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It’s safe to say this man’s romantic proposal melted more than just his girlfriend’s heart.
After buying a ring, Albert Ndreu spent two weeks meticulously planning the moment he’d pop the question to his girlfriend, Valerija Madevic.
But it all went up in smoke when the tea-light candles he used to spell out “Marry me?” caught fire and burned down their flat in Sheffield, Yorkshire.
“I was planning the proposal for over two weeks,” he says, adding that he kept struggling to find the right thing to do to mark the special moment.
“I bought the most important thing, which was the ring, and I just needed to make sure the day was perfect.
“Valerija always says the most important thing is the small everyday gestures, but I wanted to do something special for the proposal.”
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He had decided to surprise her by filling their living room with 100 candles and roughly 60 balloons, the Yorkshire Post reports.
Romantic music was playing, and a bottle of wine was waiting to be uncorked.
After spending four hours preparing the perfect setting, the besotted waiter went to fetch the love of his life. But when they returned a horrific sight awaited them.
“We walked up the stairs to the flat and there was smoke everywhere. I told him to call the firefighters because our house was on fire,” Valerija says. “I was in total shock. I was shaking because it looked like it was really bad.”
But Albert (26) was undeterred and got down on one knee in the charred room and asked the love of his life if she would marry him with sirens wailing in the distance and their flat engulfed in flames.
“He pulled out a box from his pocket and I was just speechless,” she said. “He said that he messed up — our house was literally in flames — but asked me if I would marry him. And I said yes.”
Albert recalls the immense relief he felt when Valerija accepted his hand in marriage.
“The best news? She still said yes,” he says. “I was so worried about everything going wrong I never imagined I could set the house on fire.”
"It didn't go exactly as I thought it would, but she said yes, so I think the day took an unexpected turn but ended up exactly how I wanted it to."
“It will always be an unforgettable day for us and a story which will be amazing to tell our children.”
Albert and Valerija have been together for just over a year after meeting on a dating website.
“I believe that people have a destiny and there is someone you're meant to be with - and for me that's Valerija,” he says.
“We found each other on an app and it was my first match and I immediately knew I didn't need the app anymore,” he says adding that after they connected online they started talking for hours.
“We got on like a house on fire, but maybe we took that a bit too literally.”
They plan to wed on the one-year anniversary of the fire, and hope to invite the local fire department to thank them.
“I hope this serves as a warning for others that maybe there is such a thing as too much love, or too many candles,” Albert says.
Sources: DailyMail, Edinburg News, NYPost, Yorkshire Post
