Butter Dishes, Bridges and Rings

It was Hugo's suprise birthday weekend this last weekend, and I had been planning the trip to Dublin for ages. Ireland was somewhere he'd never been, and rather than risk another unknown European City mini-break (see January) I thought I'd play it safe and at the very least we'd be able to drink a lot of Guiness.

Unfortunately, the hotel I had booked (The Castleknock Country Club and Hotel) was a huge corporate strogosphere straddling a no-mans land between Dublin's Phoenix Park and a very fancy golf club, miles from the nearest transport link and filled with hideous red carpets. So, it was with rising blood pressure that I fell asleep on the Friday night, wondering why I hadn't applied to the EU for some funding to cover the cost of a weekend in Dublin (almost the most expensive city in Europe) and booked somewhere central, and boutiquey instead.

The next morning, my heart sank as I opened my eyes to see the view of the massive carpark from the bedroom window, and tried to go back to sleep. This turned out to be a fruitless task as Hugo announced he had a present for me, which confused me a bit given it was his birthday. So, I sat up and looked expectant as he leapt across the room and hid something behind his back. I started to wake up a little more. Handing me the gift with the words 'guess what?' written on the tissue paper of what was very clearly a butter dish, I unwrapped it and looked at my new butter dish in my hands. I was quite confused at this point. "Now comes the serious bit" he annouced and slid onto the floor, taking a smaller box out of the butter dish. My heart started going wild.

He then said those three words every girl has dreamt about hearing:

"Will you marry me?"

And I looked at him, kneeling on the floor, holding a ring and beaming at me with a huge grin, and I yelled "YES" and flung myself over at him, all thoughts of hideous red carpets and horrible views from the window forgotten.

After a massive Irish breakfast where we flipped from the stunned 'oh.my.god we're getting married' to laughing hysterics, attracting the snarly glances from other hotel guests, we walked through 8 miles of Phoenix Park into Dublin city centre, and there, Hugo proposed again, on the Ha'penny Bridge (at my request - now that you've done it once, why not get proposed to a whole load of times??) and a wonderfully champagne-fuelled weekend ensued. I would definitely recommend Dublin for a place to get engaged in. It was wonderful and now that I am snowed under at work, my blood pressure soaring because of client / boss demands I take 2 minutes every so often to remember 'argh, I am engaged, I am marrying Hugo!" and this gives me a wonderful moment of total work bullsh*t immunity.