Fay­ola K J Fras­er

Car­ni­val and love are not of­ten syn­ony­mous for many, but for Mar­cus Williams and Shelly Ju­rawan, every Car­ni­val for the past six years has been a ro­man­tic re­minder of the day they met.

How­ev­er, this Car­ni­val, on the sixth an­niver­sary of their fate­ful meet­ing, Williams de­cid­ed to give a more em­phat­ic re­minder than usu­al. As Car­ni­val band BLISS took the So­cadrome stage, and the back­ground of an al­tered ren­di­tion of Patrice Roberts’ 2024 hit Anx­i­ety filled the air, Williams got down on one knee to seal the deal of their love, flanked by pho­tog­ra­phers and cu­ri­ous rev­ellers, propos­ing mar­riage to Ju­rawan amidst the ex­cite­ment and eu­pho­ria of Car­ni­val Tues­day morn­ing.

The two are both long-stand­ing lovers of Car­ni­val. Mar­cus Williams is a well-known and pop­u­lar DJ, co-own­er of Rize J’Ou­vert in south Trinidad, pro­gramme di­rec­tor for Star 94.7 HD/OJO and as­sis­tant man­ag­er for Ris­ing Star and Steel.

Re­call­ing the day he first laid eyes on Ju­rawan, he re­mem­bers when their paths ini­tial­ly crossed on the stage on Car­ni­val Tues­day “as to­tal strangers six years ago.” Since that day, the love be­tween them has grown, blos­somed, and evolved, and he felt moved and ready to pro­pose to Ju­rawan, to ce­ment their love and tie them to­geth­er for­ev­er as one fam­i­ly.

“I felt it was on­ly fit­ting to do the pro­pos­al this year on Car­ni­val Tues­day,” Williams says, as the Car­ni­val they met six years ago fell on the same dates as Car­ni­val 2024, mean­ing that Ash Wednes­day, sim­i­lar­ly, was Valen­tine’s Day.

En­sur­ing he spoke to both her par­ents and his own to re­ceive their seals of ap­proval, he pro­ceed­ed to plan the per­fect mo­ment for Ju­rawan and re­quired even more ap­provals than just those of their par­ents for him to be able to pull it off seam­less­ly on the So­cadrome stage. “I had to speak to the di­rec­tors of the band [BLISS], the sound sys­tem man­agers that would be work­ing on Car­ni­val Tues­day, and the head of se­cu­ri­ty.”

As his broth­er was the DJ, he worked close­ly with him to en­sure that he had the song queued prop­er­ly so that it would play at the ex­act time need­ed for the pro­pos­al. Not leav­ing any de­tail to chance, Williams co­or­di­nat­ed with the an­nounc­er ac­com­pa­ny­ing the DJ to give a planned speech at the mo­ment.

The most spec­tac­u­lar de­tails, how­ev­er, were the ring that he got cus­tom-made from a well-known jew­eller in New York, who even came to wit­ness the pro­pos­al, and the cus­tom adap­ta­tion of Ju­rawan’s favourite 2024 so­ca song, Anx­i­ety. “So­ca make we stronger to­geth­er, right now it’s just you and me,” were the lines that blared out as Williams got down on one knee and said: “Shelly, will you mar­ry me.” A spe­cial ren­di­tion was sung over the orig­i­nal lyrics by Patrice Roberts, planned and ex­e­cut­ed by Mad­ness MuV and Shot Mas­ter J.

Al­most frozen in shock at the mo­ment, Ju­rawan’s bright smile made her an­swer clear, as she nod­ded and gave him the “yes” that brought him to his feet.

“In that mo­ment we felt like no­body else was around, it was just us,” Williams says, re­call­ing the beau­ti­ful mo­ment. The pub­lic na­ture of the pro­pos­al was a heart­felt trib­ute by Williams to the un­for­get­table mem­o­ry of how they met on the Car­ni­val stage. How­ev­er, look­ing to­wards the fu­ture, he be­lieves that their con­tin­ued jour­ney and even­tu­al wed­ding will be far qui­eter and more pri­vate, re­served for the pres­ence of fam­i­ly and friends. As a DJ him­self, Williams laughs that he doesn’t plan to DJ his wed­ding, but it will in­clude DJ sets and per­for­mances by a cou­ple of close friends in the in­dus­try, who they both love and re­spect.

The courage and gump­tion to pro­pose pub­licly is not for the faint-heart­ed and the at­ten­tion to de­tail and or­gan­i­sa­tion to pro­pose in a timed mo­ment on the So­cadrome stage, are a tes­ta­ment to and a show­case of Williams’ de­vo­tion.

This young cou­ple, clear­ly bliss­ful­ly in love, are set for many years of to­geth­er­ness, es­pe­cial­ly with the foun­da­tion of ro­mance that they have built with one an­oth­er.

For any dar­ing young men plan­ning to pro­pose pub­licly, there are some im­por­tant bases to cov­er, of which Williams checked every sin­gle one.

Ac­cord­ing to The Knot com, tips for pub­lic pro­pos­als:

1. Plan for every sce­nario: many ex­ter­nal fac­tors be­yond your con­trol can im­pact the pro­pos­al. For this rea­son, an­tic­i­pat­ing things that can go wrong and plan­ning for them is su­per im­por­tant to en­sure the pub­lic pro­pos­al goes as planned.

2. Ob­tain any nec­es­sary per­mits: in the plan­ning stage, check with the lo­ca­tion to see if you need any per­mits for a pub­lic pro­pos­al.

3. In­vite loved ones to wit­ness the pro­pos­al: if you know your part­ner would be thrilled to have their clos­est friends and fam­i­ly mem­bers at the pro­pos­al, by all means, in­vite them to be there.

4. Make it spe­cial: keep your part­ner’s pref­er­ences in mind and make it a spe­cial and mean­ing­ful ex­pe­ri­ence for them. Think of what pub­lic lo­ca­tions are im­por­tant to them.