Wedding Journal

Since Aly has so eloquently related the story of my proposal, I shall give you the story leading up to the moment — specifically the procurement of the ring. Before I begin, you should be aware of the following key fact:

I don't own a car.

I ordered the ring and had it shipped to my shared group house in Ballston; however, I was rarely there. Instead, I preferred to spend most of my time at Aly's much more spacious apartment. My roommates, like me, all worked during the day and couldn't sign for a FedEx package that kept being delivered at 11 a.m. or so. Hence, the ring ended up at the local FedEx distribution facility after three days of attempted delivery. I pondered my dilemma late on a Wednesday night in Aly's apartment. How would I get the ring without Aly knowing (or worse, driving me to sign for the package?) Could I pull this off in time to propose during our Chicago trip? Our flight was scheduled for 8 p.m. the next evening; we'd planned to go to the airport straight from work. I realized that I had to pick it up myself, and so I concocted the following plan: I would drive a rented vehicle (specifically a Zipcar) to the facility during my lunch break on Thursday and procure the ring.

I pulled out my wallet and checked for my Zipcard (the card you use to unlock the doors of Zipcar vehicles) upon deciding on the aforementioned plan. I came up empty — the card was back at the Ballston house, while I sat at my laptop in Aly's apartment. It was around 1 a.m. I checked to see that Aly was asleep and snuck out to her car. The gas was almost empty — this had been a topic of conversation earlier that evening — and I knew I wouldn't make it to Ballston and back. I went to the gas station and put in exactly one dollar of gas (not much these days since prices are so absurdly high), and watched the needle inch up a bit when I started the car. Perfect. I drove to Ballston and found the Zipcard rather quickly; after tucking it away in my wallet, I drove back to Alexandria and Aly's apartment. I arrived around 2 a.m. and went to bed.

Aly asked me if we should fill up the gas tank the next morning, and I replied, "It looks like the needle's gone back up a bit overnight. I guess we were just parked on an incline or something. Anyway, I think we'll be able to make it to work ..."

At around 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, I walked a couple blocks from my office to the location of the nearest Zipcar — a Toyota Prius with XM Satellite Radio installed on the rearview mirror — and unlocked the door with the Zipcard. I drove down to the FedEx facility, signed for the package, and got lunch at Quiznos. After I returned to my office, I tucked the ring away in my backpack for our trip to Chicago that evening. It didn't leave the backpack until just after sunset on Saturday.

Addendum:

1. I drove around a little bit more once I got back to Alexandria so the needle would go down further — a low-tech way to cover my tracks. I'm just glad we weren't doing this based on mileage; I would have had to run the car in reverse like they did in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
2. I noticed that Aly had posted to her blog while I was out doing my thing, and nearly freaked out. Turns out she had gotten up, looked around the apartment for me, and gone back to bed when she didn't see me. She had assumed that I was downstairs gathering laundry from the dryer. Whew!

Posted by Rob at 4:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Rob and I flew out to Chicago for the weekend of August 19-22 to visit friends and explore the city at a leisurely pace. That Saturday, we visited the beautiful Baha'i Temple north of Chicago and had dinner in Evanston. After dinner, we took the El back to town, got off at the Bryn Mawr stop and walked a few blocks east until we ran into Lake Michigan and the northernmost part of Chicago's Lincoln Park.

We walked out onto Kathy Osterman Beach, where we found a fishing pier that extended out into the lake (aerial photo). Sunset was fast approaching, and we decided that the pier would be the perfect place to take in the scene, with a great view of the beach, downtown and the lake itself. Near the end of the pier was a lookout tower (closed to the public), and we walked around the tower and sat down. At very the end of the pier, maybe 50 feet away, a woman stretched with practiced yoga motions.

The sunset that evening was spectacular. Between the recent rains and the air show going on that weekend, the clouds were incredibly varied, ranging from wispy contrails to plump "cotton balls." And as the sunset dropped further into the horizon, the colors that played across the clouds kept changing and deepening even as the clouds slowly drifted across the sky.

I think Rob wanted to pop the question there, on the pier, but, 45 minutes later and the sunset almost over, Yoga Lady was still doing her thing. And when a boisterous foursome came out to our end of the pier and sat down next to us, we decided it was time to leave.

We walked back down the pier to the beach, and over to a grassy, tree-covered spot labelled Contemplation Point on our map. Sitting on a concrete bench, we chatted and watched the rest of the sun sink out of view.

Then, under the pretense of looking for a cellphone, Rob reached into his backpack and pulled out a square box. "I'm going to do this right," he said, a tinge of nervousness in his voice.

He walked around the bench and knelt down on his left knee. As he opened the box to reveal the ring, he asked, "Will you marry me?"

A huge grin on my face, I said yes.

Posted by Aly at 1:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

We announced the news of our engagement to some of our friends via instant message, with a simple query:

What do you like better? robandaly.com or hurtsapong.com?

Since most of our friends are somewhat geeky, just about everyone understood right away that we were talking about a domain name for a wedding Web site. And while hurtsapong.com was a sentimental favorite, robandaly.com seemed like the best way to go.

So here we are.

Rob and I are still getting our stuff together, confirming the wedding party and other details, not to mention a lot of other non-wedding-related things going on. Once everything settles down a bit, expect to see more here about our wedding plans and the preparations for the Big Day and beyond.

Posted by Aly at 11:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)