This boyfriend got the best deal—his girlfriend said yes
While everyone was busy scoring sale finds on Sept. 9, Jeric Fortuna, a licensed private pilot, had other plans. It was his girlfriend Mara Sotto’s 30th birthday, and he wanted to make it extra special by proposing to her.
They had been dating for over six years and, wanting to start a new chapter with Mara, Jeric wasted no time planning with Mara’s family. The accounts manager recounts, “Jeric asked for my dad Maru’s approval first. Then, it was my mom Mabel who planned on having a special cake decorated. Prior to asking permission from my parents, he sought advice from my brother Chino and secretly asked help from Tiya Pauleen (Luna) on the engagement ring.”
Masking the proposal underneath the not-so-simple birthday celebration, Mara did notice quite a few “extra” details such as the styled dining room and a huge cake that arrived totally covered. “We usually keep it simple, so I just thought that maybe this was how they thought I envisioned celebrating my 30th birthday,” she says.
As soon as Jeric arrived, they all proceeded to the area to sing her a happy birthday. That was how Jeric entered the room holding the huge cake with a Tiffany box décor, as suggested by Mara's mom, on top. An avid collector of jewelry" Mara loved the color. Apparently, there was more to the cake. “When he finally stood beside me as I was about to blow the candle, that was when I read the words on the cake. It said ‘Happy Birthday’ and ‘Will you marry me?’”
Was she surprised? Mara said that she wasn’t expecting it. “We both agreed that it would happen in a few years but there was really no specific year.” This pleasant surprise became all too real and surreal as Jeric went down on one knee and proposed. And as soon as she started sharing to her closest friends and cousins about the proposal, she realized that everyone already knew about it. “Jeric secretly gave all my loved ones a heads up prior to my birthday. That one truly made my heart melt,” she beamed.
As he proposed on her birthday that coincided on the 9.9 online sale, she couldn’t resist adding a little fun to her Instagram post. “Little did I know that Jeric was going to ‘add me to his cart’ for the rest of our lives,” she wrote.
As for their wedding plans, they hope to start as early as December. “We are definitely going to pray for the best time to get married and where we should have our wedding because getting engaged in the middle of a pandemic definitely came with no manual,” Mara said.