Not all the romance in bookstores is in the books

When Lily Tschudi-Campbell reported for work at the Red Balloon on what was supposed to be a day off, they were in no mood for a marriage proposal. But that's what they got.

"The owner of Red Balloon Bookshop told me I needed to come in 15 minutes before the after-hours writing group that [now-fiancée] Cass and I are both in. It was for some sort of urgent work thing that was unnamed and that I was therefore sort of grumpy about," recalled Red Balloon book seller Tschudi-Campbell, who uses they/them pronouns, of that late-December day.

That was all happening because Cassidy Foust, a St. Paul software developer who used to work at Red Balloon, colluded with owner Holly Weinkauf to lure Tschudi-Campbell into the St. Paul shop.

"When I started to think about proposing, kind of immediately I knew I wanted it to happen at Red Balloon. It's a place that has been dear to us for a long time. We love the books, we love the people," said Foust.

So Weinkauf invented busywork for Tschudi-Campbell, who has an MFA in children's literature from Hamline University, to do when she came into the store.

"Holly had completely messed up the board games display and knocked a bunch of things over and hid the little fake book I made for the proposal in the clutter," said Foust, who placed the engagement ring in a mocked-up book called "Frog and Toad Get Engaged," inspired by Arnold Lobel's classic "Frog and Toad" books, which both love. "So the task Lily was given was to clean up the board games display, in which they'd find the book. At which time I would come out to propose."

It didn't happen quite as quickly as that, though, because Tschudi-Campbell was so focused on the (fake) task at hand.

"I wanted to do well at my job even if I didn't understand why it needed to happen right then, so I was really focused on cleaning up this display," said Tschudi-Campbell. "Holly kept saying, 'Oh, you can skip that part.' But I was all, 'If I'm doing it, I will do it well.' So it took a lot longer than everyone expected, apparently. It took me like 10 minutes to get to the fake book. I was in work mode, so I didn't transition very well to proposal mode."

Since they were already planning to go to the writers' group afterwards, they followed through on that but, said Tschudi-Campbell, "Nobody got anything done because we were all chatting about this."

Their plan is to marry in the fall of 2026, marking the 15th anniversary of the couple's meeting.

And they're actually not the only pair that got romantic in a bookstore last December.

So did a couple who prefer to remain anonymous after getting married at Minneapolis romance bookstore Tropes & Trifles, in a pre-store-opening ceremony attended by the owners and a chiropractor who also happened to be a wedding officiant. Both fans of the store, they were wed in the "Romantic Fantasy" section.

They're planning a more public wedding later this year and, although offbeat wedding venues are apparently on-trend, it probably won't take place in a bookstore.