Meet {Bride & Groom To Be}: Luke & Marlene

 

 

{In his words....Groom to Be: Luke}

 



We met through mutual friends of ours, Chris and Nina Cardinal. Chris and I had been friends since 7th grade, and Marlene had just started working with Nina at their hospital.

Nina, ever the matchmaker, saw a common background in Marlene and I. She told me Marlene was perfect for me and offered her number. I had always been suspicious of setups, and at the time I wasn't interested in looking for some fabled perfect match, so I declined... But Nina gave me her number anyways.

Over a couple months, Nina subtly and gently demanded that I call her, and each time I held my stubborn ground. After three months of asking and denying, she mentioned that Marlene, and the rest of the floor at the hospital, had been waiting for me to call. Up until this point, I had no idea that anyone else knew about the proposed setup. I realized I was being manipulated, but there was also a girl waiting for some pigheaded ass to call her.

Not wanting to be a pigheaded ass, I picked up my phone and immediately called her... after pacing and worrying and planning out exactly what I was going to say for over an hour. I was relieved to reach her voice mail, so I could avoid an awkward conversation and just leave an awkward message instead.

 

After a week without a response, I wrote it off, and decided that she wasn't interested in talking to the jerk that waited three months. I went out to a late dinner with friends that Friday night, to have a few drinks and laughs and forget the whole thing. Before the drinks even came, Nina arrived from a bachelorette party with a friend in tow. Like a deer in headlights, I was introduced to Marlene.

I did my best to make conversation, but it was hard to listen while I thought about how much I deeply regretted my unshaven face, dirty pants, and awkward sobriety. We talked about her recent trip to Germany and she shared some pictures with me. I humblebragged about my recent experience as a guest chef. I must have made a good impression somehow, because I called her again that weekend and she agreed to go out on a date with me.

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Our first date had some odd weather for that time of year. It had been getting warmer and warmer that week, but the temperature dropped 20 degrees the night before and rain poured all morning. I kept thinking throughout the day that I needed to take an umbrella with me, just in case, but I couldn't find my old one. I made a trip to the store right before leaving, to pick up a new one. I wasn't sure what kind of umbrella would impress a date, but I tried to choose one that might.

I met her at the restaurant with a hug, fighting my awkward instinct to leave it at a smile and a wave. We started talking by the hostess, while we waited for our table. We were completely immersed in our conversation, distracted by each other, and we missed the hostess announcing that our table was ready. We talked for nearly an hour before I thought to ask the hostess again.

It was obnoxiously loud in the dining area, with a live band behind us. I tried my hardest to make Marlene smile and laugh with any weird story I thought of, while shouting over the noise of the band. She did laugh and smile, but I think that was less due to my humor, and more because of my silly, unintelligible yelling.

 

We quickly finished our dinner and left the building. It had drizzled while we were inside. It left the streets clean and it smelled of rain. More importantly, it was finally quiet. I asked if she wanted to walk around. I knew the area well; my senior prom had been held around the corner.

The entire time I prayed it would start to rain again. That way, I'd have an excuse to offer my jacket, and cozy up next to each other under the umbrella. I started talking about my prom experience, joking about how embarrassing everything was looking back. We talked about high school and growing up and our friends and family. We dropped all our pretenses about looking cool or acting sophisticated. 

In the end, it had been the most comfortable I'd ever felt on a first date. I was very attracted to her, but she also felt like a friend. We ended the evening with a promise for a second date... She told me much later that she thought the umbrella was charming.

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Our engagement story followed a similar theme. We were engaged 10 hours apart, with two very different proposal stories... It doesn't make sense at first, but it takes some explaining. We had talked about marriage for awhile. We both knew that we wanted to be with each other for the rest of our lives. But we also wanted it on our own terms.

I had already been preparing months beforehand. I asked my mom for our family ring, and I asked her father for his blessing—all very traditional.

For our second anniversary, we went up to Flagstaff, where we had our first vacation as a couple. Like many couples before us, she was waiting anxiously for a proposal at every turn, and I was completely oblivious. I had no intention of proposing on this trip.

 

The evening we arrived, we actually ended the night by arguing. During the day, we went to a beautiful winery south of Sedona followed by a romantic meal at a nice restaurant that evening. All the while, she was expecting me to drop to one knee. By the time we got back to the hotel, she was clearly frustrated. So we argued out of miscommunication, neither one of us really telling the other what we were truly thinking: I had wanted a relaxing trip up north, and she wanted a ring.

When I woke up in the morning, I silently thought to myself and stared at the ceiling. I knew, that despite the night before, I wanted to marry her, no matter what the terms. It was far from the perfect moment, but I knew. And rather than wait for some impossibly perfect scene, I asked her to marry me there, on the bed, unshowered, and without a ring. After convincing her that I was serious, she said yes.

I had already received my "yes", so I considered myself officially engaged. But to make the engagement official in her eyes, she needed a proper, dressed-up, romantic setting, one knee, shiny ring proposal. We decided to run back down to the valley and get the ring. Nothing ever goes off without a hitch, however, and we ended up spending an extra two hours replacing my car's battery in the rain before we left.

I sped down the 17, through wind and wet, trying to recover lost time. I dropped her off, and went to have the ring cleaned.

 

I thought the best place to "re-propose" was where we first met, the restaurant where Nina had launched us upon each other. It was a little French place, with a beautiful patio—brick fireplace, and surrounded by green plants, isolating us from the world around. It was closed that day, but I snuck us around the back and onto the patio.

It was starting to rain again, and I had brought the umbrella that I bought the day of our rainy first date. She held the umbrella while I held my hands around hers to keep them warm. I asked her if I had ever told her the story of my family heirloom. About 130 years ago, there was a man in Missouri with three daughters. Without a son, he couldn't pass on his name, but he wanted a way to leave a piece of himself with his family. So he gave them each a piece of jewelry, to be passed on to their first born. The eldest daughter did exactly that. She had a son, and he had a son, and he had a daughter, and she had a son, and each of them received the heirloom in turn.

I bent to one knee just as the sky turned from a drizzle to a pour, under the umbrella from our first date. With rolling thunder in the background, I asked her to marry me, to become a part of my family, to start our own family. I pulled out the heirloom I had hidden, my family's 130-year-old diamond ring. Ten hours after my engagement, she said yes again, and she had her engagement.