No matter where your train is currently stopped in the Grand Central Station of Relationships, Marriage & Divorce, who can deny the heart-string-pulling power of a great proposal? Let's face it - it's almost June, with all her attendant weddings, brides/ bridezillas, puppy ring-bearers, vodka ice sculptures, strappy sandals and chocolate fountains. You can sense it's around the corner. All that love and hope and tulle.
I offer this bit of love and joy to us all - the newly/forever divorced, the abandoned, the never-married, the disillusioned, the bored, the uninspired, the too-tired, the good-ones-are-taken - to us all, no matter how bitter, bruised or embattled by love - I challenge you not to melt in the face of what may be the world's most joyful marriage proposal.
A great marriage proposal has all the best parts of love, right? It's a new beginning, a fresh start, full of great hope, big dreams, possibilities, faith, inspiration, optimism, youth, promise, forever.
'Marry Me' Goes Viral
So if you have not seen the epic, once-in-a-lifetime-it-took-a-village proposal pulled off by Isaac Lamb, a Portland, Oregon actor, well, spend the six minutes watching this viral sensation and regain (if only for six minutes) your joy, hope and faith in love. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll cheer, you'll love love again. It's simply not to be missed. You may even wish—even for a second—that you were Amy Frankel, the focus of all this loving fuss.
First Comes Marriage
Here's a description from the Oregon news story about the viral video:
"On Wednesday, Isaac Lamb, a Portland actor, proposed to his girlfriend, Amy Frankel. But he didn't just ask her. He put her in the open back of a Honda CRV and gave her some headphones. She thought she was going to hear a song.
He got one, all right. The video went viral after he posted it Friday and had tens of thousands of hits by Friday afternoon. By Saturday morning, his video had close to half a million hits.
"It's crazy," Lamb, 31, said. "I thought friends and family would like it, and I figured that's where it would end. I can't believe it."
Lamb likes to put on "big flashmobby type things," he said. "When I decided to ask Amy to marry me, I wanted something she wouldn't forget."
What unfolds is "a growing street party of singing, dancing, arm-waving friends and family."
Say Yes!!!
There's so much love and joy and fun and celebration and gratitude and in-the-momentness that even the most broken of us can't resist wanting to join in. By the end, when that weeping woman, sitting with her legs swung out of the back of the open car, has been serenaded, celebrated, adored, beseeched, seduced, enraptured by the love of her family, community and most importantly, her man - when he finally appears in his black suit and does the deed, and she (spoiler alert!) says 'yes' and they embrace - well, you're rooting for them. You're on their team. On team love. On team marriage. You are back on the bandwagon heading to uncertain lands with no guarantees and a lousy track record.
Fall in Love witih Love
That's why we love love, right? That's why we love the start of love, with its endless possibilities, endless storylines. It's like childbirth. (They always say you forget but, um, NO, you don't. You just do it again anyway because you just do. Despite what you know. Because of what you know.)
And so when Amy says yes and they kiss and hold each other in that first momentus, marriage-filled embrace, you know they'll be okay. You hope they'll be okay. (Technically, you know they have about a 50 percent chance of making it. But you don't care.)
And now, because it's America in 2012, the glowing lovebirds are sifting through offers from a raft of television shows, like 'Ellen,' the Today Show and Good Morning America, and, no doubt, and the folks who produce Survivor and The Bachelor and Say Yes to the Dress are salivating. Hopefully, they won't get sucked up into the vortex of reality tv, but let's not worry about that yet.
Right now let's enjoy the moment and let ourselves be reminded that no matter where the love train has taken us in the past, what stops we got off mistakenly or misguidedly or with eyes-wide-open and still plain wrongheadedly — somewhere deep down, we all yearn to get another ticket, to try the ride again, with logic-defying, heart-healthy hope. Because we love love. We have to.
Congratulations Amy and Isaac!
Interested in more on Marriage and The Divorce Diaries? Read:
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