Bernard & Lili

February 26, 2011. Him- a baby-faced adjunct professor of law (read: mock trial coach) with a Harry Potter haircut, Holy Cross t-shirt, stonewashed jeans, and glasses. Her- his dazzlingly gorgeous more 'sophisticated' law student wearing an unsettling amount of glittering costume jewelry. They meet. They each think the other is…fine. She isn’t sure why he is so obsessed with FRE 104(b). He can’t believe she doesn’t like going to the movies.

March 31, 2011. Mock trial practice. Her trial partner is away. Never one to show off, Professor Ozarowski 'heroically' steps in for the practice. He wins an objection. She wins an objection. He eviscerates the witness on cross-examination. She makes opposing counsel cry. They lock eyes. Love.

April 17, 2011 (two days after she is no longer his student, of course). He takes her on a date. Recognizing her body’s inability to process gluten, he takes her to the nicest gluten-free restaurant in the city, Bistango Ristorante. Things go incredibly well.

2011-2014. He cooks gluten-free chicken parm. She buys MoviePass. He starts watching So You Think You Can Dance. She starts watching UFC. He convinces her to be nerdier: she falls in love with Orphan Black, Spartacus and Pacific Rim. She teaches him to be cooler: he gets a haircut and new jeans. They both love Game of Thrones. They are teammates. They hardly ever fight but when they do, the fights are always in the form of cross-examinations and they work out their problems in constructive ways (more cats). He realizes they should be more than boyfriend and girlfriend.

January 15, 2014. He tells her they have plans that Saturday to have dinner at a Mexican restaurant with another couple. He sends her the link to the restaurant’s website. She looks up the menu and picks out which nachos they will fight over.

Saturday January 18, 2014.

HER:
A few days before the proposal, Bernard told me that we had dinner plans with another couple at a Mexican restaurant for the night of the 18th. He suggested we wear something nice and make a night of it. Expecting an expensive dinner, I thought he was being frugal when he suggested we walk 30 blocks to the restaurant (in January, in heels) rather than take a cab. On a normal day, Bernard walks faster than I do. That night, he walked so fast I was forced to awkwardly limp-trot behind him in my Louboutins (read: last season’s Nine West pumps) to keep up. At one point, he was almost a full block ahead of me before he seemed to realize I was supposed to be with him and grabbed my hand and pulled me along. When we reached 29th street, it suddenly occurred to me that we were walking by Bistango. At that moment, he pulled me over to the side of the sidewalk, handed me his headphones and iPhone, and played a video he’d made with the cats asking me to marry him. I won’t describe the video except to say that it was perfect, melted my heart, and made me love him even more. When the video was over, he was on his knee on the sidewalk holding out the most beautiful ring. Passers-by started noticing and congratulating us and I realized I needed to answer. After a few unintelligible gurgles I heard myself saying, “Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Dinner was a blur. Champagne was waiting at our first-date-table and the owner of the restaurant hugged and congratulated us. I wanted to call everyone we knew (especially you, Rachel, so stop being mad…) but for some reason Bernard was ADAMANT that I wait. He suggested we have an after dinner drink, but all I wanted to do was make calls. He eventually convinced me, for nostalgia’s sake, to stop at the dumpy bar where we’d had a drink after dinner on our first date to call our sisters. Once at the bar, rather than letting us sit at the two clearly empty seats by the door, he dragged me to the back. The first two things I saw were Greg’s head and Jessi’s smiling face shining in the darkness. The room was packed with some of our nearest and dearest friends who shouted congratulations as we entered. I started sobbing. He won.

HIM:
I spent the weeks leading up to the proposal attempting to channel my inner Scorsese while trying to get the cats to help film a proposal video. They were unhelpful. Shocking. Thwarted from the proper mise-en-scène by feline indifference, my proposal video underwent extensive last minute re-shoots. In Hollywood, reshoots are usually a disaster, here they worked perfectly and led to a more heartfelt video.

I spent most of the big day stressing about how to convince Lili to walk to dinner instead of taking a cab. Miraculously, despite the cold, she agreed to walk 30 blocks. In heels. As we walked to the “Mexican restaurant” (conveniently located three blocks North of our first date spot), I found myself having something of a panic attack. I imagined friends walking down the street who might ruin the surprise. I ceaselessly ran my finger over the ring in my pocket like Frodo in the Lord of the Rings. Finally, we got to Bistango (our first date spot) and walked just past it. I pulled her aside to the spot where we met up before our very first date and I handed her my iPhone and a set of a headphones with the video queued up and ready to go. As each cat helped ask ‘I love you. Will you marry me?’ I dropped to my knee just as our fetch cat delivered the ring to me in the video. I told her that “I had a long speech planned, but the cats said it better than I could – I love you. Will you marry me?” On-lookers hollered approval and Lili made a few strange sounds before saying Yes! Yes! Yes!.

We kissed and headed into dinner where champagne waited at the table where we had our very first date. I then proceeded to spend the next 2 hours of dinner staving off an absolute panic attack over who would ruin the surprise party. I had to use all of my skills of persuasion to convince Lili only to call her mother during the meal. I suggested we should get a drink afterwards and she apprehensively agreed. I told her we should go to the dive bar we went to for a night cap on our first date. It wasn’t until I suggested that we could call our sisters while sitting by the Big Buck Hunter machine that she acquiesced. When we got to the bar, Lili attempted to veer over to the bar but I grabbed her by the hand and pulled her to the back room where I’d gathered a ton of her friends to surprise her and help celebrate the engagement. Everyone yelled congratulations and Lili broke down and made numerous strange gargling sounds when attempting to speak. The night was a fantastic success.