Grand gestures define the rules of engagement

Life is a little like panning for gold. One endures a seemingly endless passing of unremarkable screed in the hope that with a little luck and a lot of hard work, eventually some brilliance will sparkle on the surface.

While waiting for life's little nuggets, it can sometimes be easy to lose hope ... to consider giving up in the face of yet another landslide and to develop a habit of looking down into the murky depths instead of occasionally staring up and seeing the sun in the sky.

Over many years, like many people, I have been in that position and enjoyed the flecks of gold as they've come and gone but with a feeling that something better had to be out there, worth waiting for.

This week on an isolated beach with no history of mining of any sort, my big shiny nugget finally came to the surface.

To be more precise, it was a big, shiny ring. And not just any ring. It was a ring that sat in the outstretched hand of my favourite person in the universe.

When true happiness hits, it does so hard - and in a way that makes every sad experience that went before it seem worth it because it was propelling you in a rapid trajectory to this moment in time, without you even knowing.

Of course, none of this occurred to me when my boyfriend proposed. Strangely, it was as if my mind and all the functions it fires were stripped away from me, leaving me speechless in a way I'm not sure I've ever experienced before and am unlikely to again. When some inquiries were made about my opinion on the matter at hand and whether I might, in fact, relinquish my hand, I managed to regain the power of speech, at least to the extent I was able to scream the required "Yes" in a volume appropriate for the occasion. And so began one of the best days of my life.

Such days are bitter-sweet, in part because of their fleeting impermanence but also because, upon return to the real world, everything else seems flatter by comparison.

But enough philosophy.

This is a story about a man, a ring and evidence that while James Bond may be fiction, his real-world contemporaries are alive and well and proposing to their girlfriends in spectacular fashion.

For while I'd been asleep in our bed with the dog's head on the other pillow as a place-keeper last weekend; my boyfriend had been in Australia.

Telling me he was in Auckland on business, he'd instead been in another country entirely, collecting a ring that had been a year in the planning and three months in the making even further afield in Paris.

While I'd understandably thought myself talking to empty space when I returned from shooting a wedding filled with stories of all the romantic details, it turned out my man had tuned in one night when I'd waxed lyrical about a specific Cartier ring, and he'd been on a mission ever since.

And now that ring (well, one just like it) is on my finger to be an enduring reminder that while he may not always get a card on Valentine's Day or light the candles at dinner time, he's a guy that knows how to deliver a grand gesture.

And even better, he's mine.