Yes, it’s official. After much thought and deliberations I have finally become engaged to my darlin sweetheart Stacebug.

The two of us were great friends throughout most of high school, although we went separate ways after graduation and lost track of each other. After six years of living our lives apart we ran into each other at a local pub and we have been together ever since that night 3 years ago. We moved in together back in April and a few weeks ago I purchased her a ring. We had planned a summer vacation in the Outer Banks at a beach cottage, and Stacy, who loves vacations, decided that she couldn’t wait the 6 weeks for the beach and booked us a romantic getway at a B&B called Cooper’s Landing. I decided that a hot air balloon ride the day before our scheduled interim vacation would be the perfect time to pop the question.

I spent weeks looking for rings on Craigslist and placing bids on eBay. I had told Stac that I had ordered some computer parts from Newegg and was expecting a package in the mail so that she would not be suspicious. When the shipment was late and I became concerned that I may have been ripped for for several thousand dollars I became very distraught and manic before I was able to pick up the ring from FedEx. (Stacy would later remark “you did seem pretty upset over what was supposed to be a $40 stick of memory.”) With the ring safely hidden away in my sock drawer I was ready to proceed with the planning for the 2nd part of my plan, the balloon flight.

I found Balloons Over Virginia after a lot of searching and phone calls, and the proprietor, Gilbert Martin, and myself traded correspondence for several weeks leading up to the big date. Since ballooning can only be done in good weather, the two of us would have to make a decision a day or two before the planned date to make sure that the weather would cooperate with us. There was also the fact that a flight would have to occur in the early morning before air tempatures hit their August norms and prevented the balloon from ever going aloft. And therein lay my biggest challenge. Getting my girlfriend up at 4:30 in the morning for a one hour drive to Richmond without her becoming overtly hostile or catching on to what I was doing.  Stacy had told me time and time again that a hot air balloon ride was one of her dreams, and I knew that it would be the perfect surprise. I also knew that if I let on about the balloon ride she would see the ring coming a mile away. I brainstormed ideas in my head and bounced them off my friends. How would I get her to Richmond in the early morning to pull off this surprise? I thought about planning a fake white water rafting trip and a few similar ideas, but nothing solid had come together as the big day drew near.

Then things got really complicated.

The balloon flight was already costing me $250 a person, and I had decided not to pay the additional $250 to make it a private balloon flight. The way I saw it, I didn’t have any problems with two strangers being in the basket when I proposed, and chances were slim that anyone else would book that day, being a Friday in mid-August. Then Gilbert (who I had told all about the engagement angle of this trip) called me and said that a TV crew from the local Richmond CBS affiliate, TV6, wanted to shoot a human interest story on hot-air balloon and he wanted to know if I had a problem with a camera crew being there with us.

I replied that it wasn’t a problem at all.

My excitement level during all of this planning had been gradually reaching toward a boiling point. I had confided in several of my coworkers on ring selection and the flight plans, but after being told that we were going to be on TV I almost went into full-on manic Mike mode. I went crazy, telling the details to everyone that would listen and pretty much not getting any work done. I had already arranged to take that Friday off, and after getting confirmation from Gil that the TV crew would be there, I went ahead and told the boss I wouldn’t be coming in that Thursday either.  I left work that Wednesday high as a kite on adrenaline.

Stacy came home from the gym that afternoon wearing sweats and a post-workout sheen. We were in the office where she admonished me for being a slacker in taking the day off, and nonchalantly mentioned that she needed to go into work for an hour Friday morning to get a PPD removed.

“um… you can’t do that”

“um…why not?”

“um..cause I got something special planned”

“what is it?”

“it’s a surprise”

And from there I knew I had lost. We wen’t back and forth for several minutes, Stacy demanding to know what the surprise was and me trying to tell her nothing. She went into full on nag-mode, telling me that she hates surprises, that she didn’t trust me, (Stacy doesn’t trust anyone AT ALL, least of all people me,) and refusing to go on any kind of a trip with me at all unless I told her what it was.  And so, less than 48 hours away from pulling off the most awesome engagement evar, I did the one and only thing possible to win the argument and shut her up.

I reached into my sock drawer, removed the ring from its case, got down on one knee and asked, “will you marry me?”

She was shocked and awed into silence for a moment before saying yes, as I had done my best to make it known to her that she would not be seeing an engagement ring for at least six months out. I explained to her all the machinations that had been going on behind her back unbeknownst to her for the past few weeks, and how she had ruined it all so close to the execution. We snapped a picture of the moment for our own private consumption, laughed over the fact that I had proposed to her in her sweatpants, and spent the rest of the evening calling our friends and telling the story I have just related to dozens of our friends.

So that’s it. I’ll just close in saying that the balloon ride went as well as we had hoped, and that you can see the video here on the WTVR website. (Window Media popup warning!) After the flight we had a beautiful weekened at the Cooper’s Landing, of which I cannot say enough good things about. We were the newly engaged super-couple, and we had a great time.

I’d like to give a special thanks to Gilbert Martin and his crew at Balloons Over Virginia for showing us a great day, and to Jessica Noll and her camera guy for putting us on the screen.