Our Story
The story begins somewhere in the bowels of Somerville, Massachusetts on a cold Halloween night…
He says:
“You know those nights where the sights, the sounds, the events, and the feelings are so deeply imprinted on your memory that years later, they still feel like just the other day? That Halloween night, I went to a party deep in a part of Somerville I had never seen before. Dressed in a wolf suit as Max from Where the Wild Things Are, I boarded the 86 bus from Allston with a 6-pack in hand, and headed to a house whose occupants I barely knew. When I arrived, the party had already spilled out of the house and into the yard and street. Hundreds of people arrayed across the whole spectrum of dress (and undress) packed into a Boston triple-decker, making one kind of mischief and another. Amidst the wild rumpus, a quiet spark flashed… and then promptly went out. I was introduced to a candy corn, a girl who was roommates with a friend of mine from BC. We exchanged pleasantries, and then we moved on with our lives…
…Or so I thought until fate intervened again. As the party raged to its conclusion, a ragtag menagerie of costumed partygoers piled in with our driver, and I found myself once again next to the candycorn. This time, the clown car environment made ignoring each other impossible, so we got to talking. And when we stopped for pizza we talked some more. And when she and her roommate missed the last train back to Quincy and had to crash at my place we talked some more. And when my “famous” oatmeal took 25 minutes to cook in the morning we talked some more. And just when it seemed she was going to walk out of my life again, I slipped her her my number and the story went on...”
Our story continues on top of a big hill in some romantic city or other…
She says:
Fast forward about three years: it's June 2017 and I had just finished the first part of my medical board exams. Exhausted from 8 weeks of studying, I boarded a plane to London for a trip that Tim had surprised me with for Christmas the year before. Prior to the trip, my friends were saying "oh, I bet you'll get engaged," but I didn't want to get my hopes up or let thinking about such a thing overshadow what promised to be an amazing and much needed vacation.
Throughout the course of the week, there were a few clues that something was afoot - Tim had an unusually close guard on his backpack and spent some time locked alone in the bedroom of the apartment we had rented, but I chose not to read too much into it.
After spending a day in London where we saw a very mo-darn interpretation of Romeo and Juliet and enjoyed some incredibly spicy Indian food, we boarded the train to Paris. On the Tuesday of our trip, we planned to have a fancy meal and head to the Sacre Coeur, a church on a hill from which we could see a view of the entire city. The restaurant Tim selected for dinner was absolutely beautiful - an example of "Old France." The walls were lined with stained glass in the art nouveau style surrounded by gorgeous carved woodwork and the meal, like most we had in Paris, was one of the best I had ever had.
We left the restaurant to go to Sacre Coeur, riding a funicular up the hill to the top of Monmartre. As we reached the church grounds, the sun was setting and we had a view of the entire city shaded in pinks and oranges in the fading light.
This is where Tim really began acting a bit squirrely. We were standing at the foot of the church stairs taking in a view of the city and Tim asked, "what do you think?" To which I responded, "it's really beautiful." Tim then pulled me over to another spot on the hill and once again asked, "what do you think?" to which I once again responded, "very beautiful." Tim then guided us to the other side of the hill. "What do you think?" "I still think it's really nice." This went on for a while before we returned to what was basically our original stopping point.
It was there at the foot of the stairs of the church that Tim knelt down and asked me to marry him. I of course answered with a tearful "yes" as some onlookers cheered. After a funicular ride back down and with champagne in hand, we began our two years of very intensive wedding planning (lol) which we can't wait to end this summer.
