To anyone reading this: since I'm a lazy ass who grows tired of telling the same story over and over, here's an account of everything that led up to my proposal. This was written in an e-mail to my cousin and hero Thomas (of Thomas' Apartment fame).

I'm engaged!

Yeah, finally, hah. Well I guess it's not any crazy surprise to anyone (considering that all told, we've been together 6.5 years), but yeah I finally did it.

Since you're probably wondering how it all went down, .... well, this is how it all went down... (a rather long account, since that's my standard e-mail mode haha)

Basically, I've been thinking about this for a while now, trying to figure out how I was gonna do this. We had talked about it a fair amount before and it was pretty obvious to both of us what The Answer would be, so all that remained was simply popping the question. With all those fancy and dramatic methods of popping the question you hear about, there's a certain amount of expectation that you'll do something special to seal the deal. After thinking long and hard about it, I realized that I didn't really want to concoct some convoluted scheme to dramatically pop the question. I don't know why, but for me personally, it just didn't feel like what I wanted to do. All the "grand plans" that came to my mind felt a little cheesy to me - ehh, maybe I'm just not creative enough to really pull something crazy haha. Whatever the case may be, I just wanted to do something simple - just to find one magic moment with us alone where I could pop the question (FYI, we're both quite a bit against "public proposals"). I guess I just wanted to let my words or my feelings carry me through rather than some big crazy display, etc.

So kinda deciding that, towards the end of last year I really started thinking about how this was gonna go down.... 'cause I was still in need of a Moment. I figured I could probably get something special going if I tie it to some semi-important day. The usual holidays - Christmas, Valentines, etc. - were too close... We just weren't really ready yet for a number of reasons (too much external stuff going on currently). One of our "anniversaries" is April 30 (breaking up and getting back together makes counting years and registering anniversaries interesting), so that was definitely a possibility. Her sister is getting married May 26th, so I thought it might be interesting to do it right after her sister gets married (for a nice 1-2 punch on the family's emotions). Thus, I decided to do it the same weekend as her sister's wedding.

So having picked a day, I had to think about how I was gonna actually do this. Again, I was still searching for how I was gonna find or create The Moment. I started thinking about maybe nice dinners or finding a nice view or finding a beach or whatever else like that, but practically speaking it just didn't seem like it was gonna work out; I just wasn't certain what our schedule would be like that weekend and so on. Eventually I just said "ah forget it, if I can't find a Moment, I'm just gonna create one!" So having decided that, I knew there were two ways I knew how to make my own Moment: either through one of my typical soliloquies full of poetic dramatics and high-flown rhetoric... or through music.

Our past few e-mails should make it obvious which one I chose. So at the end of last year, I decided I was going to try to write a song that would pretty much say all that I wanted to say, and evoke every emotion that I wanted to evoke for the moment. So I dug up a melody I had started working on many months ago (but had kinda neglected). I thought it had some potential, but wasn't quite yet how I wanted it. So I worked with it - changing it a lot, rewriting, adding new sections - until it sounded good to me. I was getting frustrated, though, 'cause it still wasn't the grand song I wanted yet. I left it alone, hoping that maybe if I pick it up later it'll become what I wanted it to become.

Once I met together with you again at VCN, that got my music ball rolling again and got me really motivated to improve my music writing and production. I then started working in a feverish flurry on my music (other songs, though - not the one I had been working on). Things started improving a lot for me, writing-wise and production-wise... as I've told you previously. Having felt things were starting to come out as I wanted them to, I came back to my "proposal song". I replayed it again and listened carefully. I realized that it was actually a lot better than I thought. Maybe the first time around I just got tired of it while working on it, but upon singing to it while playing on the piano something stirred inside me and I realized I might indeed have "a winner". btw for future reference (in this e-mail), the song is entitled "Will You Take My Love".

So then I penned the lyrics and got down to arranging and recording it. That went pretty quickly. Realizing that I still had some time before the date would arrive, I started writing another song (a song that I thought up on my drive home from work and sang to myself via my own voice mail so I could transcribe it at home). It sounded pretty nice, though not my best. I thought about it and thought, "ahh what the hell, I'll include this too". Thinking more about the whole project, I thought "I might as well just add some of my old songs I wrote about her... uhh, the happy ones at least" (FYI, it's long been known that I don't really write many happy songs - I'm a minor chord kinda dude, I guess). So I decided to add two old songs of mine (including one of the songs I sent you - "How Did You Know", of course) to what would now be the mini-CD I was gonna give her (kind of a followup to the "full CD" I gave her 2.5 years ago). Cleaning up and re-producing those two old songs took some time. Finishing up the production for the two new songs also took a while.

Having gone through about 90% of all the production, I realized I still had some more time before late May. In a moment of inspiration, I wrote up another song that just came to me suddenly late one night (titled "You're Everything"). This one I initially thought was "okay"... but then REALLY started growing on me. I arranged and produced it really quickly; it just went really smoothly and really well for some reason. I guess I was simply inspired. It ended up being one of my most professional productions.

So while all this writing and producing was going on, she suggested taking a little trip around the bay for our anniversary (the weekend before April 30th). We agreed to do it, and then I realized that that weekend would probably be an even better time to make the proposal. So that effectively cut off a month that I was gonna use to "perfect" the songs (quoted term used loosely). So then for the last two weeks before that date, I was in a mad scramble trying to finish the production for all the songs. It was difficult - moreso because she's at my place every night and thus I didn't have a whole lot of time to listen through my speakers and to record myself and so on. I lost a lot of sleep those few weeks.

But, I did finish.... not really as "perfected" as I would like, but I was happy enough with the product to present to her.

So, I guess I'll say that things basically went as I had planned: We went to on our trip and on the saturday, we ate at a nice fine dining-ish restaurant in the area. Our hotel was in Vallejo, so once we arrived in Vallejo, I parked off on a hill overlooking a large park. I'm not gonna get into every detail as to what was said, but basically it all went *beautifully*. I played the CD for her, playing each song one by one - adding some of my commentary and reminiscing on what the song meant to me and what inspired me to write it. I played my two old songs, then one of my new songs (the one I voice-mailed to myself), then "You're Everything"... and finally, after a little pause as I started feeling half-nervous, I played the song that had been a long time coming now ("Will You Take My Love"). The moment was one of pristine beauty. Tears were shed during the song and by the end of it, I had attained the emotional crescendo I was hoping for. I whipped out the ring, asked her to marry me, she said "yes" and that, as they say, was that.

You can listen to the songs if you want. I can honestly say you've played a big part in this proposal, even if you would never have known it. Getting in contact with you again has greatly renewed my passion for music writing and production, and ultimately helped make the moment that much more special (I'm sure she would have loved any song I wrote for her, but doing it well makes a difference). You can download them here if you want:

http://www.duylam.net/music/Youre_Everything.mp3

http://www.duylam.net/music/Will_You_Take_My_Love.mp3

I think these are two of my best songs... but ehh, maybe it's my own sentimentality speaking haha.