An Enchanting, Engaging Evening

I will try to keep this short, but a couple of really cool things happened tonight during Amanda's and my date.

She surprised me and took me out to The Melting Pot in New Orleans. I'd never heard of Fondue dining before, and I'm assuming you maybe haven't either. Basically it's a laid back, yet semi-ritzy joint where you walk in and are escorted to a rather private booth with light jazz playing. (Nice atmosphere.) You have a 4-course meal, and everything is "cooked" on the burner on the center of the table. First is the cheese fondue, in which you melt the cheese in the pot and dip breads, vegetables, apple, etc. into the cheese dip. Next is a salad, followed by the main course, in which you place duck, lamb, chicken, shrimp, and other meats into the fondue sauce and cook and eat. Last is the chocolate sauce, in which you dip fruit, cheesecake, pound cake, etc. It is an exotic, scrumptious, and expensive dining experience (and Amanda paid this time, in spite of my constant arguing for 2 weeks...she'd been planning to surprise me...and boy I was happy!) It felt like some hedonistic Roman celebration...it took almost 3 hours to eat it all. I can't really do it justice, so visit the link to the website above. It was the most singular fun dining experience of my life. We had a ton of fun.

Next I drove her down to the Mississippi River, the perfect after-dinner romantic spot. Beautiful night! I'll skip all the particulars and go to the main thing that prompted this post. I got to witness something I've never seen happen before...

So I'm holding her looking out over the water and behind us there's this gazebo with several lights shining brightly from its ceiling. I prompted her to come up with me into the gazebo...I'm looking at it thinking it's got The Sound of Music gazebo scene written all over it. I embrace her and we start to slow dance. I mentioned how special a spot it was.....

As we left later on in the evening, I heard a voice from behind me, "Hey!" I turned around expecting to have a beggar asking for money, but when I saw this couple heading toward us, I noticed how nicely dressed they were, immediately rejecting the thought. I realized it was a young couple, perhaps three years older than us. The guy introduced himself to me and handed me a camera, asking me if I'd do him a favor and take some pictures of them slow dancing together. He said, "We're really going to get in the zone," or something, so I was like, "Hmmm." As they started to dance, I looked at Amanda to see what her expression was, and it dawned on me a second after it occurred to her as she gasped, "I wonder if she knows what's about to happen?!" And surely enough after 5 minutes of slow dancing and them smiling and whispering and kissing, down he popped on his knee, amidst camera flashes, and simply asked, "____, will you marry me?" Her response was timeless and priceless. Almost exasperatedly joyful, she breathed, "YES, YES!!" "Oh of course, yes!" In front of her was a beautiful ring in a lighted case. The rest is history. After they were done with their private celebration we congratulated them and actually met (haha) and walked to a hotel, exchanging email addresses and chatting.

There are some other particulars I found out that made the event even more special in my mind...but I won't disclose them, to protect this beautiful couple's privacy.