Engagement, Part 1!

It's about time I tell you guys our engagement story, huh? :)

We were in New York City from July 17-24, and scheduled a show for every night, save for the day we had to leave. We really love musical theatre- it was SO awesome!

Wednesday night

Thursday night

Friday matinee

Sunday matinee

Monday night

On Saturday July 20, we made reservations at The Capital Grille, which is a pretty swanky chain restaurant. They had a special going on called "The Generous Pour", which was a tasting of 7 different wines (both red and white) that came at various points during your meal, as well as an 8th dessert wine.

The servings you see are the "tastings" they poured us - a generous pour, indeed! My god, it was like a full glass of wine. Except there were 7 of them. And then there were 8! Obviously, I drank everything that I was given, except for maybe one of the whites. I was feeling preeeetttyyy great at this point!

We left the restaurant later than we anticipated because the meal took so long - JW had promised me cheesecake for dessert, but we couldn't get it there because we would have been late for The Phantom of the Opera, the musical we were scheduled to see that night. He promised that we'd get some after the show.

If you can imagine it, we literally RAN out of the restaurant at 7:47pm. I know because the below picture was snapped at 7:46. The show started at 8:00 and was 7 blocks away. !!!

Honestly, I think JW is surprised I'm still standing. Full disclosure: me too.

A little reference:

Please imagine me, in the pictured wedges and dress, RUNNING through Times Square, and JW chasing after me. Yep.

Fortunately, we got to The Majestic Theatre with one minute to spare. (Again: time stamp!) The below pictures were taken at 7:59 and 8:00, respectively.

The Phantom of the Opera is a special show for us. For our first official date, we went to see the movie on December 26, 2004. We both love the soundtrack and had watched the 25th anniversary special, but had never seen the stage show together. (I had seen it a few times, with my family.)

I thoroughly enjoyed the show - so much so, that I started crying near the end of it. I'm pretty sure I was so emotional because I was still a little drunk, but honestly the performances were so top notch that I wouldn't have had to be drunk to be moved by the performance. It was spectacular!

We left the theatre and I made JW take some awkward pictures by some of the posters outside, like the one below.

Why did I think The Angel Sculpture called for a picture??

::headdesk::

As we left the theatre, JW told me that his sister, who was in town visiting, was at this place with really good cheesecake, so we should meet her there- fulfilling his promise that we'd have cheesecake. Uh, duh! To cheesecake we go! We started walking, and maybe went about a block before we approached the Intercontinental Hotel:

(taken two days later)

So tall!

As we approached, he wheeled around and said, "I wonder if we have a room on the 31st floor?" and in my confusion, all I could muster was a bewildered, "What?!" as I followed him inside. He went up to the front desk, and retrieved the room key almost immediately. We then headed over to the elevators, as I continued to stare at him with a look of bemusement and confusion.

The room key :)

Now, at this point you must be thinking: "Come on, Hayley. You knew he was about to propose!" And I have to tell you that honestly I had no idea. He had spent most of the trip expertly leading me off the trail and making me believe that proposing during this trip was the farthest thing from his mind. We'd constantly joke about it - we'd be in museums, and he'd get down on one knee to tie his shoe. Or, we'd be walking around and he'd randomly turn to me and say, "What if I proposed right now?!"

I mean, just the way that we talked about it so absurdly, plus, after the idea of getting engaged "in a few years" had been ingrained in me ever since we graduated college, it honestly couldn't have been further from my mind.

Part 2!