Today marks the seventh anniversary of the night we got engaged.

Seven years ago it was a rainy but mild Saturday. I had planned on popping the question that night, but it was to be a surprise and I had schemed the entire week and a half prior to get all of the pieces in place. We spent the day shopping for a chair and purchased a wingback chair* (from I forget where) mid-morning and came back to the duplex we were renting.

Fortunately, the Girlfriend had to go pick up some dry cleaning. So I took that opportunity to throw some of her clothes into a bag and head down to the Four Seasons (now the Fairmont Olympic Hotel) where I had previously made a reservation. I was able to upgrade to the Presidential Suite (nothing like a marriage propsal to get a free upgrade) and get the room set up for later that night.

I’ll skip the dinner part because, quite frankly, the restaurant wasn’t very good and I was pretty unhappy with the recommendation from a coworker. Suffice to say that we had an average meal at an average hotel restaurant.

But, the dessert was the piece de resistance (and, to be fair, this was where the brunt of the recommendation came from). I asked the restaurant to print up a special dessert menu with the last menu item being the actual proposal. I had to talk up the desserts at this place (because the food was really nothing special) to ensure that the Girlfriend would at least take a look at the dessert menu. I watched her scan it and then stop at the bottom at which point I produced the ring. Heh, not bad if I say so myself.

So then we headed to the Four Seasons and we had quite a nice rest of the weekend. We had “fancy brunch” at the Four Seasons and the funny part about that was the questionable choice of clothes I threw in a bag for her to wear the next day.

So here we are today. We had alphabet soup for dinner (homemade!), but we did add some brie and stilton and a nice sausage with some pears so it was pretty nice all-in-all.

* As an aside, our taste in interior decorating and furniture has changed considerably since then. We’re in the middle of a slow but sure migration to contemporary designs. Furniture, unfortunately, lasts a little while and is expensive to replace. More on that in future posts.