As I mentioned in a previous post, it is hard to keep a secret in our house. This is because our favorite thing to do with surprises – even small ones – is to come up with obscure, tangentially related hints, then see if the other person can guess what it is. For example, last month Mr. Guinea Pig called me at work and said, “I have a surprise for you to guess: you can’t touch it, and it’s related to the Wizard of Oz”. I’ll spare you the random guesses I texted to him all day – when I came home I found that Mr. GP had gotten a (long overdue) oil change for my car! Wizard of Oz -> Tin Man -> Oil. Of course. 
Naturally, the hints just make me more curious to know what a surprise is, which leads to a lot of time spent quizzing Mr. Guinea Pig about birthday gifts, anniversary plans, and of course – the proposal (you’d think I’d just let that one be a surprise, but noooo). Thus by December, I was pretty sure Mr. GP was going to propose within the month, but I (mistakenly) thought it would be on our 11-month anniversary. When that came and went, I assumed that he would wait until our one-year anniversary, and sort of forgot about it. Then we went to my parents’ house for Christmas, and I walked into my dad’s office one day to have both Mr. GP and my dad yelp in surprise and tell me to get out! When my mom was secreted away to the office while my dad distracted me, I thought, ‘Aha! Sometime soon.’
Christmas day rolled around, we had a great day of celebrating, and Mr. Guinea Pig randomly changed into khakis and a sweater in the afternoon. I noticed and thought it was odd (we’d all been wearing jeans) but decided perhaps he thought he had to dress up for Christmas dinner. After dinner with my parents and sister, Mr. Guinea Pig asked me (for the second or third time that day) if I wanted to watch Tropic Thunder that night. We had talked about watching it sometime during the trip, but I thought Christmas was sort of a weird time to watch the movie, so I had been reluctant to say yes all day. At about 9 PM, things were quiet, so I figured why not watch Tropic Thunder and asked, “Do you want to see if my family wants to watch?” (Since they had mysteriously disappeared.) Mr. Guinea Pig said, “Nah, I asked them. They don’t want to.” At that response, I got a little suspicious because my parents are always up for a movie, but he put the DVD in and the menu came up as Tropic Thunder, so I dismissed my suspicion.
Then I hit play. After the first strains of our favorite song, “Oh! Darling” by the Beatles started to play and the first picture of us came up on the screen. I hazily realized what was happening and only knew that my heart rate had suddenly skyrocketed. I turned to Mr. Guinea Pig, who got down on one knee, said some very sweet things we can’t for the life of us remember, and asked me to marry him. After a resounding, “YES!” there was a small pause, and I said, “What do I do now?!” Mr. GP laughed, handed me a ring, and said, “I think you put this on.”
(Light Ceylon sapphire center stone with diamonds down the sides!)
(The lovely ring on a paper flower)
(Definitely my favorite piece of jewelry)
The rest of the evening consisted of lots of happy celebrating with my family (who knew the whole time, and had been sitting in a bedroom waiting!), drinking champagne, and my parents asking if the slideshow of photos Mr. Guinea Pig had made was ’safe’ for them to watch (yes).
(right after we got engaged – my eyes are still puffy from crying)
Was your proposal a surprise? A complete surprise, or a semi-surprise like mine (I saw it coming, but didn’t know exactly when)? Were your family or friends in on the secret?
This article was originally posted onWeddingbee.
