# Our Story

Falling in love with Yagmur was easy. She’s incredible. Planning a worthy proposal of such an incredible woman, on the other hand, was not so easy. So I asked myself, “Alex, if you were a beautiful and culturally astute woman, where would you want to get engaged?” Naturally, there’s only one answer to that question — Branson. Unfortunately, Branson was booked, so I planned a trip a city that’s culturally a close second — Paris.
After dinner at a small cafe on our second night there, we, along with two of our good friends who travelled with us, strolled down to the river Seine to board Les Vedettes du Pont-Neuf for an evening boat tour of the sparkling city of light. We sat in the back. It was quieter there, with small dock that would later come in handy.
Several years ago, the french decorated the Eiffel Tower with elaborate lighting that, every 15 minutes or so, erupts in a flurry of twinkling flashes. Next to the blank, black sky of a big-city, it’s breathtaking. But because we embarked from the other side of the city, I had to wait a while for that to be the backdrop of our big moment, which was fine. I’d waited until Paris, I could wait a bit longer. But as we floated down the river, the brisk September evening urged Yagmur to ask for my suit jacket. My heart stopped.
Now, I thought I’d planned this well. In fact, the part I was most proud of planning was the security of the ring. I’d run every scenario in my head of how it could go wrong, not the least of which was the ring falling into the water, and we’ll get to that later too. I had locks on my backpack that even I barely knew the combination to. I never let the ring out of my sight. (It took three months to custom make, so I was a bit protective.) And when I did finally let it out of the locked backpack to go to dinner that night, I made sure to button the flap of the inner pocket. I remember that I did this because I remember thinking, “Damn, why do they gotta make this thing so hard to button.” So, as logic would have it, that damn button was equally as difficult to unbutton when my shivering and sweet, soon-to-be fiance requested my suit jacket.
I began to fumble frantically with the button while mumbling an entirely incoherent jumble of words, which, to this day, I could not say what they were. And just before I thought the jig was up, Christen, one of our travel buddies, offered her husband’s jacket. “He’s not wearing his,” she added. “O-K,” Yagmur said. What she really meant was, “Thanks, but I’m not sure why this joker I’m dating won’t fork his over.
” Now, not only do I have to work my way out ungentlemanly hole, but my soon-to-be fiance is wearing an oversized suit jacket for the starring role in our engagement film. (Oh, I suppose I forgot to mention that Christen had orders to start filming when I got ready to propose.)
In about the only good thinking-on-my-feet moment all night (I mean, cut me slack, proposing is nerve-racking), I told Yagmur I wanted to take some photos of her with the Eiffel Tower in the background, so she should probably shed back down to her stunning black dress. She did, and after a few photos, I said some romantic stuff. She smiled. I knelt and proposed. Then, like she had done countless times in my nightmares leading up to this night, she grabbed the ring and jumped and hugged me and the ring went flying. I didn’t really go flying, but now you have a pretty good idea of what was going on in my head. We hugged for a moment. I put her down very, very gently; put the ring on; and the rest is, as they say, l’histoire.
THE END