The Proposal

You just know

when you know.

And I know I love her

and

I can't wait for the rest of my life with her.

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OMG!!!

HOW DO I DO THIS?!!

DO YOU GUYS KNOW HOW HARD IT IS TO PROPOSE THESE DAYS?!!!

Do you know how much PRESSURE there is to make it really special?!!! IT'S INSANE!?!!

Everything has to be perfect. Like perfect - perfect!!!

The ring, how its done, the scene - ALL HAS TO BE SUPER DUPER SPECIAL!

Like Big Mac 'special sauce' special?

No. More like how-you-proposed-will-be-told-to-everyone-including-your-neighbour's-great-great-great grandchildren special.

So not only must it blow the socks off of her, but it needs to impress five generations thereafter! Talk about pressure!!

It needs to be sweet, romantic, sentimental and funny (all the typically girly requirements which of course is nearly impossible to do).

It's crazy!! This world has gone nuts I tell you.

Nuts.

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Three.

Four.

One.

or

Twelve?!!! WTFBBQ?!!

These are the month's salary I've been told I needed to save up for the engagement ring. I was like *choke* THAT MUCH?!!!! for an engagement ring?!!!

HOLY $&1)#!

Hahahaha

*DEEP SIGH*

It's the first real test of your love :P

But I knew I couldn't propose without a ring. This was something I needed to do.

I also knew that buying diamonds is really tricky. You can get really burnt if you didn't know what you're doing.

So I made sure I did a lot of research. I googled diamonds and learnt about the four C's. But most helpful was reading pages and pages of the Vogue forums. To catch a fish you need to think like fish!! Hehehe.

I also went on James-Bond-espionage-spy mode. I spied on her jewelery box when she wasn't looking (it wasn't hard, I've raided her underwear drawer many times). I checked the

type of rings she had and measured her ring size (her ring size = my pinky finger size! yes!)

Taking these into consideration, I felt I had enough material to go into a ring store without feeling completely lost. Power through knowledge!!

One Friday afternoon, I went to Tiffany's, Hardy Brother's and Rosendorff in the city. I think I spent a good half an hour on each store talking to staff and having a good look at what they had on display.

What made it easy was I knew exactly what I wanted, a beautiful solitary ring (to symbolise my one love.... awwwww.......)

The guy at Tiffany's was really nice. Really helpful and was really professional. I saw a ring there that I liked (I swear I heard music when I saw the ring).

Hardy Brother's were expensive. Even more than Tiffany's for a similar ring. Plus they made me join their email list which was very evil of them. Not a fan of the all-black interior look either.

The lady who helped me in Rosendorff was the best. She was very excited about my engagement and was very pleased to hear what style of ring I was pursuing. I actually liked what she suggested but when she started offering discounts for it, alarm bells started ringing. Suddenly I

wasn't very sure if I was getting a good deal or not.

But I didn't decide straight away.

I sat on a decision for two more weeks and I passed the shops a few more times.

In the end it came down to what felt right.

It was simple, it was beautiful, it was perfect.

The song by Deep Blue Something was one of the first guitar songs I learnt.

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Taylor Swift's song Love Story is the inspiration for my proposal.

Its a cute love song and I really like it! Its about love, its got Romeo and Juliet (for which my girlfriend has seen the movie a gazillion times, drooling all over Leonardo).

But the song's best part is the surprise proposal in the end! The music turns slow and melancholic.... which then builds pace and then BAM!!! HE KNELT TO THE GROUND AND PULLED OUT A RING!! Great finish!

I wanted to use this to spring my surprise proposal :P

I was contemplating singing the song and popping the question in the end.

Last time I sang for her on the guitar she was in tears, either she liked it or it was really bad. But to play the guitar and sing, knowing a proposal was to happen in the end sounded risky! She'd pick it from my voice that something was up.

Plus my Taylor Swift voice is VERY unromantic.

Maybe I'd propose by YouTube? Pre-record a song then post it on YouTube? Then we watch the video and pop the question right in the end?! Awesome!!!! :P

Very nerdy though :(

But the idea of a video proposal did grow on me :)

I thought about it a lot more and after much brainstorming I decided to match the cute song with a cute cartoon clip that I'd make.

Now I've done some cartoon sketching a long long time ago, so I was really rusty with my drawings.

To make a whole video required a lot of work. The whole exercise took four nights of brainstorming, sketching and storyboard planning. And it took a full day to put it all together.

I made a total of 140 animation cells for the video

In the end I finished with a very cute proposal video clip.

I'm really quite pleased with how it turned out.

It was cute, romantic, sentimental and special.

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We had breakfast at Monza that cloudy Sunday morning.

We both ordered dishes with eggs covered in Hollandaise sauce.

How come something so bad could be so good!

The big breakfast got us completely stuffed and so we went to Kings park to walk it off.

Kings park was beautiful that day.

All the flowers had bloom.

There were colours everywhere.

She was in a happy mood that morning (because I've fed her and she's had her coffee hehehe). and were sharing jokes and talking about random things.

Like what we always do.

After going down and up the Kokoda track, we found ourselves a tree to rest under.

We had a view overlooking the city.

The sun had come up and just being under the cool shade was really nice.

It was perfect.

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On the 18th of October, 2009, under the shade of a tree,

I proposed to her.

After she wiped away the tears, she said yes.