Here's us cruising along the Grand Canal in a gondola in front of the Ponte Rialto with our gondolier serenading us in the background moments before Ari proposed. Romance meter is off the charts! :)

Up to this point, Ari had made me believe that he never wanted to get married. In Ari's words, he never explicitly stated this, I fashioned the idea of never getting married all on my own. For a whole year I was "inceptioned" to think this scenario was a long way away for us.  For a whole year, every time I attempted to bring up the topic of marriage I was quickly shut down or Ari would employ some military style interrogation aversion technique, even a simple "hey, look over there" would work as I'm flawed with being very easily distracted and gullible. Boys, if you need advice as to how to get your woman off your back about the "M" word, Ari is a black belt world champion at this.

I would eventually come to the conclusion that it wasn't on the cards for us and in my wallowing misery would complain to every girlfriend, family member (both mine and his), defenseless animals, inanimate objects... Basically any one/thing who cared to listen lol

So, needless to say I had no idea what was coming my way. For me it was just another beautiful Italian experience being shared with my most favourite person in the whole world, for Ari I believe there was some serious calculation and nerves involved as to the when, where and how of it all. As we were docking from our wonderfully romantic gondola ride, Ari handed the gondolier our camera for what I assumed was one last photo before we disembarked. To my complete shock, this happened...