Andrew and Desiree

Andrew proposed after we were together for about 1.5 years. We did talk about growing old together etc but nothing concrete was ever discussed and I was under the impression that it would not happen for quite some time. A few months before the proposal, we traveled to Africa and everyone was convinced that Andrew was going to pop the question during the trip. I joked to him that he shouldn’t bring the bling as we will get robbed there, and I guess he took the hint!

The holiday came and went and there was no talk about a proposal or marriage after that. In March 2012, Andrew told me that he was planning to take his big client and his wife for a dinner hoping that he could get more sales out of them and since the wife was Indonesian like myself, he wanted me to get close to her to help him to seal the deal. I said not a problem at all, bring it on! So when he said that he had all the dinner arrangements covered I didn’t think anything of it (I should’ve suspected something though because he is normally lazy and will get me to be his free personal assistant). He told me the date, time and place for this dinner to take place and he said to call him after I finished work on Friday to meet him somewhere before heading to the restaurant.

On the day, Andrew called me after lunch to say that there was a change of plan; the client insisted that Andrew should do a sales pitch to him before dinner and this pretty much messed Andrew’s plan for the night. He said that he had no choice than to hire a room at the Langham Melbourne to do this presentation and that we would go to dinner afterwards. I met a nervous looking Andrew after work and he said that he needed me to look through the presentation before to make sure that it looked good for the client.

When we got in to the room at the Langham, I realized that Andrew had booked one of the suites with a beautiful view across the Yarra River with a balcony the size of our apartment; I joked and said: “we should make full use of this and stay here tonight!”. He said “let’s talk about it later and please go through my presentation now as it is very important, it is sitting on the table on the balcony”. When I read the presentation, it said “turn around, yes, that means you” with a smiley face and I thought “wow he is being very creative about this” and when I turned around to ask him why he was doing this type of presentation to such an important client, he was on one knee. It still didn’t register to me that he was about to propose so I asked him if he had dropped something! Then I saw the box, he asked me if I would do him the honour of marrying him and the rest was blurry because I had too many tears in my eyes :).

Fast forward 7 months later, we had our relaxed engagement party at Fitzroy Lawn Bowling Club with family and friends. We were blessed with a beautiful 26 degree day with no clouds as the whole week coming up to the day was just miserable with rain and cold days. A good friend of mine Harvard Wang took the photos of the day and he did such a fabulous job! We had a truly amazing day and I can’t believe that we are only 4 weeks away to our destination wedding in Ayana Jimbaran Bay Bali, time sure does fly!

Ms Gingham says: A relaxed day in which everyone looked like they were having a blast! Congratulations Desiree and Andrew!

Desiree says: “My name is Desiree Sutrisno, I moved down to Melbourne from Jakarta, Indonesia 14 years ago to study and ended up living in Melbourne until now. What can I say, every time I try to leave this country, it always pull me back in, I do love Melbourne.”