Alex & Amelie

One of Amelie's favorite places in the world is Dash Sushi.

Dash Sushi was discovered in 2014, while Alex and Amelie lived in a sketchy apartment complex in Belmont, CA. It became Amelie's favorite sushi spot the moment the server handed her a plate with sake toro nigiri. Its location - 15 minutes away, plus parking in the worst public lots ever designed - and the quality of the food made it a go-to spot for special occasions.

After they moved to San Francisco, going to Dash became much more difficult - 45 minutes without taking into account traffic AND parking and at that point, wouldn't it be better to just get food in the city anyway? It's not like the city is lacking in good food - and Amelie was left with a nigiri-shaped hole in her heart. So of course, she was very excited to receive a calendar invite one January afternoon: "Let's go to Dash Sushi!" She hit YES immediately.

At the restaurant, while Amelie exclaimed happily over a platter of omakase sashimi (including the amazing sake toro), Alex had more than a bit of unfiltered courage house sake. As they walked towards Alex's Camry, Amelie resigned herself to being the designated driver again. "But wait!" Alex said, "we're not going home yet." As Amelie's worldview holds that the best follow-up to Dash Sushi is ice cream, this wasn't out of the ordinary. Alex put an address into the GPS, refusing all the while to tell Amelie where they were headed.

Ten minutes from their destination, Alex exclaimed "Stop the car! Stop the car!" Despite the questionable legality of pulling over into the unmarked lane on the side of the road, and Amelie's protests to that effect, she eventually did. Alex burst out of the car excitedly, exhorting Amelie to do the same. There, on a bridge overlooking the bay, Alex pulled out a box with a customized version of Amelie's dream engagement ring and asked her to marry him. As you can probably guess, she said yes!

They then headed to the mystery location, which turned out to be a hotel room filled with champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries, where Amelie, who up to this point had been keeping it more or less together, spent about an hour crying ugly (but happy) tears and getting snot everywhere.

And the next day, Amelie and Alex told their family and friends. But, to Amelie's endless amusement, Alex had mentioned his plans to David, who had then told all of their local friends that he was planning to propose that evening, so exactly 0% of them were surprised. TL;DR: David is a huge gossip, Alex and Amelie are getting married, and you should always get ice cream after sushi.