A proposal with all the fixings

Psychologist Bobby Brown told some gems on the way to his spectacularly romantic marriage proposal to Andrea Ladda.

It was lovely, lovely -- except for THE LYING!

"I didn't have a choice," the mental health practitioner for Boys Totem Town in St. Paul said Wednesday with hearty laughter. "Here's the thing: You don't understand Andrea. She's a lawyer. She's analytical. She's an investigator. You know how y'all women are. You can't slide anything past you -- not that I'm encouraging men to do that. But you're too good. And if you're going to lie, it better be an air-tight lie."

Brown enlisted the fibbing skills of Gene Gittelson, whose Gittelson Jewelers store in a Minneapolis skyway was the site chosen for the marriage proposal.

Gittelson was in charge of leaving Ladda a voice mail that broke the news that the ring they had designed in 2010, when Brown put it on layaway, had been accidently sold by a new employee while Gene was on vacation in Las Vegas.

"She checked to see if Gene was out of town!" Brown said by way of justifying his deceptions. "She was checking my story, and I knew she would. I'm like, 'Come on!' "

Ladda said she thought "there's no way that's going to happen" when Gittelson said the ring was gone. She said she didn't buy the story until after she "jumped on Google and googled 'Las Vegas jewelers show' and was able to confirm that's where Gene was."

"I had the ring here the whole time," Gittelson told me. "But I said, 'I'm so sorry, this has never happened. I'm going to have to make you a new ring.'

"Andrea was never mad. They came in on a Saturday and I told her how sorry I was again. Then I said, 'So Bobby, when are you going to give her this ring already? It's been here since last summer.'

"He said, You know, Gene, when I give this beautiful lady the ring, I would like to have a violinist play some music. Something beautiful. All of a sudden, she hears a violin," Gittelson said. "She's looking at this guy, her eyes are tearing. Then he says, Personally, I would like my family here, with flowers. All of a sudden, five or six people come in with flowers."

By the end, some 30 family members had showed up, as you can see from these photos by Nancy Van Thorre at www.nvtphotography.com/?p=388.

"Then Bobby kind of lowered himself in his chair. Everybody cried," said Gittelson. "In all my 26 years in the jewelry business, nobody went to such an extreme. It was a touching thing."

Brown and Ladda have been dating for eight years, since meeting when they were students at Augsburg. Now a Ramsey County law clerk, Ladda graduated from William Mitchell College of Law in 2009.

Brown earned his master's of psychology degree from the University of St. Thomas in 2011, royally defying the predictions of doctors who did not think he would finish high school.

Asked if the thoroughly charming Brown has retired from lying, Ladda laughed and said: "Yes. There should be no more surprises. It was perfect. Absolutely amazing."

But Brown said: "I have more up my sleeves. When you are in love with someone deserving of love, you want to treat them with the love you are experiencing. My momma raised me to be like this."

They are planning an August 2012 marriage. Many congrats!

Andrea Ladda and Bobby Brown have earned the privilege of one of life's happy rites of passage.

"Bobby put in work before the proposal," said Ladda. "My grandfather, Victor Ladda -- he would be the one who would have walked me down the aisle -- passed in April 2010 from cancer. Bobby had already asked for his blessing."

When Victor was diagnosed with a second bout of cancer in 2010, his wife and Andrea's grandmother, Dorothy Ladda, fell and broke her hip.

In 2008, Ladda's uncle, Gary Ladda, died in a motorcycle accident, and Brown's grandfather, Preston Atlas, died. Then on Feb. 14, 2011, Brown's grandmother, Bessie Atlas, died.

"We've had three years of craziness. A series of ..." Andrea couldn't finish the sentence.

Never the type to dwell on life's downers, Brown started a nonprofit, Bobby Brown's Violence Prevention Initiatives, to educate kids about the dangers of guns and the unintentional pain these weapons can cause.