Melissa and I got engaged on September 5, 1994 at the dinner table in our 399 State Street apartment. We had been camping with my parents that weekend at Glimmerglass State Park in Cherry Valley. It was the first chilly, fallish evening of the season. After a fun weekend together--and me carving our initials in a covered bridge, (I can't get arrested, can I ?!) we came home and had a very romantic candlelit dinner together. We were both in our comfy flannel pj's, which still smelled like campfire! Something about the moment was so right...we both felt it. At the end of our quite common yet very special dinner, I excused myself and on a whim went and got the ring. I returned to the dinner table, got down on one knee, and asked this most beautiful creature to be my wife. Tearfully she accepted. It was overwhelming.




In fact, I had purchased the ring many months earlier, after doing EXTENSIVE research on the subject. Initially, my intentions were to propose during a carriage ride on a return trip we had planned to Montreal that October. But right then, at that very moment, I just knew it was right...some things are better left unplanned. Really, it was as much a surprise to me as it was to her--I was not prepared to propose, but there was no denying the "rightness" of it all. Melissa says that she knew when I got up from the table that I was going to ask her to marry me. She doesn't know why, she just knew.




Her ring is a pear-shaped Ceylon Sapphire set in platinum flanked by two pear-shaped rubies. After seeing a very disturbing Public Television program about the DeBeers Diamond Cartel, we knew that a diamond was not for us. I sold my beautiful solid birch shelled drumset, saved some more money, and was off to buy a ring. Since Melissa loves sapphires, I went in search of the rarest and most beautiful I could find. The rarest is, of course, the Ceylon, (both Princess Di and Ivanna Trump were given Ceylons--although I know their marriages are no indication of how ours will go!) and I had my jeweler order one after another until I found the right one. Next, I had to work with them to design just the right setting for the perfect ring.

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This page was last updated on August 09, 2007