How It Happened - Letting the Secret Out

The night before we left for the Bahamas, I sent a cryptic email out to a select crowd modeled after the movie "Fight Club." Here's a copy:

Welcome to the Quocshow. . .

The old blog had to be filed away but I started a new one...mainly just pictures for now but it will serve its primary purpose over the next few days.

A few housekeeping items:

Rules of The Quoc Show

1st RULE: You do not talk about THE QUOC SHOW.

2nd RULE: You DO NOT talk about THE QUOC SHOW.

3rd RULE: There shall be no public discussions about happenings in THE QUOC SHOW over facebook, myspace, etc

4th RULE: Secrets in THE QUOC SHOW stay in THE QUOC SHOW

5th RULE: Rule #4 means you do not expose secrets to anyone, even significant others. I cannot stress how CRITICAL this is.

6th RULE: Seriously, keep this to yourselves.

7th RULE: Follow along at the Quoc Show Blog

See attachment.

(attached was a file called, Sssh its a Secret.jpg which was a picture of me holding the engagement ring.)

The plan was then to send updates to my blog while I was in the Bahamas to keep people updated up until the big moment.

How It Happened - The Perfect Ring

When it comes to choosing an engagement ring, the majority of guys have the same number one requirement:

"What's the best rock I can get for the money I want to spend?"

Its a bit shallow, but the engagement ring a girl wears will always be compared to other engagement rings. The guy has to be aware that the ring will be the center of attention when the engagement is announced. It will be the single source of pride and excitement for the girl.

Needless to say, its quite a bit of pressure.

Most of the time a girl will mention to her boyfriend what she likes in a ring. Things like setting, cut, design, etc. The fun thing about surprising Carly is that I didn't know any of this. All I knew was that she probably didn't want yellow gold since she doesn't wear any jewelry that is yellow gold.

I did some research online and based upon past discussions with some of my female friends, I had a rough idea. Rough meaning that it would be a princess cut diamond on a white gold ring. Still no clue about setting or design. The more I researched, the more I learned about diamond quality. I was unfamiliar with how a diamond's value was derived. Things like clarity, color, cut, etc. Apparently there were a bunch of factors that determined how much a diamond was worth.

When I got back to Erie, we talked about the ring and decided the best place to get a diamond was in Toronto, Canada because we'd get a better deal, we were familiar with the jewelers (they were Vietnamese), and it would be tax free.

Note: For those who don't want to drive to Canada for tax free benefits, Delaware is a better option if live in the Philly area.

After talking about settings, my Mom talked about her original setting for her engagement ring. She no longer wore it because she had her diamond remounted and offered to use that as the setting for Carly's ring. It made sense on two fronts:

1) The setting was white gold.
2) I haven't had many traditions where something was passed down from older generations because I've never met most of my family (they are still in Vietnam). It was special to me to be able to have a ring that belonged to my Mom become a part of the ring I'd give to Carly.

I was half way there. Now it was a matter of getting the diamond.

We looked at several diamonds and it came down between choosing a big diamond (bling bling) or a smaller one with higher quality. I went for quality since the diamond was exceptionally pretty and I figured that Carly's look wasn't "rap star" with a superfluously sized diamond relative to her finger size.

"Got so much ice you can skate on. . ." (BG)

The final piece was finding out sizing. This is the first I'll admit it, but I did end up stealing a ring from Carly's jewelry box. It looked to be about the right size. I have seen Carly specifically wear a ring on her right index finger but I could not find that one so I went with any other ring I could find that Carly wouldn't notice was missing. As the jeweler was sizing everything out, he asked a pretty good question:

"Does she wear this ring on her middle finger? It looks bigger than normal."

Damn, that was a good question. After some debate, I think we agreed to size the ring at 6.5 (I think) which seemed about average. The jeweler then went to work on the "masterpiece."

While this was going on, Carly actually called me to check in. The store was a bit loud with everyone talking and she asked what was going on. I had to make up a story about relatives being over for the weekend, etc which seemed reasonable to Carly.

After two hours, the finished product was ready. The ring was absolutely gorgeous. I looked at in admiration and thought to myself:

"Wow, the future is literally in my hands."

and then I thought

"Man, I hope she likes it. . ."

and finally

"I hope it fits her finger!"

How It Happened - Asking The Dad

. . .or not

. . .well, sort of

White Anglo Saxon tradition is for the future groom to ask the future bride her father for a blessing or permission to get married. I pretty much thought it was a given but over the years, I've heard both sides of asking and not asking. I really was on the fence about this until I had a conversation with Adam who got married last year.

Adam said to go ask Carly's dad. I then mentioned what if I didn't' get a chance to ask before of the short time between getting the ring and going to the Bahamas. He said that's fine, just call her Dad as soon as the proposal is done and explain that I didn't get a chance to ask him because of time constraints but I wanted to get his blessing in marrying Carly.

I then played devil's advocate and said what about not asking since its an old tradition. He said if a guy married Madison (his 8 month daughter) and didn't ask for his permission he would "beat the kids ass." I got a good chuckle out of that.

I decided that I would ask. On the way back from Erie, I was going to drop by Lock Haven and have dinner with Carly's younger sister Ashley. I then thought to myself that it might be a good chance to help Ashley start moving her stuff out since I had room in my car. It was also the perfect excuse to drop by Carly's parents place to have "the talk."

Things went according to plan. I made it to Lock Haven and took Ashley out to dinner and got some of her stuff to take back to her house. I called Carly and told her I had stuff to drop off at her parent's place and she called them to let them know I was coming. Turns out that on a random Monday night when people are usually at home, Carly's parents were away for prior plans. There was an outside chance that her dad would be there when I arrived at 9:30pm but as fate had it, he wasn't there when I got there. I dropped off Ashley's stuff and came to the realization that I would have to go with Adam's suggestion of asking when I'm down in the Bahamas.

How It Happened - Road to the Ring

With my Mom in the know, it was now a matter of finding a weekend to get to Erie to get the ring. I left on a Saturday at about 2:30pm and got into Erie around 11:00pm. The next morning, my Mom and I decided that the best place to get a ring would be to go to Canada since its tax free. I drove the three and a half hours to get to Toronto where there was a strip of jewelry stores in Chinatown. After picking up the ring, my Mom and I got haircuts at a hair salon and then had dinner at a Vietnamese cafe. On the way back, it turned out that my Mom forgot her passport to get back into the US. I called my sister to figure out what usually happens in this scenario.

I thought to myself, "Man, if you can talk your way into getting your Mom past a customs border g guy, you can talk a person into almost anything."

When we got to the customs officer, I responded cheerfully to his questions and said I took my Mom to Toronto for the day as an early Mother's Day present since I was going back to Philly. After looking at my Mom's driver's license and asking who our President and Vice President were (she answered both correctly), the guy let us through. I then drove back to Erie and the next morning, drove back to Philly.

All in all, driving 1200 miles in 48 hours is all the time it took to get the perfect ring.

How It Happened - Telling Mom

My Mom has always been asking me about when I was going to get married the past few years and has even tried to get me to go weddings of family and friends to try to introduce me to a potential future daughter in law. She eventually met Carly and really took a shine to her immediately because Carly fit the mold of someone she wanted for me which was someone who makes me happy and someone who really cares about family. When I decided to get the ring, I wanted to keep it a secret and the only person I told was my Mom.

My Mom had a trip planned to Vietnam for two months through mid-April to mid-June which meant that we would miss Mother's Day this year. After a few tries planning a trip to Erie that did not work out, I finally was able to schedule the visit five days before we left for the Bahamas. I called my Mom up to tell her I was coming to Erie and when I explained why, she took it pretty well and went through the questions any protective parent would ask:

"Are you sure she makes you happy? Are you sure you want to do this?"

I gave her a very enthusiastic and clear "YES."

She replied, "Alright. Let's do this. Look online to get an idea of what you want and when you get to Erie we'll figure it out."

It was on.

As a side note, Carly was very unhappy upon finding out I was planning a trip to Erie without her and it took a lot of convincing that this trip was more to see my Mom before she left for Vietnam and would have been inconvenient for Carly to go since I was going to be in Erie for only a day and a half.

The best part was that I was able to involve my Mom in picking out the ring I would give to my future wife.

How It Happened - The Inspiration

I still remember being at a wedding with Carly toward the end of February for her cousin Caitlin and her husband Gary. It was the traditional bouquet toss and as Caitlin threw the flowers over her shoulder, I recall thinking to myself how "far to right" the flowers were going. Coincidentally, right into Carly's hands.

The idea of an engagement and marriage was never seriously on my mind. I've told Carly before that I thought of her as "The One" and that marriage was inevitably a matter of time but that time never really had a time frame.

Fast forward to middle of March 2008.

At the company sales meeting in February 2008, it was announced that I made the President's Club trip to the Bahamas. We started getting the agendas and activities planned for the trip. The agenda included:

• Staying at The Cove Atlantis
• Rooms with a view of the beach
• Dinners at fabulous restaurants like Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill
• Swimming with the dolphins
• Sunset sail boat cruise
  

It hit me quickly and suddenly. This trip was going to be something I'll never forget. This trip could be one she will never forget. If I wanted to do something special, I had the best possible environment and situation to do it. I knew she was "the one" and I had the money. . .what was I waiting for? I had to be opportunistic. I had to do the proposal in the Bahamas.