One Enchanted Evening
Charity Boutte & Jonathan Murrell
Conservatory Gardens in Central Park, June 2, 2006|
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The proposal: I proposed to Charity in March 2005. We'd been dating for quite a while, and I knew I wanted to marry her. We go to dinner every weekend, so I invited her to the Marriott Marquis. They have a restaurant called the View, and it's the only restaurant in Manhattan that has a rotating floor-it makes a full circle every hour and a half. The dinner was a little nicer than usual, but she didn't seem to know what was going on. We were talking, having a good time, and then she said, "It's Sunday, we should go, we've got to get ready for work in the morning"-because we usually have to leave for work by 6:30-and I said, "Oh, let's take it easy, enjoy the view and the scenery." She was like, "What's going on?" I had my hand under the table and I took out some pictures of us from the last six months. I told her how much I loved her and that she was the perfect woman for me. About five minutes after we looked at the photographs, I whipped out the ring, got on one knee, and proposed. Charity was speechless, and then finally she said, "Yes!" Afterward, the waitress said she had no idea I was going to propose, since most guys are so nervous they get up and go to the bathroom, but I kept it cool the whole time.
The location: We had an interesting engagement. We originally planned for a 200-person-plus wedding, but Jonathan had a new job and mine was getting overwhelming, so we decided to put the
wedding on hold for a little
while and focus on our relationship. One day, we were both feeling stressed out, so we went to relax in the Conservatory Garden in Central Park on a friend's recommendation. We thought, Wow, this is the most beautiful place; it's so peaceful,
a little oasis. Jonathan said,
"Hey, we could get married here." Because we both have such huge families-my dad is one of thirteen, my mom's one of eight, and Jonathan's dad is one of ten-coordinating all of that seemed like it would be less about us, so we downscaled and re-planned the wedding from scratch for only 30 of our closest family and friends, which brought the focus back to our relationship and
each other. A month and a half later, we married at the Gardens.
The highlight: Honestly, for
me it was during the ceremony
when my grandfather read the scripture from Corinthians that I'm named after, using my great-grandmother's Bible. I had asked him to read a Bible verse, but
I didn't even think about which Bible he'd be reading from, so it was a total surprise. It meant a lot to me, and I got a little choked up. In modern versions of the Bible, it says, "Love is patient, love is kind," but the King James Version he was reading from uses the word charity instead. Afterward, the pastor made
a joke about the line "faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity," saying to Jonathan that without Charity, you have nothing.
The moment: During the ceremony, the pastor asked us to whisper a secret to each other. He said the secret would be something from the ceremony that we would keep with us forever and refer to often. I love that we have a special memory that only we share.
The mishap: The shuttle taking our guests to the reception got lost on the way there. The driver took them to the East Side, then the West Side, so they got to
see a little bit of New York. Since it was just the 30 of them on
this shuttle van, they also got the chance to bond. Several people later shared stories about the good talks they'd had on the trip down.
The advice: Date each other during the engagement. You get so busy planning the wedding that you kind of forget what it's all about, which is the two
of you and how much you love spending time together.
The day before: We both took off from work and took care of
the critical things: We got our marriage license, picked up our honeymoon itinerary, made
rain contingency plans, found my makeup artist, and bought our wedding bands. Believe it or not, we weren't stressed. We had this amazing sense of peace about the whole thing. It was perfect chaos.
From the Winter 2006 New York Wedding Guide