found my heart in san francisco

So after our trip to San Francisco last weekend, I decided to share our proposal story and photos with you. It all went down in April of 2008. Here is the story from my husband's perspective, as written by him the week after our proposal. It's a long one so grab yourself a coffee (morning readers) or a glass of wine (nighttime readers). I hope you enjoy...

Well my latest adventure took me to the mean streets of San Francisco, where unbeknownst to my beautiful and unsuspecting girlfriend Chanel, I planned a surprise engagement for her. Under the guise of a meet and greet business trip, my lovely and I were to fly into San Francisco mid-day Friday for a few days of fun and exploration followed by a big client dinner and hobnob Saturday night. Chanel had agreed to go with me in hopes of being able to catch up with her good friend from college, now living in S.F., and celebrate her birthday with her, which was on Sunday. Her girlfriend was in on the surprise and, risking their friendship, told Chanel she had last minute family plans, and had to go to Lake Tahoe for the weekend. Disappointed and frustrated yet still supportive, Chanel was willing to still come along for the ride. Thank God. After arriving and checking in we grabbed a car provided by the hotel and struck out to examine the intricacies and obscurities of San Francisco's Japantown... Wait, you mean Chinatown right? Nope the benignly unknown and completely off the beaten path, where no one would know us, neighborhood of Japantown. 

Not being able to write the script any better, our driver missed the street we were meant to turn on and we rounded the next corner to back track to our destination.  Somehow we accidentally ran right into Chanel’s girlfriend, who was supposedly out of town, along with 4 other of Chanel's closest friends, that where there for the surprise, getting into a cab on the most random street corner possible. As Chanel propelled herself out of our moving car screaming in rhythmic beats “(Friend)?!?!---Pull over!---(Friend) is that you?!"  The blood rushed out of my head and extremities and all I could think to do was pretend it wasn't happening and proceed to ask the driver at the top of my lungs, "...so is that a 6 speaker sound system you got going there, cause it sounded fantastic... Bose right?" I then start pointing profusely at inanimate objects around the car to try and divert her attention. "Baby did you see that door handle, no seriously check it out I think it's kevlar..."  At that point, it was in the driver's best interest to do as my rightfully confused and borderline violent girlfriend was exclaiming and pull the car over. Thank God it was Chanel’s friend’s birthday weekend, and the girls were quick on the uptake to make the potentially devastating encounter all about her friend and divert the attention off Chanel. The girls told Chanel that the real surprise was that we were all supposed to meet for her friend’s birthday dinner and a special girls ‘night reunion, sort of a reverse surprise party. And I was along for the ride with work obligations. A two-for-one. And that we just happened to circumvent the “SURPRISE” part by a couple of hours... Sure I'll go with that, I had no idea how I was supposed to fit into girls’ night out but at that point I was willing to squeeze into Chanel's pumps to pull this thing off (insert your own bald designer in San Francisco joke here). The girls managed to make Chanel feel assured of the agenda and we ended up having an amazing unexpected night out with good friends, even without me in drag... 

[about to head out for the night]

The next day, as Chanel and I killed some time before "my big client business dinner," several more groups of friends and family equipped with a massive banner, arrived in San Fran. 

[adventuring around the city]

They loaded a chartered trolley and posted up on Pier 29 right about the time when Chanel and I happened to be "discovering" Coit Tower and the views of the city from above. 

[while they were getting off the trolley in front of pier 29, KC and I were up in that tower]

Completely exhausted from way too many emotional pump fakes, as well as sacrificially jumping on some unexpected sake bombs the night before; I took out a pair of binoculars that were conveniently packed in my bag. We gazed out over the city's natural and architectural wonders for what seemed like several torturous hours (it was about 12 minutes) allowing all the pieces on the street below to be moved into place. As I pointed out various monuments and landmarks I could see that the crew in the trolley was in position and I eagerly encouraged Chanel to, "look down at those crazy people on the street with that massive sign!" 

[all of our friends and family holding up the HUGE sign..."Chanel, K.C. has a question"]

Upon reading it through the binocs, she finally realized what was happening as she turned from the window back to me, already on my knee, where I was able to tell her how I feel about her and asked her if she would marry me. 

She said yes.

Several hugs, kisses and text messages later, the trolley with everyone aboard came and picked us up. 

[everyone on the trolley]

[Coit Tower behind us]

We popped a few bottles of champagne and had a few toasts, took a little tour of the city and its sights, and then had an amazing dinner and celebration. We followed it up the next day with an all group excursion into Chinatown and the best Chinese food I've ever eaten (House of Nanking on Kearny).... 

Nanking]

I was insanely thankful to all that helped pull it off. It was an amazing weekend of perfect weather, ridiculously epic scenarios, friends, family and a stunning new fiancée.

Obviously my story differs from his some, being the girl on the other side of this. And, since I am not him, I can say that he nailed it with this one. There were so many amazing details that he left out and the amount of planning and love that he poured into this weekend proved that I would be a very blessed girl to spend the rest of my life with him. Now we get to live out that blessing. Life is good.

I love having all these photos from our proposal but from all of them, this might be my favorite...check out that sign. Ha ha!

I hope that you liked reading the story and seeing the pictures as much as I did getting to relive it!