10 years to manage it...

I started planning for our 10th anniversary (Friday 15th November) to be the big day in the Summer of 2024 and arranged a first visit to the jewellers. Amber's suspicions were instantly raised when I said I was going into town to buy new shoes and came back empy handed, but luckily most of the rest of the planning was done over email. As the weeks and months wore on it was looking increasingly unlikely that I was going to be able to pull this off in time, but my big break came when my parents came up for a walk one weekend and Amber was feeling unwell and decided not to join. After seeing my parents off to the station (at this point I had decided to keep it a secret from everyone) I slipped back into town and finalised the design but was told it was unlikely the ring would now be ready until the Monday after the anniversary.

Wed 13th - a missed call from the jewellers, the ring was ready for collection! The next day Amber was going into London for a school trip so this was going to be my only chance to pick it up before we drove down to Bath on the Friday evening. I moved my tutoring session to online and left work as early as I could to get to the shop before it closed at 5pm. However the fates and three different sets of roadworks in the centre of St. Albans were against me and my estimated arrival time slowly ticked passed 5pm. Luckily the good people of Wharton's unlocked for me when I got there at 5.15pm and I managed to avoid a fine for my suspect parking on the road outside. My luck was beginning to turn!

Disaster struck again upon arrival at home as Amber was there! The almost simultaneous "what are you doing here?", was followed by a reasonable response from her (grabbing dinner before the trip) and some vague nonsense from me (my tutee is busy later so wanted to do it online instead) and provided enough cover for me to keep the bag out of sight.

Despite very nearly deciding to delay to the following day on the drive down (how romantic is it really going to be when we arrive in Bath at 10pm after a full day of work, a two and a half hour drive and a burger king for dinner...) the rest of the proposal went off without a hitch. The place we were staying in was incredible and after a brief dip in the hot tub before the 11pm curfew, I got down on one knee and pulled the ring from the pocket of my robe. 💍🥂