Lisa and Blake – Engaged!

One of my favorite things about meeting couples is hearing their romantic stories about how they met, why they fell in love, the proposal… Well, folks, Lisa and Blake win. Seriously. I’m just going to pick one of their ridiculously sweet stories (not because there aren’t twenty more, because believe me, there are…) to give you an idea of how adorable these two are.

The Proposal: One night Lisa and Blake go out for Chinese food. As is their custom, they each choose a fortune cookie for the other, and hand it over. On this particular night, Lisa has NO fortune in her cookie. Kinda weird, but they move on. Blake opens his cookie, says he doesn’t want to give her the wrong idea for her birthday, and stuffs the fortune in his pocket without letting her see it. Like most girls would, Lisa patiently waits for just the right moment to steal the fortune. It reads: “Be prepared to receive something special.” Now she’s certain Blake will propose the following week, on her birthday. Only he doesn’t.

After getting over her incorrect assumption, Lisa leaves for Costa Rica, to teach. She’s gone for a month and a half, and can’t wait to see Blake at the airport when she returns. She finds out at the last minute that he isn’t going to meet her there, and is understandably confused, hurt, angry… Her parents don’t take her home, though; they give her a boarding pass to another plane headed for San Antonio, where Blake has been visiting friends. Lisa suspects nothing. She is mainly irritated that he is in San Antonio, obviously more concerned with friends, drinking, and sports, than with her return. While exiting the plane, though, she decides he’ll probably be waiting at the gate with flowers, so she begins to get excited again. Only he isn’t there.

She wanders amongst the strangers in the airport, growing more hopeless and disappointed. A chauffeur approaches her, asking if she is Ms. Manson (Blake’s last name). Lisa gets into the limo, and is driven to the Hyatt. She slowly looks around the lobby, but still doesn’t see Blake. The doorman asks her if she has a reservation, and she says she doesn’t know. “Oh, right this way, Ms. Manson,” he says. She is let into a room that is filled with hundreds of roses. I think it’s important to note at this point in the story, that Lisa swears she had NO IDEA that Blake was going to propose. The combination of exhaustion from international travel added to the stress of all the unexpected changes and everything… well…

Lisa is so upset that Blake wasn’t at the airport (either time) to meet her, that she barely notices the flowers. She is asking him why, but he is only smiling. She finally catches a breathe and begins to see what is all around her. Her eyes fall on a small box on the desk. She hurries to it, crying, hands shaking. She opens the box to find her ring – which isn’t there! What she finds is a fortune, from a dinner months earlier. “Be prepared to receive something special.” When she turned around, Blake was on his knee, with the gorgeous ring he forged himself (yes, really… he hand-made the ring and wore it on his pinky finger the whole time she was in Costa Rica), asking her to be his wife.

The final surprise came when the excited pair went downstairs to eat. Both families, who had known all about Blake’s very elaborate planning, were waiting to congratulate and celebrate with the very lucky, very happy couple.

Now, we’re super excited to get to play a part in the romantic story of their wedding day, which will take place in October, in Belize!