A promise of love on the Emerald Isle

Young Chang

He asked her parents first.

He got down on one knee.

Family members already knew what was going on and waited just a

wall away, video camera poised.

And as if things weren’t enviably wonderful enough, the whole

shebang took place in the rainy, dew-ey, ever-romantic grayness of

Ireland.

“My mom and my family were going to be over there for this time

period and Ally’s mom is a bit adventurous and she wanted to go and

we invited her along,” said Kyle Scrimgeour, the groom-to-be. “It was

a wonderful opportunity to kind of put two and two together.”

Costa Mesa’s Bette and Jay Rothman traveled to Southern Ireland

with their daughter Alison and her then-boyfriend Scrimgeour in late

July. Alison Rothman had no idea Scrimgeour was going to propose.

Her parents did.

Scrimgeour’s mother planned for an elaborate dinner at a

bed-and-breakfast that resembled a small chateau, Bette Rothman said.

They all gathered there one rainy night. Scrimgeour, of Hermosa

Beach, scrambled for an excuse to get his girlfriend outside, so he

could propose in private. He suggested the two take some pictures.

Outside the bed-and-breakfast, he got down on one knee during the

impromptu picture taking. Still on bended knee, he said,

“While I’m down here, I love you very much. Will you marry me?”

Rothman gave an emotional and shaky “yes.”

They opened the bed-and-breakfast door and got emotional with the

rest of the family. Everything was videotaped, of course.

Alison Rothman was in San Francisco before press time and couldn’t

relive, for the Pilot, her reaction.

“She was just ecstatic,” said Bette Rothman, of her daughter. “And

it was awfully nice I think to be there with his mother, his brother

and sister ... It was raining the whole time, but it was a very

romantic time.”

Nothing compared in romance or sweetness to Scrimgeour’s proposal,

but the greenness of Ireland, with its narrow roads and storybook

pastures, came close.

In Kinsale, called the “gourmet capital of Ireland” by travel

catalogs, the vacationers ate fine food that was just as fine as even

the eats in Paris, Bette Rothman said.

“And the people are just warm and friendly and went out of their

way for us,” added the retired medical manager for Pacific Care.

One stranger literally did. When the travelers got lost, he got in

his car and guided the Rothmans and Scrimgeours to where they needed

to go. The good deed lasted minutes.

“We thanked him and he said, ‘have a wonderful time in Ireland,’”

Bette Rothman said.