Although my fiance, Bret, is originally from East Sussex, he moved to the United States in 2000. We lived and worked within two miles of each other for two years and had never met. In March 2002, we found one another online when he commented on a quote I had in my profile from the Winnie-the-Pooh stories. It turns out he was a Pooh fan too so that’s how it all started! He told me all about Hartfield in East Sussex and about Pooh Corner and how all those places in the books actually exist! Particularly we discussed the game of Poohsticks. We’ve now been together for almost three years!
We were looking at engagement rings last summer but I didn’t know how serious he was about it. We finally found one we loved at a jewellery shop in my home town but Bret told the guy he would let him know. (This was three months before he proposed and I found out later he had called the guy and ordered the ring a couple days later and had it in our house the whole time! It was in his golf bag!).
I had never been overseas when we went on a short holiday to England in 2003 and visited with friends and family and of course took a trip to Hartfield. We enjoyed it so much, we went back in November 2004 for three weeks. A couple of days after arriving, he asked if I would like to visit Hartfield again and of course I agreed. After visiting the Pooh Corner shop, we parked and took the 20 minute walk to Poohsticks Bridge. His parents had gone along and I didn’t think anything of it because I knew they liked the area as well. From our previous trip we had only one picture of us together so I asked him mum to take some pics of us at the bridge. Little did I know what kind of pictures I would get that day. It just so happened that I was wearing a sweatshirt that had a design that was reflecting the flash and this totally worked in his favor of his cunning plan. I had been hoping for a proposal but after we had been there a while I accepted that it wasn’t going to happen when he suggested that we play Poohsticks one more time. When we went to the other side of the bridge to see who won (whosever stick floated under the bridge first) we would turn and let his mum get a picture of us (avoiding the flash on the front of the shirt) which made perfect sense to me. But when I turned, wondering why he wasn’t on the other side of me for the picture, I found out why. There he was on his knee, with a tear in his eye and my ring in hand asking me to marry him. I was so shocked and tried to catch my breath for what seemed like an eternity. He actually had to ask if I was okay! Of course I said yes, and we got more pictures. His mom was able to snap a shot of him on bended knee and my shocked expression. I was so glad they were there.
We are planning to be married in the UK but are taking our time as we are planning it from the US and I’ll definitely be using the confetti site to help!
