UPDATE: I thought I’d add in a few more details about this post, since it’s a bit personal. You can obviously see in the video that I’m a bit uncomfortable and nervous talking about it, even to this day, and I think a lot of that has to do with those old feelings from last year popping up. Hiding something from a spouse or partner, especially something this big, is hard, and it made for one of the most stressful times in my life. I honestly think it was worth it, though – just watching Mystery Guest putting the ring on her finger again makes it all worthwhile, and having a great story to tell about our engagement is a lot of fun (although, admittedly, I don’t talk about it very much).
As far as the sponsor goes, I really don’t harbor any bad feelings. I think Joe Morin from Storybids did an amazing job putting all of this together. In the video, I don’t give him nearly the credit he deserves. Very frankly – there never would have been any media, any sponsor or any chance of succeeding without Joe’s brilliant work. I’m eternally grateful and he knows it. I’m not upset with the sponsor, either, although I hope one day they can find the courage to let me show the video we made to my fiancée – I think they’re very paranoid about it getting leaked onto the web, but it would be great fun to let her see it.
As for the aftermath – we had raised about $10,000 through MySuperProposal.com in donations, and that money was given away to the Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital. The very kind folks from the Veronica Mars show not only called us on the night of the proposal (as they had heard about it), they sent flowers and a signed copy of the script. An article ran the next morning in the local paper, but despite a short media blitz, there was no big circus, and I think that’s just how we both preferred it. For those cynics who worried that we’d never set a date, we have – the wedding will be in the middle of September of this year, so expect my blogging to be non-existent at the end of the summer 🙂
A few relevant links:
Some photos from the Ad Shoot:
Enjoy the SuperBowl, everyone – maybe there will even be some great commercials on this year. I’ll let you know if we end up on the Oprah show for Valentine’s Day…
