Where were we?
Well, Last time I don’t think i actually ended up getting very far with the story of the great engagement. At least I think perhaps I demonstrated if nothing else a proposal for a guy is like an iceberg – the event itself (the proposal) is just the tip of a 13 storey monolith that wants to take you to the murky depths of the seabed and cause great injustice to be done to cinematic efforts around the world for the sake of a dollar.
My apologies, that would be what might be termed an infraction – a segue into a different topic. I’ve been warned about doing that…
The Horror
Tip of an iceberg – that’s where we were. And it is! Once you have the venue (or at least a state and country, lets not get into the venue to prematurely) you have the whole process then of lining yourself up with a ring that will get her to say yes, in the case you haven’t got her confounded enough to say it already. I was lucky and had managed to pull the wool over her eyes long before… Rings are a minefield as well. It was the next step in my planning though. The research, the research (i feel like Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now … the horror, the horror… on another segue I’m not sure what should be read into the movies that continually come up in my head writing this… One was about the horror, one just was a horror…)
For me I was lucky – again – we had walked past jewellery stores before and looked at rings for ‘the fun of it’, so I had the advantage of having an idea as to what the lovely lady liked, and didn’t like, and what looked good and didn’t look good. I also got to look at the spectacular price one of those suckers can set you back (keep your voice down Brando). You know I should have been a writer – they earn good money… could have avoided a real good one. I once asked a writer what type of writing pays the best… ransom notes he said.
Infraction I know.
Diamonds
I spent a good three weeks at my new job in lunch breaks and before work (being dropped in at 7am affords one at least an hour in the morning over coffee to get overwhelmed by the law of the diamond) researching. And there is so much to learn about diamonds.
Now I’ll be the first to admit that I can be a little on the neurotic side when it comes to buying things. I need to know that I’m getting a good value equation, a solid investment more or less out of everything that I buy. At least the things that I have a particular opinion about. If I’m indifferent I just go for something that does the purpose. But, I’ll be honest I can drive people made researching the slightest purchase. At least I can drive Megan mad. But she has figured it out now so that when she wants a new cordless phone in the house she knows to tell me about wanting to get one about 2 weeks before she actually really wants it. This gives me time to research the marketplace and settle on what i think is the best purchasing experience. Its why I just really struggle with buying clothes. you can’t compare clothes to ensure your purchasing experience is going to live up to the expectation. Its such an ephemeral purchasing experience, and I just don’t care for it. If there is something ineffable about, it’s just gonna freak me out and get me all worked up about buying.
So you can imagine with that in mind what it was like coughing up for this pony. It was a research not only about the 4-C’s which are again the tip of the iceberg. You have brilliance, florescence, culets, isotope chromatography reports, cuts, ratios, percentage high-to-depth-to-width, angles. Now your dealing with that and you’ve got to basically have a scatter chart to price these things and then way up the value of each item and find identical diamonds but with just one variable and compare different and then do a regression line to get a pricing curve that your happy with to make sure your not loosing out on your purchasing potential (I mean look at it this way, your going to be looking at it for the rest of your life, if you have A which is x quality for $y and B which is x+1 quality for $y what you gonna wanna be lookin’ at?! your going to wanna look at y with that x+1 aren’t you?! Dam straight skippy your gonna wanna look at that extra +1 and go, yep, i found that sucker). So this process went on for sometime.
Believe it or not as well there are different platinum’s as well! Can you believe there are some shonks out there that are cutting the shit with cobalt and other ‘meh’ grade metals. They are like a sophisticated mans cocaine dealers. Seems that there are better and worse grades of platinum depending on the metals that they mix it with to make sure it is shiny and has the right weight. But very few are super long lasting and scratch resistant – yep the rarer more expensive types. So then not only do you have the DESIGN you can’t even start that until you have the right ALLOY!
Did i mention the iceberg thing?
I once had a dream about… nevermind, point of the story is that it can overwhelm!
So, after a month or so of exploring design, quality, technical specifications etc on these things I had it all narrowed down and I wanted to start the buying process. Well then bugger me if there isn’t a dam shortage of good quality diamonds at the moment due to the GFC. The few places cutting diamonds really well and making the good ones slowed down i the downturn to return inventory. Then we all got into our credit cards and comfy with debt a little quicker then they thought… Now add to that there is trouble getting the diamond with the minimum standards you want.
Ice with your bourbon?
Boxes
but before you buy the ring as well there is the problem of all the very dodgy ring boxes they come in – they are all branded! its like shameless advertising of the jeweller. Shame on them shame! I’m realising that my rather obsessive level of detailing about the whole thing might be coming across as rather unbalanced and not healthy. …. …. I don’t know how to answer that … lets move on… lets not dwell on our own faults, our friends do that for us more then enough over a drink or two.
The much harder question
New personalised custom made box (which nearly got lost in the Brisbane Floods days before we were to depart for Colorado), Ring chosen and selected there is the really, really hard question to ask – the father for permission.
This might be a very unique circumstance. Well not might, is. There seems to be many many people who have difficulty with this part of the process. I only say this because now looking at wedding magazines (don’t get me wound up on that one, its like a perpetual motion device) there are whole sections – chapters – devoted to how you get around this and come out in one piece. I guess I was lucky I’ve always got on well with Megan’s parents, no doubt in part due to the incredible good fortune that perhaps they can’t understand me with my accent all the time, so its another case of pulling the wool over, I’m sure us Aussies have been pulling the same trick for some time now around the world. it can get you far, though not if your at starbucks and they can’t understand you. Not going to get far then.
The hard part about ringing and asking for permission is that when you live with the person, its really hard to get the phone at a time that will work to ask. particularly when you have to time it around morning or afternoon because of the time zone changes. The other hard part is trying to subtly get their phone numbers from your other half so that you can make the call when they aren’t about. I ended up getting the phone numbers by luck because we were expecting a package to be delivered and I suggested it would be good if i had the number sin my phone in case i needed to call and confirm details. After that the only venue left was work, which was achieved with use of an empty boardroom at 8am in the morning.
The weirdest part of doing this is the fact you can’t tell anyone afterwards! So your walking around the office proud as punch, very excited, and your got this dirty big secret and you can’t tell a dam soul. That was a strange day. I think I went all out and took an extra 15 minutes for lunch and got myself a coffee (if you know me, its big!). I’m sure someone picked up on my mood somewhere, because it would seem every packet of poo type job that people had and wanted to offload was offered to me on the day. Unfortunately the next day the jobs were still there…
The Big Event
The big event was another confusing thing for me. Do you spend everything on the ring or save some for a grand gesture big event style proposal? It was a conundrum… one little moment in time for the thing you see for ever. I took a poll of the female lawyers in my office. There was general consensus that the event had to be a good one as well. And I do accept that now with my 20/20 past vision. I mean, its the question every asks isn’t it – how did he propose? and well bugger them feeling like a fool when they have to say “in the car before hoping out for work” think about how you look gentlemen – you look like a right boob. Of all the times to go in low and under the radar this isn’t the time. People will judge you forever based on this one little moment in time! Carpe Diem!
I admit I think there is a balance to be had… the 60foot hummer screams overcompensating, people are just going to come to the wrong conclusion on that one.
Colorado Rustic
There is a whole blog in this heading. A whole blog – a whole TV series for that matter. And there is an Ally Mcbeal followup to the Practice on it with the MQT – the Megan, Quality, Test. Its a fickle little beast the MQT, but an endearing one once you know its ideas write cheques that it just doesn’t want to cash when its there with the rustic all about it. It just looks at it and goes ….. “computer says nooooo”.
Colorado Rustic really is like anywhere rustic when your just that little out of town and there are mum and pop operations running a place and they have a different QT then your QT, or the MQT. The MQT is very much a Mini, or BMW style QT, this aint your Holden ute at the B&S ball QT.
So Colorado Rustic was ruled out after a day of looking around online and wondering if they tart up the photos on the web how bad can it be when your there (never did go to find out). So I went city all the way.
Brown Palace
Two nights at the Brown Palace in downtown Denver staying on their top floor in a “top of the Brown” with couples massages, 7 course dinner, Room prepared whilst at the massages so that its full of rose petals with a table in the corner covered in candy, chocolate and red-velvet cupcakes with cream-cheese frosting and decoy presents.
Did I mention it was Valentines Day as well?
An Aussie In Japan 