How We Met
The week after Super Bowl XLVI, as the last of the ticker tape on Broadway was being swept from the streets after the New York Football Giants won their second title, two thirtysomethings happened to sit down next to each other at the now infamous Whiskey Tavern in Chinatown. The girl, Stacy, was quite content to just read her magazine and drink her beer in peace. The boy, Drew, was too busy arguing outside on the phone to bother striking up a conversation with a woman who obviously wanted to be left alone. They might never have crossed paths again but, as fate would have it, they lived one block from each other, destined to transform a chance encounter on a barstool into a lifelong romance.
The Proposal
Early evening on April 22nd, 2014, which coincidentally happened to fall on Earth Day and the 20th wedding anniversary of his father and step-mother, Drew suddenly decided to propose at a small cabin just down the way from William Faulkner’s Rowan Oak Estate in Oxford, Mississippi. As Drew paced nervously after retrieving the ring he’d secretly been travelling with, Stacy was getting ready for a romantic dinner at City Garage downtown. Nearing the middle of a month-long southern road trip, it was probably the nicest both of them were going to look until they returned home and, suddenly, the timing just felt right. In a move that would have made his mother proud, Drew dropped to one knee on the old wooden floor and asked for Stacy’s hand as she rushed through the cabin to grab one last thing for their dinner date. Bitten by surprise and rocked to her core, she mercifully said “Yes!” and Drew stood to slide the ring onto her finger. As the white magnolias bloomed around them, the ring sparkled and smiled as they walked along the road towards a night that just a few moments before seemed a little more ordinary. Now, it was suddenly a celebration of their engagement and, unknown to them, the entire town was ready to celebrate with them while the rest of the world waited to hear the good news.