Un­der­wa­ter mar­riage pro­posal turns tragic

An Amer­i­can man has drowned while propos­ing to his girl­friend un­der­wa­ter at an idyl­lic is­land off the coast of Tanzania, a lux­ury re­sort said in a state­ment on Sun­day.

His girl­friend Ke­ne­sha An­toine posted on her Face­book page footage of Steven We­ber propos­ing to her through the win­dow of their un­der­wa­ter ho­tel room at the lux­ury Manta Re­sort in Zanz­ibar.

“You never emerged from those depths so you never got to hear my answer, ‘Yes! Yes! A mil­lion times, yes, I will marry you!!’,” she wrote on Fri­day in a post con­firm­ing his death.

Her video shows We­ber swim­ming up to the win­dow, and press­ing a hand­writen note against it which read: “I can’t hold my breath long enough to tell you ev­ery­thing I love about you, but ev­ery­thing I love about you I love more every day. Will you please be my wife, marry me.” He then pulled out a ring as An­toine squealed with joy while film­ing.

Her video shows We­ber swim­ming up to the win­dow, and press­ing a hand­writen note against it which read: “I can’t hold my breath long enough to tell you ev­ery­thing I love about you, but ev­ery­thing I love about you I love more every day. Will you please be my wife, marry me.” He then pulled out a ring as An­toine squealed with joy while film­ing.

It is un­clear what went wrong dur­ing the pro­posal atpe mb a is­land, a pop­u­lar hon­ey­moon des­ti­na­tion.

“We never got to em­brace and cel­e­brate the be­gin­ning of the rest of our lives to­gether, as the best day of our lives turned into the worst, in the cru­elest twist of fate imag­in­able,” An­toine wrote.

“We never got to em­brace and cel­e­brate the be­gin­ning of the rest of our lives to­gether, as the best day of our lives turned into the worst, in the cru­elest twist of fate imag­in­able,” An­toine wrote.

“Know­ing him, al­ways quick with an off-colour joke, he’s prob­a­bly en­ter­tain­ing some­one with a story about how he roy­ally screwed up that pro­posal and died while be­ing ex­tra.”

“I will try to take so­lace in the fact that we en­joyed the most amaz­ing bucket list ex­pe­ri­ences these past few days, and that we both were so happy and ab­so­lutely giddy with ex­cite­ment in our fi­nal mo­ments to­gether.”

An­toine, a lawyer, added: “You were a bright light to ev­ery­one you en­coun­tered. You never met a stranger, and you brought so much joy to so many peo­ple. You were kind, com­pas­sion­ate, you reg­u­larly made me cry with laugh­ter, and you show­ered me with a love like none I’d ever ex­pe­ri­enced.”

An­toine, a lawyer, added: “You were a bright light to ev­ery­one you en­coun­tered. You never met a stranger, and you brought so much joy to so many peo­ple. You were kind, com­pas­sion­ate, you reg­u­larly made me cry with laugh­ter, and you show­ered me with a love like none I’d ever ex­pe­ri­enced.”

She also wrote that a few days ear­lier he had de­scribed the hol­i­day asa“once in a once-in-a life­time thing that peo­ple want to ex­pe­ri­ence be­fore they die”. Manta CEO Mathew Saus con­firmed to me­dia in an email on Sun­day that “a male guest trag­i­cally drowned while free­d­iv­ing alone out­side the un­der­wa­ter room” on Thurs­day. “The ac­ci­dent is cur­rently un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the local Zanz­ibar po­lice author­ity.” The cou­ple were stay­ing in the re­sort’s famed “Un­der­wa­ter Room”, a $1,700 (1,500 euro) a-night float­ing struc­ture off­shore in crys­tal clear waters, where the bed is sur­rounded by glass win­dows look­ing into the ocean.