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Her name is Dani, she became a fiancé yesterday

15 July 2007, 10.15am-ish… With her back to the door, Dani quietly reads the lifestyle lift-out from the Sunday newspaper while waiting for her friend to arrive at the big, beachside café. Her hands rest on her knees under the table. Her pretty blonde head hovers just a few inches above a story about soaring house prices.

Dani leans back into her chair and smiles gently as her friend explains why she is 20 minutes late. They air-kiss once the friend sits on the opposite side of the table. 

“So, how are you?” Dani asks in a tone more subdued than her usual hands-in-the-air, big-grin silliness. The friend pauses, and then accepts the quick detour from small-talk to the nitty-gritty. She is aware that Dani will leave the country in 7.5 days and no doubt has little time for small-talk.

“I think I’ve found a beach house I would like to buy,” the friend explains to Dani, going into detail about where, how and why, complete with pictures. Dani says her “oohs” and her “ahhs”, but her extraordinary big, blue eyes dance with could-be distraction.

“Dan, what’s going on?” the friend asks, her own tone hovering inbetween worry and over-curiosity. Dani’s eyes shine with new wetness, and a slight pinkness rises to the top tips of her cheekbones. Within seconds her larger-than-life smile stretches across her face.

“Jez asked me to marry him,” Dani explains with the rush of words, amazement and a touch of disbelief. The two friends pause and smile at each other across the table. Dani’s enormous blue eyes now jump from her friend’s own eyes and big smile.

“When?!” the friend asks. “Where?! How?! Where is it?!” Dani slips her hands out from under the table and shyly holds up her left hand to show  the very silver Tiffany’s ring with the perfect diamond sitting alone on her wedding finger.

“I really should get a manicure to wear a Tiffany’s ring,” Dani says, her normal hands-in-the-air, big-grin silliness now returned. “But I’m scared I’ll turn into Bridezilla!”

The two friends are interrupted by the arrival of breakfast and coffee. The young waiter’s own mood so very ho-hum compared the big-news-buzz at the table. “So?” the friend encourages.

“I had no idea!” Dani says, her hands now weaving through the air as she speaks. “We were on a Great Ocean Road bus tour. He proposed at the 12 Apostles. He got down on one knee. And he even had the ring!”

Dani answers her mobile phone – it is the fiancé. Her big smile grows even bigger – she is almost swooning. He is awake and is ready to join them for breakfast. She calls over the waiter to order her fiancé an orange juice in anticipation of his arrival.

“I wrote him a note this morning to tell him where we’d be,” she said after a good sip of a latte. “I wanted to sign it ‘your fiancé’, but I couldn’t work out how to spell it. I ended yo writing ‘your finance’, which is very wrong. So I screwed it up and put it in the bin.”

Dani’s fiancé arrives only a few minutes later. Dressed in summery pants, a casual suit jacket, thongs and a light scarf skilfully knotted at his neck - he is a dark in contrast to Dani’s extreme fairness. They smile coyly at each other as they greet each for the first time that day as "betrothed".

Jez is thrilled to be offered “congratulations” and then tells the story of how a number of bus tour companions chose to pose in front of a roadside sign instead the seven-or-so nature made columns still left standing in the Southern Ocean.

Dan and Jez cock their heads, form the two-fingered pace sign beside each check and cheesy-grin for a mock camera.

They kept the proposal secret from their bus tour companions, but called both sets of parents within moments of the proposal. Dani’s parents were easy to find, and her two sisters were promised bridesmaid roles. Jez’s Malaysian parents were harder to tell. At a family party, and concerned about the high-cost of the call, his grandfather ended the call almost as soon as it had begun.

“One of my aunts had to tell my parents,” Jez explains, giggling through his words, as he does. “So they called back, very excited.”

Breakfast is over. They wander past the bright knick-knacks for sale in stalls in the touristy Sunday market along St Kilda’s esplanade before coming to a stop in front of the gaping mouth of Luna Park.

Dan and Jez cock their heads, form the two-fingered peace sign and cheesy-grin for their friend behind their camera. They giggle and then say "goodbye" before wandering off hand-in-hand to pack up their St Kilda flat.

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