Our engagement story
Ollie and Amy met through a mutual friend (thank you Brad!) in the autumn of 2011, but didn’t start dating until July of 2012. By that point, London was full of Olympic excitement and Amy was getting towards the end of her Masters degree at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama before heading back to New York. She returned home in September, but was accepted to a PhD program to begin the following January. Amy and Ollie stayed in touch while she was away and they had a brief chance to see each other when Amy came back to London for her graduation ceremony in early December when they were forced out of the relationship closet into “official” coupledom (they’re still not sure what that means) by her well-meaning former roommate, Markoesa, in front of Amy’s mom, Nancy, and super-cool California cousin, Mark.
When Amy moved back to London in January she and Ollie were able to pick up where they left off. In October they decided to move in together. Over Christmas 2013 Ollie and his family visited Amy’s family home in Vermont. Everyone got on swimmingly!
For Amy’s birthday, Ollie gave her a pair of Eurostar tickets and a walking tour guidebook to Paris. They took their trip over the Easter weekend, finding an extraordinarily well-located and affordable hotel near the Sorbonne (we're happy to provide you with details, just send us an email). They woke up very early in the morning on Maundy Thursday (the day before Good Friday for those of you who are not Christians or Early Christian scholars) and hopped on their train to begin their Parisian adventure. On Good Friday, they set off for Shakespeare and Company, the famed English-language bookshop on the Left Bank. From there, they found their way to Notre Dame, where they watched the faithful perform the Veneration of the Crown of Thorns. Next they went to the Shoah Memorial, where they located the names of at least two members of Amy’s family who had been deported from Vichy France. In need of a lift after the somberness of Notre Dame and the devastation of the Holocaust museum, Amy and Ollie decided to go for a cup of tea and a snack at famous French tea house Mariage Frères, stopping to take a picture outside of Schwartz’s Deli on the way.
At Mariage Frères, over gilded chocolate cake (no joke, the cake really was shiny and gold), a green tea and vanilla eclair, single-estate Darjeeling and high-grade Oolong, Ollie found the moment he was waiting for. He looked deeply into Amy’s eyes (which left her wondering if she had a fleck of gold or chocolate somewhere on her face) and said “there’s something important I want to ask you.”
Ollie got down on one knee across the table and presented Amy with a small box. Ollie asked her to marry him and Amy said yes. He handed her the little box, which was filled with rose petals, a note, and an old costume ring of Amy’s. Ollie had looked all over for a ring but didn’t find the perfect one. Instead, he had decided they should look together.
They left the tea shop and headed to the Louvre, where they were thoroughly disappointed by the Mona Lisa (tiny and unimpressive, but what can you do?). On their way to dinner with Amy’s friends, Joyce and Pierre, Ollie stopped and picked something up off the ground. Amy, charging on ahead so as not to be late, looked at him confused as he handed her a $20 bill. If this story has bored you, we apologize. Here’s the summary: We got engaged in Paris and then we found $20.
