Our Wonderful, Amazing, Fantastic, Romantic 3 Year Anniversary!!

March 16, 2012 marked our 3 year anniversary together - we can't believe how fast it has gone!!

Most of our day was spent working, which unfortunately meant we were apart - but that made the evening even more special! Here's the thing - we are with each other (or at least in the same building) almost ALL of the time, so planning surprises is extremely difficult and requires great skill and sneakiness! We somehow always manage anyway. 

The day flew by, and at 5:30pm, preparation began. Laura turned her desk into a make-up counter and Sarah turned her's into a hair salon, and an hour later we were ready to go! Working in central London meant we are able to get from our office to the Southbank in 15 minutes. On arrival we wandered around the food market sampling cheeses and getting SO tempted to taste the AMAZING falafel wraps - so hard to hold on until our meal!! So we rushed to the restaurant, where we were seated early!

Top Table had suggested The Archduke, a Blue & Black restaurant that specialises in cocktails, steaks and jazz - perfect for us! Located under the railway arches at Waterloo, we were lucky enough to get a window table (Sarah requested it ahead of time) with a view of a fountain in the park over the road and a perfect place to people watch - not that we had much time for that! :)

We are impatient when it comes to presents, or at least Sarah is - so she wanted to get the gift giving underway at the first opportunity. After we put in our orders, Sarah brought out the pink wine bag - we aren't big wine drinkers, so Sarah thought this would be a great decoy to throw Laura off the scent - and it worked a treat!

First present out of the bag was a bottle of Millions - 'a symbol of how much Sarah loves Laura' Awww!

The second was a set of Russian Dolls - the reason behind this was two-fold 1) Laura has wanted Russian dolls ever since we booked our trip to Moscow last summer and 2) it was a great way for Sarah to give Laura a special message. The dolls each carried a message on their front and a note inside....

SO cute, right??

We have been talking about getting married for ages - in fact anyone who knows us is well aware of our hen/bachelorette party and wedding plans (well, you have to be prepared!!) but we have agreed that there will be no formal engagement until we have saved enough money to get the rings - how very practical right?! But we each want a proposal and we both know what kind of rings we want to get!

Sarah wanted to take the three year anniversary as an opportunity to move things one step closer after getting the idea from a close friend in Australia. After hearing about our wedding plans, Kate had emailed us saying 'congratulations on your pre-engagement' and so Sarah thought she would officially pre-propose!

Other than Laura bursting into tears (of joy!), it went down well (SHE SAID YES! Of course!!), and it just in time for the biggest prawns we'd ever seen arrive for the starter!

We are pretty sure that the waitress had no clue what on earth was going on and whether Sarah was upsetting Laura, and why there were cards and presents filling up our table!

After the delicious starters were cleared away, Laura got to give her gift to the eagerly awaiting Sarah - a beautifully handcrafted and personalised bracelet including a stone with Sarah's favourite colour - purple. And because we love any opportunity to match, Laura got one with her favourite colour stone - pink! So cute!

As we were putting the bracelets on, dinner arrived - Sarah's chicken was one heck of a big bird! and Laura's burger was 'still mooing' - just the way she likes it. In honour of Laura's Dad, Sarah even tried a bit of the burger and decided it 'wasn't that bad'! The food was ALL delicious and kept us quiet for most of dinner except for the odd 'I love you' and 'I'm so happy!!!' coming from both of us.

With dinner suitably demolished and the wine finally drunk, we thought we'd take a stroll along the Southbank. It's one of our favourite places to enjoy the view of the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben and the London Eye. Walking hand in hand we couldn't help but feel so incredibly lucky. We know that having the opportunity to live, work and be together all of the time is a privilege and we never take that for granted.

It also meant we spotted a couple of eggs in The Faberge Big Egg Hunt, but that's another story!

3 years is only the beginning of our journey, but what a start it's been. Thank you for joining us, and we hope you'll stick around to see what the future brings!!

Love always from a very happy (and newly pre-engaged) Sarah & Laura xo