by Tamara McHatton

Every woman dreams of the most romantic, the most perfect marriage proposal. Books have been written with the ideal proposal as a scene. But only SUITE could bring you, our readers, the actual dream come true. Here now...as it was played out.

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Ya know, sometimes I wonder about the wisdom of having a staff on board at SUITE.

Now don't get me wrong...I love them dearly and they help me out in more ways than I can count, but sometimes, they decide to revolt, outvoting Evan and myself on what goes into the magazine each month. And this month is no exception.

After they found out about THE event at RT 2006, they insisted we put the BIG announcement in June's issue of SUITE Magazine.

For those of you who don't know...after four years of dating, Evan proposed to me. But this was no ordinary proposal.

Evan secretly arranged with the producers of the Mr. Romance pageant, to do the deed during the show itself. He only told four people his plans, knowing how rumors and word of mouth make very little unknown during the Romantic Times convention. Even the MCs of the pageant, Beth Ciotta and Andrei Claude, were caught completely unaware.

So there I was, having just walked off stage after performing my pose-downs with the great set of guys in the competition, nervous as hell, and soooooo glad to be out of the spotlight. The backstage area this year was about three foot wide. Since I came off the stage before Bryee Pozzessere (Heather Graham's beautiful daughter), and she was wearing a Connie Perry original hoop skirt, I was kind of pinned where I was.

Rich Devin, the producer, came over the PA system (remember, I was backstage and couldn't see what was going on since we couldn't see the back of the projection screens like in previous years) and said he had some important announcement to make but needed help (I'm paraphrasing here since I can barely recall what actually occurred). So he called Evan up to the stage. I do remember all of us pose-down ladies kind of looking at each other going...”what the ????” I personally thought it was another 9-11 incident. Then Evan said something about a blonde running around, helping others, RT wanting to show appreciation, and would Tamara McHatton (moi!!!!) come out on stage.   more >>