February 20, 1999
Trystan's P.O.V.

My sweetheart of almost seven years, Thomas, had encouraged me to have the 30th birthday party of my dreams. I wanted to pretend I was a nightclub owner, and I wanted to have two of my favourite local bands play, plus have DJ dancing to the 80s, new romantic, British synth, and classic goth tunes I love best.

So I rented a local Oddfellows Hall for the Saturday after my birthday, asked Kao Tao and Raving Sane (Thomas' band) to play, rented stage lighting, borrowed audio equipment, arranged for catered food and cake, bought a keg of beer, wrote up a playlist, and invited everyone I knew to what was billed as Trystan's Ultimate Birthday Party.

The party was progressing swimmingly. The hall was filled with about 60 people, including all of our parents, many co-workers, old friends from high school and college (one even flew in from LA), and new friends from online. Kao Tao finished their killer set, and Raving Sane was almost over. The last song was "Sensory Overload," and during the final sequence, Thomas put down his guitar and took the mic off the stand.

At first, I thought, "oh, he's just gonna make some sweet speech about how 30 isn't that old." But his speech was about "sharing our love" and how long we've been together. I was suspicious, but it wasn't till he actually got down on one knee that I thought, "OHMIGOD! HE'S REALLY GONNA DO IT!!!" Of course I said YES! The whole time, his keyboardist kept playing, and the whole thing was being videotaped (gee, and I was thinking that videotaping the party was overkill! naturally, his friend with the camera was in on it, as were both bands and his best friend who was DJing). As Thomas' dad said, "well, they both sure do have a flair for the dramatic."

It was the most amazing, memorable, romantic, outrageous, brilliant, outstanding, stunning, stupendous, fabulous, wonderful, exciting, amazing, thrilling, perfectly special moment of my life thus far.

*happy sigh*

I am soooooooo thrilled that he finally asked me! We've talked about marriage, money, careers, children, sex, you name it, many, many times and in great and gory detail, and have often agreed that "someday" we'll get married. Well, looks like "someday" will be next year!

Funny, but I'd been thinking I would propose to him and that our trip to Ireland this May would be the perfect time -- find some windswept moor with a crumbling castle in the background, and pop the question there. Then last night, after he proposed, one of his friends told me that Thomas had *exactly* the same idea of an Ireland proposal! But then he thought, why wait?

And it was even more special to have it happen in front of *everyone!* It really meant a lot to me -- Thomas knows me so well, he knew I'd love sharing that moment with friends and family.

I'll be walking on a cloud because of this for ages!!!

Care to see the proposal video? Warning, it's a 5mg download, and the picture quality isn't that hot (it was basically filmed in a very dark nightclub; the audio is good though). You'll need the Apple Quicktime plug-in to see it. But if you still want to download it, well, enjoy!