Robert Goulet and Our Engagement

Well, Robert Goulet died today (well, it's after midnight so officially yesterday). Normally, those Hollywood events don't even register with me but this one did for one specific reason . . . Heather and I saw him in Camelot the night we were engaged.

We had been dating for four years and surrounding our engagement we hadn't really been out to do anything really fun for awhile. We were just poor college students working hard on our Master's degrees. I had been planning our "fun date" for weeks as our engagement and knew that we were invited to a wedding in Waco on Saturday. We had planned to go on our date on Friday night so I had everything planned out and set. A week before the date though, Heather told me that we had been invited to be at the rehearsal dinner and she said that we would be there. She thought that it would be a great date for us. After dating so long, I was concerned that she would know when I would "pop the question" and I really wanted it to be a surprise. I played it off like it was no big deal but now I've got to rush around trying to get all of my plans moved from Friday to Saturday!

On Friday morning, I met with Heather's Poppy and Granny and asked for her hand in marriage. Heather's dad had passed away our freshman year in college and he had asked Poppy to "take care of his girls for him." I wanted to honor her Dad by specifically asking Poppy for his approval. I was nervous, but he didn't give me any grief. After meeting with Heather's grandparents, I went over to her Mom's place and asked her permission as well which went very well. Feeling very good about the acceptance of her family members I drove the routes that we would take on Saturday and made sure that the timing of everything would work out.

I picked Heather up on Friday afternoon to drive down to the wedding rehearsal and she had no idea what all I had done that day! On Saturday afternoon after the wedding in Waco, Heather was feeling sad to leave all of our friends to go on our date. I thought that this was the perfect opportunity to get all "this date may be IT" thoughts out of her mind. I told her that our plans were flexible and did she just want to hang out with our friends in Waco that night. She thought about it a little and decided that we had fun with our friends last night and today and we needed a date night just us -- thank you Lord! Of course, I knew her pretty well and had bet on that response the whole time.

So, we drove back to Dallas and got ready for our date. We started off with dinner at Dakota's. It a great restaurant that is actually under downtown Dallas and has an open air courtyard that is in the triangular intersection of three streets (check out the intro on their Web site). After dinner, we went to Fair Park and watched Robert Goulet star in Camelot. I love good musicals (Les Miserables, Phantom, etc.) but Heather had never seen one live. I had checked the running time of the musical but didn't factor in the time of the intermission! Heather could tell that I was kind of nervous but I tried to not make a big deal out of it. She really thought that the musical was the end of the date and she was shocked anyway that we went to such a nice dinner and a musical. As soon as the curtain dropped, I let Heather clap twice and we got out of there! We drove north on the Dallas North Tollway and exited in Addison. I pulled over and put a blindfold on Heather. We drove to the Addison Airport where I had rented a plane to fly us around the city and I got down on my knee in the back of the little four-seater airplane and asked her to marry me.

So, that's our story and how Robert Goulet makes me think of our engagement. Wow, am I a blessed guy to have married so far over my head!