mary-masked
Holy Shit I Got Engaged
Published: May 22nd 2017, 2:39:32 pm
Johnny and I have been talking about getting married for a while. We held off a long time because it seemed smart to let the early relationship delirium wear off, make sure we could live together, make sure he really *was* comfortable being poly since he'd never done it before, etc.
My parent's engagement story consisted of my mom saying to my dad "Do you wanna just get married?" And, while their relationship is the very model of what a marriage should be, I hoped for something with a bit more romance. So I told Johnny that, while I didn't want an expensive diamond (or really a diamond at all, I've seen that movie) I *did* want him to propose to me and I wanted him to do something special for it, if only to set it aside from the myriad of times he said "Marry me" when I did anything he was particularly fond of.
I didn't expect anything super fancy. I hoped for something slightly more unique that the usual ring in a champagne, but a lot of our friends have done proposals during the curtain call of shows they were in, so I thought something like that would be nice. Johnny decided this needed to be a *project* and he's terrible at keeping secrets so he's spent the last few months saying things like "I'm really excited about this proposal I'm planning for you but I can't tell you about it." Which was, honestly, adorable.
Some friends of ours bought tickets to Hamilton a year or so ago, and they bought tickets on multiple dates, knowing that they could resell whichever tickets fell on a date that didn't work for them. So we managed to get tickets from them for the regular high price, rather than the astronomical price that most people are paying. And by incredible coincidence, that date fell five weeks after my friend James moved into the roll of Lafayette/Jefferson. So I was already excited about that day, but then Johnny was a little *too* insistent that I not take any gigs after the (matinee) show and I started to get suspicious.
"If I guessed when the proposal was going to be," I asked him, "would you want me to say anything?"
"When do you think it's going to be?" He asked. I told him and he waited just a hair too long before saying "Nope! You're wrong! That's not when it is!" and then leaving the room.
About three minutes later he came back to sheepishly ask
"But if you *did* guess it, would you want me to tell you?"
I laughed ans said no and resolved to at least pretend to be surprised. Days went by and more hints were dropped by accident. Johnny mentioned that my parents might visit that weekend, which would be an odd thing for them to tell him, but not me. He made a big deal about how we should dress up nice for this restaurant my friend recommended we go to after the show. I used Johnny's computer for something and tried desperately to ignore a FB pop-up notification that said something about someone posting to the secret facebook group "May 20th, don't tell Mary Cyn." I saw my friend Sarah on Thursday and as she left she said "Well I'll see you on...SOME TIME. PROBABLY NOT VERY SOON."
I was *pretty sure* I was getting engaged on the 20th and had already gotten zen with it so by the time Friday night rolled around and Johnny came home and said
"Hello, my love, are you ready for our Musical Engagement Weekend?" I didn't even notice that he COMPLETELY BLABBED the big secret he'd been trying so hard to keep. He is, in fact, SUCH a bad liar that less than 20 minutes later he was talking about work and said "And, whatever, if my boss gives me shit I'll just be like 'Sorry, I got engaged this weekend.'" then he realized what he'd said, bit my shoulder as a diversion tactic, and then ran away. But, again, I was already so sure that we were getting engaged that weekend, I completely forgot that he wasn't supposed to tell me about it.
At this point, we were all but saying "I'M NOT GOING TO PROPOSE THIS WEEKEND *WINK WINK*" and "I DEFINITELY DON'T EXPECT YOU TO PROPOSE THIS WEEKEND *WINK*"
To be honest, I'm glad that I knew what was happening otherwise there was a very good chance that I would have gone to this engagement dressed like a shlub, or not wearing any makeup. Also, that morning he was visibly on the verge of a panic attack so I decided to drop the pretense, take him in my arms, and reassuringly whisper "I'm going to say yes."
That calmed him down enough to make the joke "You're going to say yes, to Hamilton?"
And he actually managed to surprise me a little because I was expecting it to happen at the post-hamilton party (arranged via secret FB group) but, since my friend James was in the show and took us on a tour of the stage Johnny actually proposed to me ON THE SET OF HAMILTON. Which is just about the best proposal story I could have. And it was perfect for me since I was practically born in a theatre.
I promise not to fill this patreon with a lot of wedding related posts but I wanted to share this story since A: it's hilarious. and B: I think there's a way to turn it into an article.