Extending a warm hello to all the readers of Kathryn’s blog, I’m Keith and I’m hijacking Kathryn’s blog today in order to write the following…
Being a wedding photographer, Kathryn knows a fair bit about weddings and proposals and often when I come home from work she’ll have some article or video she wants to share with me. If it’s a proposal, it’s usually an over elaborate event either getting an entire tube carriage to sing or hiring out a cinema and doing a movie declaring their love. So no pressure then when it comes to proposing to someone in the industry.
I’ve wanted to propose to Kathryn for a long time. I thought of everything and anything for the proposal, I looked into hot air balloon rides, trips to Paris, trips to Ireland where Kathryn’s family are from, I thought of taking her to London for a show or a boat ride on a river but none of my ideas felt special enough. Back in December we booked a holiday to Oludeniz in Turkey for the following April. Oludeniz has the most photographed beach in Europe and Kathryn loves the water so I thought this would be the ideal opportunity.
In February I bought the ring. Kathryn had dropped several hints of the type she likes and I hoped the one I finally bought was just as she wished for. I’m terrible at keeping a secret and several times in those weeks leading up to the holiday, I almost blurted out that I had a ring and wanted to propose but realised that the holiday had to be the time to do it. Suddenly, the wind dropped out of my sails. Kathryn has a very close knit family and one week before we’re due to go away, Kathryn’s cousin Jess was proposed to by her boyfriend Alex who was soon to be deployed to Afghanistan. While I was really pleased for them, I thought that if I now proposed to Kathryn a week later, I would be raining on their parade. I felt awkward about proposing now but decided to take the ring on holiday anyway. I’d been building up for this moment and didn’t want to miss this opportunity.
The apartment we had on holiday was lovely but as with most holiday accommodation, the rooms aren’t massive. I wondered how I was going to hide a ring in our small apartment for any sort of time and more to the point, how was I going to get it on the plane without Kathryn knowing? I decided the safest place to hide it was in one of the camera lens bags… Kathryn likes me to feel needed and carrying her camera equipment is my responsibility so she was unlikely to look in there without me knowing. Once at the hotel I was pleased to find a safety deposit box in our room so I told Kathryn not to worry about money on holiday, I would look after it all so with any luck, she would have no reason to look in there. I thought I’d been rumbled on more than one occasion but thankfully I made it to the final day of our holiday without Kathryn catching on.
We had the best time on holiday and it was really needed for both of us. There was just one last thing I needed to do to make it complete and I decided that Jess and Alex wouldn’t mind sharing the celebrations…at least I hoped they wouldn’t mind… I need to marry this girl…and I needed to ask her now. After breakfast on our last day, we decided some souvenir shopping was in order. I’d suggested that we eat down at the beach on our final night but decided I would take the ring down with us in the morning in case Kathryn didn’t want to come back that evening. I stuck the ring box in the left pocket of my shorts and made Kathryn walk on my right hand side so she wouldn’t notice the conspicuous bulge in my pocket. We then sat down and had a drink at this nice little bar on the beach that had egyptian like seats to relax on and Kathryn joked about being the wife of a Pharaoh in a past life. The conversation made this the perfect moment to propose and while it’s cheesy I’m sure it’s a line neither of us will ever forget. “Kathryn, I’m no Pharaoh but will you marry me” and that’s all I needed. No balloon ride or clip that had 200,000 hits on YouTube, just a simple, natural conversation with a woman that I adore. Of course, she said yes and we beamed ridiculous smiles for the rest of the day, accompanied by phrases such as, ‘Hello fiancee’, ‘shall we go to the pool fiancee’, ‘night night fiancee’ and so on… Two weeks later and I’m still chuffed to be able to call her my fiancee and here’s why…
When someone asks ‘why do you love me?’ it’s a really difficult question to answer, it’s easy to tell someone they’re lovely… generous… kind… loyal… honest… beautiful… caring… thoughtful and genuine (which, Kathryn, you are all of those things), but lots of people could be described in that way. The reasons I adore Kathryn are for the random songs she insists on singing for me in the car, the way she misses me when I’m at work, the way she shushes me when I say something she doesn’t want to hear, the way she hates when I drive fast even though she’s a faster driver than me, the way she listens to me rabbit on about work whether it be good or bad, the way she flares her nostrils when she disapproves of something, the way she frowns upon my clowning around and then two minutes later she’s pulling faces at me, the way she makes a point of telling me she’s hanging my pants on the washing line – she may even phone me to tell me this if I’m not there, the way she gasps and covers her face when I tell her how long we’ve been going out and that we’re buying a house together (Kathryn’s a bit of a commitment phobe), the way that she deals with my drunk moments (which aren’t very often) – rather than get annoyed when I’m drunk, she videos it so she can laugh at me the next morning. I adore the way she wakes me up every morning whether I’m ready or not and the way she greets me at the door when I come home, when we can’t be together she’ll phone me just to listen to my voice and usually ends up making random noises at me while she edits photos on her computer, I love the way she gets me to do stuff or makes out she doesn’t know how to do something just to make me feel useful, the way she expects me to know what she’s thinking no matter how random it is (I’m getting better at this), and while I love all of the things about Kathryn, especially the way she makes me laugh, the one thing I love more than anything is that my fiancee, Kathryn, truly is my best friend in the whole world.
Love you Miss Andrews xx
This is a fab post Keith, I got a little misty eyed at the end
Congratulation to you both again!