How I popped the question, Prt 1

Ok, so now its time to do a little boasting about how it all began.
The wedding thing, not the dating thing, that’s a story for later times. You see, thru no small amount of craftiness on my part, I managed to arrange for almost everyone we know to all be at the same place at the same time. And all unbeknownst to Nessa. This might seem like a small thing to most of you out there, but pulling one over on Nessa is harder than you'd think. She's good at reading people and can sniff out an line of BS from twenty paces. Hell, I don't even let her pick up her Christmass gifts untill its time for her to open them. She's that good. This was going to require finesse. Sadly I don't have much of that, so I went with deviousness. I have that to spare.
See it went like this...

First thing I did was to tell (not in any particular order) Mom, Jen & Brian, my Sister, John & Karren, and my Dad that I was planning to ask Nessa the BIG question. There were others I told as well, but they're not part of this story.
This was step one of a grand plan. A plan that hadn't been fully thought of yet, but grand none the less.

Second thing to do was decide on the When & Where. Jen & Brian's place seemed like the obvious choice for the "where", so I asked them. They said yes. That part was easy at least.

So then it was a matter of when. This was a trickier problem. First I had to figure out how to get everyone (save for Sister and Dad who just live too far away to be there) at J&B's, each with a reasonably believable story for being there. This took some thinking. Thankfully my best friend John is all shades of smart and into all shades of things, including (on the small scale) brewing beer. This is something that J&B are into (on not so small a scale) as well as my self. So Brian and I decided that that Saturday was going to be a BREWING day, wink wink. And since John was interested in brewing, we invited him and Ren to come down and help make a batch. Passed word along to John, and boom. Got four of the players lined up for the grand event. That was easy enough.

Now how to get mom down there. At the same time. Without seeming suspicious.
This took some thinking.
Not a lot mind you, as the Fates were kind to me. See while all this brew day planning was going on, my sister's friends Rachel & Dougie from across the pond were over here visiting with my mom and doing the tourist thing. Well as it turns out there aren't any wolves (or dogs that look like wolves) in England. Or not enough to speak of at any rate. So mom had the idea to use J&B's dogs (3 large wolf look alikes) as a stop on the site seeing map. J&B were cool with this. I was cool with this. Hell, this might just work.

Things were looking good. The stage was set, even if the script wasn't. Everyone knew their rolls.
Now all I had to do was set the hook, so to speak.