cindy.and.chris
November 2006
the.proposal
cindy's version:
Chris and I made a trip out to the East Coast because I had to attend an alumni
delegate conference at Yale (a whole other story in itself) and my friend was getting married in New York.
Chris and I took a red-eye from California and arrived in an unseasonably warm New Haven on Thursday, November 9th.
Chris worked on shooting "Missions: Impossible 2" (the sequel to a short spoof movie he made a couple years ago)
with some Yale friends, while I went to lots of meetings with old white men in tweed sport coats and bow ties.
Chris had told me to meet him at 4:00pm so we could all go up to East Rock (which overlooks all of Yale and New Haven)
to shoot a scene for the movie. So we drove up to East Rock and took in the warm and cloudless New England dusk,
with brilliant shades of gold and orange adorning the trees and sprinkled on the ground, and the sun beginning
its descent into radiant folds of pinks and purples. Chris and I were shooting a scene in the movie where I handed
over a makeshift briefcase filled with cookies (the ransom). During the last take of the scene, I opened the
briefcase/bag and found a box sitting on top of the cookies. I thought, "Oh no! Chris messed up the scene with
this random box that he's stuck in here." Then, as the film was still rolling, Chris said, "What is this?" and I
thought, "Oh no! Now he's messing up his lines!!" Then Chris took out the box and started getting down on one knee
when I said, "It's dirty!" referring to the muddy ground on which he was about to place his nice clean pants.
Chris, in his nervous state, said, "What? No it's not! I polished it this morning." Then Chris said that he wanted
to take me up to East Rock because it was a special place for us. It was where we filmed our first (and his favorite)
movie together and where we had always loved watching the sunset. He asked me to marry him and I said yes. Then we
hugged and our friends left us alone to enjoy the rest of the sunset and the crisp yet gentle New England fall.
We prayed together and I cried as we reflected on five bittersweet years together and beheld the beauty of God's
creation in sunsets and in togetherness.
Chris also planned a surprise engagement party for me later that night, where lots of friends came to
celebrate with us. I was reminded of what amazing friendships we've been blessed with, as our friends raised their
glasses to us, shared with us their encouragements and exhortations, and unhesitatingly prayed for us.
The backstory/Why I wasn't surprised:
1) My mother. My mom cannot keep secrets. A couple of weeks ago my mom sent me a long string of forwarded emails,
one of which said, "Chris is going to propose to Cindy when they go to New Haven in November." aiya.
2) My astute powers of deduction. When I realized that Chris was going to have us go up to East Rock for the movie,
I figured that he would propose there because we love East Rock and because Chris is pretty predictable :).
3) An accident. When Chris and I were in the car on our way up to East Rock, Chris was wearing a nice suit jacket
that I didn't recognize. I sort of hit him and said "Where's this jacket from?" but happened to hit him in the exact spot
of the ring box. oops.
4) Friends. The engagement party was almost a surprise until 15 minutes before the party, when a friend said to Chris,
"Hey, so you sent an evite!" to which Chris responded, "What? I don't know what you're talking about. What?"
Then Chris could only hang his head and say, "So close. So close."
chris' version:
It was August when Cindy told me that she would be going back to New Haven for an alumni conference. I had asked her parents for her hand a few weeks earlier, knowing that I wouldn't be proposing until the autumn (a strategic move - in case they said "no," I would have a few buffer months to bust out my persuasive argument skills and change their minds). But I still had no idea how to propose.
It is the preponderance of websites such as this that raise the stakes and challenge the creativity and ingenuity of every man who intends to propose to his girlfriend. Women these days hear of so many wonderful surprise proposals that they come to expect a similar story will be written for them. Cindy wasn't much different.
So it occurred that I spent many sleepless nights brainstorming ideas, looking for the perfect proposal. (Guys, email me if you want me to throw some ideas your way). I tested ideas out on friends who asked - each one not knowing that what I was telling them was merely one of several ideas in competition (haha, tricked you, Esther!).
But in August, shortly after Cindy said she would be going to New Haven, I found my plan. You have to wake up pretty early in the morning to fool Cindy, and I like to sleep late. My surprise proposal seemed almost doomed from the start.
East Rock - that gorgeous mountain that overlooks New Haven - was the place where I first met Cindy (then, a freshman) at a picnic. A year later, I began casting her in my student films, one of which took place on East Rock. After we started dating, we would often drive up there to watch sunsets and marvel at the beauty of the city below.
So in an attempt to surprise her, I planned to shoot a sequel to one of my parody films (my favourite genre). I took a day off from work, wrote the script and did pre-production coordinating with my usual Solid Gold Productions crew (a cadre of my buddies who acted in and helped shoot all my films). I wrote a pivotal scene for Cindy and me to meet on East Rock, and the plan was in motion.
On the day of the shoot, my buddies and I were busy editing the footage that we shot earlier in the morning (we actually shot the whole movie, so that it wasn't just a fake script), when Cindy showed up for her scene. I had been so caught up in editing that I almost forgot to bring the ring to East Rock. Right before we left, I said, "Hold on, I forgot something" and went fishing into my messenger bag, dropped the ring box into my inside jacket pocket and grabbed a miniDV tape as a decoy, which I threw to my DP Sam. Except I couldn't hide the silly grin on my face, which I totally thought would give away my plan. Luckily Cindy didn't see it. Unluckily, she poked me in the ribs exactly where the ring was hidden.
While we were up there, we shot the entire scene straight from the script. And then I told Cindy we needed footage of her walking away from me toward the car. This was just a ploy to get her back turned so that I could put the ring box into the briefcase. After that, I made us do the scene again so that I could propose and by now you've read how it all happened in Cindy's story, so I won't repeat it (plus she stole all my jokes). Even though she wasn't surprised, it was a sweet (and by sweet, I mean ausome) way to begin the new stage in our lives as an engaged, wedding-planning couple.