....The Big Moment

So I promised a separate post about events at Giverny. Once we arrived here we were immediately struck by what a pretty little town it was that seems to just suddenly emerge from the seemingly endless paddocks and fields.

Once we arrived we found a place to have a quick bite and then I marched us off to the gardens, with an ulterior motive beyond just smelling the roses. I had made sure that a certain object was in my pocket before we even left Bruges, so that I wouldn't have to try and somehow sneakily do it later at a critical time.

On approaching the gardens I suddenly had to deal with a nearly hysterical Nicky because she had become a bug magnet and they were apparently crawling all over her. I didn't see a single bug on her and I was put in mind of what I had heard about heroin addicts coming down off their high. Anyway I'm sure the bugs were real and eventually even saw one or two myself.

The whole plan at this stage was to spend some time romantically meandering through the gardens and eventually end up on the Japanese Bridge where I could ask a fairly important question. After what I felt was an appropriate amount of meandering it proved nearly impossible to get Nicky to walk to the bloody bridge. But we got there. And so did about 30 tourists.

In a desperate attempt to get something remotely close to privacy I started offering to take photos of couples and friends so that I could shoo them off the bridge. We got down to a few other people when I pulled my "look over there!" ruse which partially worked so that I could pull the ring out of my pocket and asked Nicky if she would continue to make me the happiest man in the world by agreeing to be my wife. I'm pretty sure she said yes because there was lots of hugs and kisses and then we had to leave the bridge because people were looking. Nicky also made me take the ring back because she didn't want to drop it in the water. She got it back once our feet were on dry land.

We then pretended to be super interested in Monet's house, I made sure as we went through the gift shop that we picked up a print of that Japanese bridge to have framed and put on the wall as a nice memento.

After that we had to get out of Giverny and go find some bubbles. Actually the first bubbles we had were of the Cidre kind, which we didn't actually enjoy, so we made sure we had a nice glass of champagne over dinner in Les Andelys, that was much better. Also Nicky wanted to re-live the moment so she could give a more coherent response, so I proposed again over champagne just to make sure we all agreed. She definitely said yes that time!

For those interested, here's the ring:

And I think that's brought everyone up to speed, we're now a happily engaged couple! 

Omg I feel so grown up...

Brandon and Nicky.

PS: Nicky says there definitely were bugs all over her at Giverny.