Walt and Sara Lane
Charlotte, NC
To appreciate our engagement story, you’ll need to understand a little about how Walt and I first met. It was August 2008 when I was working and living uptown. I had to work late on a rainy night but luckily I brought my umbrella with me that day because the walk home was about 5 blocks. As I stood at the intersection under my umbrella, waiting for the crosswalk light, I noticed a guy walking up to the other side with no umbrella, soaking wet. I crossed the intersection and as I was about to pass the guy, thinking poor guy, we recognized each other from a party the previous Saturday night. All I knew about him was that his name was Walt. I knew this because the party was to celebrate Walt’s return to the US from working/traveling abroad. I attended the party with a friend to meet people in Charlotte since I just recently moved from Clemson. Little did I know I would be meeting my future husband for the first time. Once we recognized each other we stopped in the rain and said “Hi”. He was on his way to Press to pick up a Cobb salad, I thought this was kind of strange because Press is a sushi and wine bar but I offered to walk him there under my umbrella. After an awkward physically close walk under an umbrella with someone you just met for the 2nd time we arrived at Press and he asked if I would like to join him for a glass of wine. Over the glass of wine we discovered we grew up 15 minutes apart in South Carolina but knew no one in common. The rain let up and his Cobb salad was ready. We parted ways that night after our first of many glasses of wine.
Fast forward to Wednesday August 3, 2011… the day of the proposal. I drove over to Walt’s condo after work because he had set up a dinner date at a friend’s place who recently moved to uptown Charlotte. Walt’s condo is uptown as well so we planned to walk, it was a warm but pretty August night. As we were walking out the door I noticed a movie rental that needed to be returned so I grabbed it figuring we could just drop it off on the way to dinner. We dropped the movie off at the RedBox at Harris Teeter and I started to cut through the parking lot like we had done many times before but Walt kept walking up the sidewalk, so I followed. We turned down Church Street and I was telling him about something and didn’t notice that he stopped walking. He grabbed my hand and turned me around to face him. He said that we were not going to meet his friend. I was really confused at this point until he got down on one knee in the middle of the sidewalk, at Church Street and Trade Street. He told me that he always knew the spot where he would propose to me…the same spot we met in the rain three years earlier.
After a minute or two of total shock, and tears, and all the mushy stuff he stood up, pulled the ring out of his pocket and asked me to marry him. Of course I said Yes! As we hugged I gave a friendly wave to the guard at the parking garage across the street as he cheered and clapped. Walt had planned for us to go to Press as we did three years ago in the rain. After a bottle of wine, sushi and a Cobb salad we returned to his place to call family and friends to share the exciting news.