Steph, a Community Manager for an educational startup, was expecting to just celebrate her 33rd birthday in lockdown with a group video call with her best friends. However, as she reveals to GLAMOUR, her partner Pete had other plans. Here’s what it’s like to get engaged on a group video call… with 15 people watching…
Pete and I have been together for a little over four years after meeting on Tinder and we’ve lived together for the past two years, just between Finsbury Park and Arsenal in North London.
It was a Tinder match that actually worked out! I had been on and off Tinder a few times, I feel like everyone has that love/hate relationship with dating apps. I had just gone through a phase where I didn’t want to date at all and went back on Tinder for a week. During that week I matched with Pete and came off the app.
For our first date we went to the Hoxton Hotel in Old Street, and there was a moment on the date where I thought, “okay, this is a good sign.” We had been chatting away and I said, “Oh, actually I’m quite hungry, do you want to have a look at the menu? I’m just going to pop to the bathroom.” When I got back from the bathroom the menus were gone, and I said, “Where have the menus gone? I’m starving,” and he’d ordered all of the starters. Every single starter on the menu! I thought, “this guy knows what’s right, he knows what life is about.”
From the moment I met him in person, he made me laugh a huge amount, and I remember on our third date, Pete said that he felt like he was making up how well we got on until we were together. He’d go away and think, “Did I make up how well we got along? Is that even real?” Then we’d go on a date, we’d get on really well and it would be really great, and when he told me that it really was a nice way to sum it up. I think it’s a good thing when someone makes you laugh, and four years on, he still makes me laugh.
Pete has made every birthday since we met super special so I had no qualms about celebrating it in lockdown with him. My 33rd birthday was on the 24th of March, and leading up to my birthday, I’d actually had plans on the day to go out for dinner for a group of friends. Pete had said to me, “The weekend before your birthday, keep it free, I’ve got some plans.” But as we got further and further into March, the situation with Coronavirus worsened; we were put in lockdown, the dinner plans were cancelled, our weekend plans were cancelled, and we were isolating at home.
So, Pete just said, “We should do a birthday video call with your friends, just so you have a chance to check in.” The plan was just meant to be super low-key, we would just have a drink, a chat and maybe a piece of birthday cake.
I had the day off work, so I was at home in the flat. I just rewatched Fleabag all morning for probably the several hundredth time. It was an odd situation on your birthday when it’s beautiful weather, you can’t leave the house, Pete was really busy with work and I was living life in lockdown. I just thought it would be a really low-key day but I decided that I was going to get really dressed up, I just thought, “just because it’s my birthday, I’m going to do something to make myself feel like I was going to a party!”
I washed my hair, put a bit of makeup on, put my fancy pyjamas on and put some heels on! Then at around 7PM, we got on the call with our group of friends, there was about 15 of us on the call. All day Pete had said, “I’ll give your gift a bit later, but I want to do it on the call.” He literally gave absolutely nothing away.
He’s quite a cool cat in that sense, he doesn’t really get nervous in that way. Just before the call, he said, “Oh, I’m going to go upstairs and I’m going to put a blazer on.” I was like, “Oh, yes, babe! You’re really getting into this lockdown dress up fun! Yes, we’re going to have some quarantinis and Prosecco, and you’re going to put your blazer on!” I loved it! He trotted back down the stairs in a blazer as I was faffing around making sure people could get on the call. Then he gave me a birthday card, and he asked me to read it out loud.
I read the card out and he wrote about how my mum and granny would be proud of me, I lost my mum when I was 25 years-old, and my granny a few months previously. Pete mentioning both of them in card was really lovely and both their photos were on the table that we were sat at – it just felt like they were part of it.
As I was getting towards the end of the card, he just got down on one knee and revealed this box with a very beautiful engagement ring in it, and he proposed. I was so shocked. Shocked doesn’t even really cover it, because it’s such a mix of emotions. I was so overwhelmed, and I had an audience as well, but they’re not in the same room as you. Pete was down in front of me, and everything just went a bit blurry, because I was in absolute shock. I was so happy and thrilled, and then I saw the ring and I was like, “And he did really well with the ring!” I’m not even sure if I ever said the word ‘yes’, although I was saying it in my head, I’m just not sure the word actually ever came out. It was just very magical.
Afterwards Pete talked about where he had planned to propose. He had initially booked at the table at The Savoy, which was my mum’s absolute favourite hotel, for dinner and he planned to propose there on the Saturday before my birthday. But actually, having it in our own home where we are, where we’ve got lots of memories, was actually really lovely and felt really special. He did a good job and he just didn’t seem nervous at all. It was quite incredible. All day, he is just operating like a normal humanbeing, doing his regular work stuff. But even when he wasn’t, he was super chill. He didn’t show any stress or nerves, he did say that he kept checking the ring in the sock drawer, and I came close to finding it while putting away laundry!
Getting engaged has brought us a lot of joy at an uncertain time. These times are almost so hard to sum up, because everyone’s experience is so personal and unique, even though we’re all going through lockdown as a whole world. Everyone’s setup is quite unique, and everyone’s got their own challenges. What’s been so nice about this is that I feel when we do share it with not only our friends, but with wider family, and then when they tell other people, it seems to bring a lot of joy for other people as well.
It’s just nice to hear some positive news and I also think it’s a really great reminder of we’ll just weather this storm, we will get through it together and out the other side we’ll be able to have lovely celebrations in person with the people that we love and care about. Lockdown reminds you about the really important things in life and that’s taking care of the people that you love, making sure that your family and your friends are okay, and just doing all you can to make sure that you’re doing everything to support other people.
Getting engaged has also given me a project, because now I can start thinking about our wedding, so in another way it’s a good distraction. Pinterest has been my absolute go-to and I know this is going to sound a bit bonkers, but there was a venue that we both really liked so we had a virtual tour at the weekend and we just provisionally booked a date for next year. Pete is very decisive; he makes decisions a lot quicker than I do!
Both myself and Pete can be quite anxious people, so actually it’s good to have a distraction from the news, because otherwise we’d have it on all the time. While it’s really good to be across everything that is going on, sometimes it is nice just to have a little bit of escapism and let your mind think about some of maybe the more positive times ahead.
Looking forward to the wedding is actually really comforting and thinking about all your friends and family being in the same place and celebrating something together. I think that also helps on those days where, obviously, lockdown might be a little bit more challenging than others to just think, “okay, well, let’s just push through this, plan and look forward.” It’s also nice just having a bit of time to enjoy the fact that we are engaged and what’s been really nice is that we’ve gotten cards and flowers in stages, so it almost feels like, when your birthday lasts for a whole month!
I think for me when the Queen did her speech, I felt like she summed up that sentiment so well. “We will all meet again, and we will all come back together, and we will get through these times,” that in itself is also something that spurs you on to stay as positive as possible, we are living in unique times and this proposal has added another unique feeling to the circumstances.
Congratulations Steph and Pete! This is just the kind of story we need right now…