Call Me John Stockton: A Proposal Story

"A bell is no bell 'til you ring it; a song is no song 'til you sing it; and love in your heart wasn’t put there to stay - Love isn’t love 'til you give it away."  ~ The Sound of Music

I'm like the John Stockton of proposal assists.  He's the all-time assist leader in the NBA.  I'm two for two on helping boys pop the question.  (If you missed the first proposal story about McCain and College Roomie, click here.)  Basically the same, me and John Stockton, I think.  Because the odds are that only two of my readers (BFF and Loud Oklahoma Girl) appreciate my circa-1990's basketball reference, allow me to move on to the proposal story.

Opie was Little Brother's best friend growing up.  Which meant he was basically like another little brother to me.  For years, there were 3 tooth brushes in our bathroom--mine, Little Brother's, and Opie's--because he was at our house so much.  We've sat together at funerals and celebrated graduations and danced at weddings and introduced Little Brother's retiring address and, well, pretty much everything in between.  My mother makes special meals when he will be around for dinner and his mother cornered The Boy from Texas and let him know that I was one of their kids too.  All this to say that Opie is pretty much family to me.  So when he told me he needed an assist with a marriage proposal, you better believe I was all over that.

And so we plotted for about four days.  The plan was that we'd go to Mass at 7:15 on Sunday and then I'd come up with some reason to stay near the church to do something for about 20 minutes, then get us back over to the church and inside where a photographer would be waiting and I'd sneak up into the balcony to snap a few photos from that angle as Opie got down on one knee.

And everything went off pretty much without a hitch.  We finished Mass and the bride-to-be asked me if I wanted to go with them to dinner.  I said yes but that I needed to run to Starbucks first.  So we walked over and I spent a crazy amount of time looking at the coffee cups while Opie went into the bathroom to kill time and text the photographer.  He came out and we just stood around talking and the poor girl got impatient.  She was hungry. 

Mrs. Opie:  "So are you buying something or not?" 
Me:  "Oh, no, I don't really like anything here."
Mrs. Opie:  "Well let's go then, I'm starving!"

We start walking back to the church to get our cars.  Problem is that the photographer hadn't given me the green light yet.  So Opie and I walk slow.  And I mean S-L-O-W.  Mrs. Opie is basically sprinting down the street.  I'm just rambling on about nothing asking about rent and apartments and all sorts of crap.  I finally get the green light and have to get us back to the church.

Me:  I have to go to the bathroom.  I can run into the church.  Let's go back over there.
Mrs. Opie:  We're going to a restaurant right now.
Me:  I can't wait that long.  There's a bathroom right in the back of the church.

And so we all walk in the church, I act like I'm going to the bathroom and then book it upstairs to the balcony.  And then this perfection happens.

This photo by Joellyn Rathmann (the professional photographer who captured it all!)

I couldn't be happier for these two and loved getting to get in on the proposal fun!