For one Onondaga Community College graduate, Saturday's commencement celebration came with an unforgettable surprise.
Moments after Bellanina Viggiano received her degree in Creative Writing, she stepped off the stage and into a wedding proposal from her boyfriend of four years, Shaun Barfield.
Barfield had been planning the moment for months. “I came in this morning and asked who was in charge of the ceremony,” he said with a laugh. “I asked if I could do this, and was told, ‘Yes. Let’s do it.!”
Viggiano had no idea the proposal was coming. “We already knew we were going to get married, and we had been thinking about when.”
Barfield successfully kept the proposal a secret, even when Viggiano became suspicious.
“She asked me if I was going to propose and I told her, ‘I can’t do it. I don’t have a ring,’” he said.
That changed moments after she crossed the commencement stage.
She walked down the steps, onto the floor of the SRC Arena, and there he was!
“When he was standing in front of me, I was like, ‘No you’re not,’” Viggiano said, smiling.
The couple met four years ago through their church, Christian Life Assembly on Syracuse’s North Side. They plan to marry this fall.
