Five Years

Today is my five year wedding anniversary with my amazing and wonderful husband Kenny. I realized months ago that I have never documented the proposal, so I thought it might be fun to reminisce and tell that story here today. This is for you, Baby.

Kenny and I started dating on December 1, 2001, so on December 1, 2006 we celebrated five years of being together. Kenny told me that he was taking me out to dinner and to “dress warmly.” I didn’t think too much of that at the time; I just assumed he had something else planned for after dinner. Oh did he.

He picked me up at my parents’ house, and we went to dinner at a little restaurant off Carrollton Avenue called Iris (now in a new location in the Quarter). The food was excellent, but I couldn’t get past the fact that Ken kept obsessing over his cell phone all throughout dinner. He even got up in the middle of our meal to place a call, which he never does. However, his explanation was a good one that completely threw me off: he told me his mom had been concerned about his grandfather and he needed to check in with her. I totally bought it, and we went on to finish our delicious dinner.

We left Iris and headed to the mystery stop. He took me to the site of one of our first dates: Celebration in the Oaks at City Park. 2006 being the year right after Katrina, we were lucky they even had the lights up for the walking tour. But they did, and I thought it was very sweet of him to take me back there.

I still had no idea what was coming, but I did notice that Ken was also obsessing a bit over his suit coat. He didn’t take it off much, which is a little out of the ordinary, especially when he’s driving. Turned out, of course, that he had the ring in one of the pockets, as well as a couple of props he needed, so he was a little nervous about that coat.

We had just gotten inside the park gates when I realized that I had left my new camera in the car. I wasn’t going to go back to get it, but, naturally, Kenny highly encouraged me to do so. One of the park employees agreed to let us run back to the car to get it, and we continued on inside the park.

We ended up in the rose garden right away, which was not what Kenny wanted. So he steered me over to the “Cajun Night Before Christmas” display. As we were walking over, he finally got the phone call he had been waiting for.

Kenny had apparently been trying to meet with my dad all week long to get his blessing over the proposal, but he never got to do so. It was a busy week work-wise for both of them, and Nopsi assumed that Kenny wanted to meet with him about something work-related. This shocked me because Nopsi is usually so astute, but, then again, he was a little distracted with work.

Kenny needed to be able to talk to Nopsi without me overhearing, so he told me to stay by the display while he took the call. He walked pretty far away from me, so after a bit I went over to be by him, but he shooed me back. Too funny in hindsight.

Also funny was how Nopsi finally got in touch with Ken. He flew back to Houston that evening, and Kenny had to leave a voicemail for him while he was in the air. (Ken later told me that if Nopsi hadn’t called him back he probably would have proposed anyway.) Nola and QP happened to be on that same flight (they were on their way to Paris), and Nopsi checked his messages when they landed in Houston. The girls, suspicious, told Nopsi to call Kenny back right away. They just knew something was up. Kenny somehow missed that call, so Nola and QP went on to Paris horrified that they wouldn’t know anything for 8 hours.

Kenny didn’t talk to Nopsi until the very last minute, when he got back to his Houston house, but the conversation went well. Nopsi apologized for not being available earlier in the week, and he gave Kenny his blessing to propose to his only daughter.

Permission secured, Kenny was able to relax a little bit. We wandered to a few other places and then made our way back to the rose garden. I had just gotten my very first digital camera (Ken gave it to me for my birthday), so I was psyched to try out some of the different settings on the roses. This worked completely in Kenny’s favor: while I was absorbed with taking pictures, he slipped away to another row of flowers to put his plan into action. The props he stashed inside of his suit coat were roses, one to use and two backups just in case. He even had to cut the lining of the coat to make them fit and not be noticeable!

When I had had my fill of pictures, I looked around for Kenny and spotted him a few rows over. He didn’t want to get too far away from his set up (for good reason), so I walked over to him. He told me he had found the perfect rose for me to photograph and led me over to it. I noticed that it was a slightly different color than the rest and that it was also perched perfectly in the top of a bush. Upon closer inspection, I saw he had nestled a beautiful diamond engagement ring inside of the rose.

I looked at him, and he looked back at me with tears in his eyes. This next part is a bit of a blur, but I’ll do my best to remember. I think he dropped to one knee and said some very sweet and heartfelt things, including “I love you” and “you mean the world to me.” He finally got to the most important part (the actual proposal), and then the ball was in my court.

My response?

“You’re doing this now?!?”

Classic, Courtney, classic. Kenny and I still joke about that moment to this day, and those words will always make us smile. I don’t think I actually said “yes” until much later in the night when Kenny informed me that I hadn’t actually answered him. After getting over the shock that I was being proposed to, I think I just held my hand out, he slipped the ring on my finger, and then I threw my arms around him and kissed him. He was teary; I was not.

 

(I saved all of my tears until I was walking down the aisle at our wedding. I was suddenly so overcome with the emotion of the day that I absolutely lost it. And I really thought I would hold it together and that Kenny would be the one to cry again. Boy was I wrong.)

We essentially had the garden to ourselves while he proposed, which was nice, but we did find someone to take a picture of our newly engaged selves right afterwards. After that, we walked around the rest of the park in a blissful daze, holding on tight to each other and overcome with happiness.

We got married exactly one year later, on December 1, 2007. I love that our anniversary hasn’t changed since the day we started.

So Happy Anniversary, Baby. I loved you then, I love you now, and I’ll love you always.