Hello, Happy Monday! How was your Thanksgiving? Good? Relaxing? Ours was the best ever! Our eldest daughter Sri got engaged!
The back story
The year of COVID has been sucky needless to say. But even in a year as rough as this one, there can be rays of sunshine. For us its the engagement of our eldest daughter!
For a young couple living together for the first time in the year of COVID it felt like 3 years is what Sri and her boyfriend Pranav told us. Since they were literally living together and working from home 24 hours a day for the past 9 months and survived, they realized they want to spend the rest of their lives together 💞 Next step – an engagement!
BF wanted to propose before year’s end in a romantic setting in Napa Valley the first weekend of December. But with the virus in full on outbreak everywhere he decided to reluctantly cancel those plans the week before he was to propose!
What’s a guy to do when his proposal plans get cancelled?
With so many venues closed BF was having a tough time figuring out where to have a memorable proposal. Enter our family, his parents and our garden. I offered our garden as the backdrop for his surprise proposal and he agreed to trust us to make it magical on Saturday after Thanksgiving. The two families (excluding Sri as this was a surprise for her) decided because of COVID to keep the celebration to an intimate gathering of just our two families.
My garden to the rescue
Those of you who know me know I am an avid gardener and take pride in my Shangrila. My garden came to our rescue for this very special proposal. The twins and I, my husband and grandpa all orchestrated the perfect setting for our beloved Sri.
Five days to plan one day to execute
With just five days to work with because all this was decided just the week before! And we were looking at Thanksgiving week with two days off! We ordered tea lights from Amazon fast shipping, the earliest they would arrive was Saturday morning. As a backup Pranav’s parents ordered more to arrive on Friday. And as another backup our little Rani ordered another set also to arrive on Friday.
Friday our family couldn’t do anything. Why? Because Sri was home with us for Thanksgiving and didn’t leave till Friday evening!
Friday evening Rani is hitting refresh on the Amazon delivery screen every 30 minutes. “En route” “En route” – 5pm, 6pm, 7pm – no delivery. Finally at 7:30pm we get a notification the tea lights arrived!! The twins rush to get the packages and test them out in a bowl of water – they work! Now we wait till Saturday to set the scene.
Rani our fashionista perfectionist
Can I just say that Rani was a sisterzilla – if there is such a word? She was obsessed with every detail of the surprise. “What about this, what about that, where is Pranav going to stand, where will Mahesh Uncle our photographer stand, make sure Sri doesn’t see him, will we follow Sri when she walks down? What about the music, what about the dry leaves?” She was driving me crazy! I was so overwhelmed I stopped talking to her 😁🤨🥺🥺🥺. But its because of her perfectionist attitude and her eye for artistic details that it looked so amazing with the help of her partner in crime her twin sister Anjali!
Saturday morning setup. Shopping for flowers and setting the romantic garden scene
Sweeping the garden, floating the tea lights, placing the lanterns, setting the hidden iphone in our little lemon tree
Rose petal walkway is ready
Lights, camera, action!
How did we get Sri to look so beautiful if it was a surprise?
We told Sri to get dressed up so we could take holiday card pictures 😁.
How to convince Sri to walk down to the garden?
One of the twins excitedly asked her to come to the garden to check out what crazy changes I had made. Sri responded “Mom always prunes everything in the winter, I’ve seen it before.” What to do now? The twins convinced her to come and look anyway. And so the walk down the steps began (in slow motion for the rest of us). Sri said she thought “Oh the petals look pretty.” but didn’t realize what was happening until she saw the lanterns all lite.
Twilight Proposal
Sri said YES!
Flowers for the newly engaged from her twin sisters
Happiness all around!!
Can we cry now?
Happy Parents of the newly engaged couple ❤️💙
Family pics!
Was it a surprise?
YES, YES, YES!!!! Sri said she had no idea there was going to be a proposal that Saturdayl! We did it!!
Next post, our Indian engagement ceremony right after the proposal.