The Milan News-Leader
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
The heart of the matter
The business of romance and the rising cost of love
By Brian Cox, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: February 14, 2008
It was Valentine's Day and Deean Parris' hands were sweating. He'd been planning it for a month and everything was set. He was ready to ask Karen Small to marry him. After dinner, the two returned to a hotel in downtown Ann Arbor, where Karen found lit candles and rose petals strewn about the Jacuzzi.
She thought it was a Valentine's Day surprise.
Little did she know.
"I turned around and he was on his knee with a ring," said Karen, "and I thought I was going to have a heart attack. It was shocking."
Deean said he chose Valentine's Day because he decided it would be "good cover."
"I figured what better day than Valentine's Day to get engaged," he said. "It was romantic, I guess."
Deean is not alone in his thinking.
Of the 2.3 million couples who get engaged each year in the United States, a full 10 percent actually get engaged on Valentine's Day, according to the Diamond Information Center.
What couples usually don't do is get married, according to the Rev. Lorna Brown of Manchester's Rites and Rituals.
Brown has been conducting 35 to 40 wedding ceremonies a year for the past eight years and she cannot recall officiating a single wedding on Valentine's Day.
"It's a day people may do something romantic," Brown said. "Not get married."
Now with three kids, Karen and Deean Parris, who both graduated from Milan High School and live in Ypsilanti Township, said they plan to spend a quiet Valentine's Day, exchanging flowers and a gift.
"We'll probably have a fire and order out," Karen said. "Deean's pretty good about remembering. He's never forgotten Valentine's Day."
Which isn't to say that Deean Parris isn't like a lot of other men.
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