[Fwd: Great news!]

[babagannoush]

My friend Arlie is stationed in Afghanistan so I didn't have a way to send him the good news apart from email. The result follows below, make sure you're sitting down for this (as opposed to reading LJ while water skiing).

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Great news!
Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2007 23:23:31

Arlie!

I hope you're sitting down (as opposed to reading email while scaling a mountain) because I have some great and wonderful news to share with you:

Sophia and I are engaged to be married!

I don't think I got around to telling you anything about my girlfr...fiancée so here's a quick summary:

• We met at William and Mary and got along quite well (despite me dating someone else at the time).
• We lost touch after our respective graduations (she's class of 2001) and while I moved to Boston she moved to Spain for a year.
• She tracked me down through a mutual friend after I moved back to Roanoke and started pestering me to come visit her in Richmond.
• Eventually we reunited in Lynchburg for an evening (she had a huge crush on me to which I was completely oblivious).
• A few months later we again reunited when mutual friends of ours got married in Williamsburg. I needed a place to crash for the weekend and Sophia jumped at the opportunity to have me around so she invited me to a Halloween costume party on the Friday before the wedding as well as invited me to crash at her place. It was over this weekend (Last Halloween) we started dating.
• I moved in with her at the end of April of this year (at this point we were already secretly engaged. Shh, don't tell anyone) and am currently looking for a career in Richmond. I am no longer working with the Cardinal Glass factory; I had lost all passion for the job.
• This weekend Mom, Dad, and Ben visited us in Richmond. They met Sophia's parents yesterday for dim sum brunch and enjoyed Sophia's dad's cooking for dinner (Sophia's parents run a Chinese take-out restaurant here in town).
  
• Today (June 24th, 2007) we got our families together for lunch at a fancy Italian restaurant where we announced our official engagement. As the story goes: I toasted the families and commented on how well we were getting along and, "I hope we get along well for a long time because flash the ring honey, flash the ring! we're getting married!"
• We've spent most of the day calling friends and family. Damn, we're tired now.

Here's the plan for the wedding:

1. Civil Ceremony on September 25th.
• Quick and dirty, no muss, fuss, or enormous cost.
  
• We found a pretty cool sounding "Civil Celebrant" to conduct the ceremony. Her name is Gwen. She lives less than three miles from here.
  
• Sophia found a pretty red dress to wear to the ceremony, too.
  
• Wedding bands are to be in the "pipe cut" style and engraved with "I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine," in Hebrew and "Forever" in Chinese.
  
2. We take the money that would have been spent on the wedding and reception and use it to visit our friends across the US and rest of the
   world. We're calling it: AMITANDSOPHIAPALOOZA!!!
   
• We're buying a domain name and will post "tour dates" soon.
  
• Locations include Galax! Roanoke! Richmond! The Greater DC Area! New York City! California! Portville/Olean, NY! London! Israel! Taiwan!
  
• Kabul, Afghanistan TBA following finalization of venue security detail.
  
• We'll send out tickets, possibly sell t-shirts at venues; on-line ordering TBA.
  
3. Profit!
   

It's getting late, I'll tell you more about the lady tomorrow but for now I'll say that she's incredibly smart, beautiful, she's a wonderful cook, and volunteers for everything. She's a classy dame and don't you forget it!

Picture attached, stand by for cuteness. Take care of yourself and I hope to see you stateside healthy, happy, and soon.

Amit