It was your average Friday night in Brooklyn.

Nick was out on the town with a visiting Aussie mate. They were on the move and the cab fatefully dropped them 4 blocks too soon at the corner of 5th Avenue and Carroll Street—just in front of the local High Dive bar.

Cut to Lauren and her girlfriends inside the bar. They had a prime seat in the front, although there wasn’t much outside to look at on that cold December night. That is until she laid eyes on him and through the window she waved with gusto (as he describes it).

He pulled his buddy inside to find out more about this intriguing girl in a grey beret. That’s when she realized he had an accent—bonus! And he tried to play hard to get (obviously not too well).

The rest, as they say, is history.

For months, Nick and Lauren intended to take a special trip together. With an element of surprise, the wheels were in motion for the ‘Magical Mystery Tour’—all aboard!

Through Nick’s meticulous research (and ability to keep a secret), he planned an adventure that included a Bonnie and Clyde style cross-country road trip in a Jeep. Their journey involved slithering encounters, caves that Indiana Jones wouldn’t dare to enter, a wrong turn into a missile firing range, Border control, windmills, intense heat, all the peppers you could eat, exhaustion, camping out in the desert during an electrical storm and finally a place called City of Rocks. This is the place where Nick’s hard work was going to come down on one knee (literally) with a thunderous applause from the desert they had been calling home.

But, Lauren pissed him off and his plans were thwarted.

The drive to Santa Fe the following day was a tough one. Nick knew he had to change his game plan and was wary of influences from the outside world (he’s talking to you Facebook friends!) threatening his romantic gesture. They rolled into the Ranch, otherwise known as The Bishop’s Lodge, and enjoyed a night of sitting under the twinkle lit skies of New Mexico sipping on cocktails in front of a fire. Seeing this as the perfect moment to drop a bomb, Nick broke it to Lauren that their trip was nothing more than an opportunity for them to grow closer together. It was not going to involve a proposal. She ordered another bottle of wine and planned to have a “talk” with him once they arrived back in NY.

Two days later, he seized the moment to ask for her hand in marriage now that it was completely unexpected.
It was not just evil, but genius.

After breakfast, they strolled hand-in-hand around the grounds and found an old dilapidated carriage where Nick was able to dip into his camera bag, position Lauren right where he wanted her and pop the question.

She said ‘oh my god, shut up, are you kidding’ and of course “yes.” And that, my friends, is the story of the Magical Mystery Tour.

Thank god they went skeet shoot after they got engaged.