WORCESTER—Archie Bellos and Sarah Reks each have plenty of tattoos so guess how he decided to propose to her.
Think ink.
On Dec. 17, Bellos had his good friend and tattoo artist, Dan Duquette, stencil “Will you marry me?” on his upper back, directly above an existing huge tattoo of the Grim Reaper riding a horse. Bellos was lying face down on a table at Scallywags Tattoo shop when Reks entered the room with Duquette’s fiance Danielle Starustka recording everything from behind her. After she read the proposal, Bellos dropped to one knee.
“I couldn’t tell you what he said next,” Reks said. “I was in totally another world. He was just saying really nice things.”
Bellos completely forgot what he had planned to say.
“I wasn’t wearing a shirt,” he said. “The thing I couldn’t stop thinking about was how awkward it was that I was proposing without a shirt on and it really threw me off my groove.”
So he winged it, talked about a few things, including mentioning their dog Presley, and presented Reks with an engagement ring and she said, “Absolutely.” Bellos had kept the ring inside a velvet ornament shaped like a Christmas tree that had once held a ring. Reks liked the ornament hanging on Bellos’s mother’s tree and jokingly said she wanted Bellos to propose with a ring inside that ornament.
“I couldn’t believe he actually did it,” Reks said.
Bellos’s mother Jackie, sister Lizzy and best friend Peter Dooley, and Reks’ best friend Alissa Chambers from Ipswich High School and her husband Evan burst out of a nearby supply closet to join the celebration that included balloons and champagne. Reks sobbed in joy.
“I felt so much love in that room,” she said. “It was really special.”
Reks’ father Rick Puente, stepmother Brenda Puente and stepsister Christina Labowicz watched on their living room television in South Carolina via Zoom from Lizzy’s cell phone. Bellos even arranged for a friend, professional photographer Paul Steimitz, to take pictures.
The couple had talked marriage before, so Bellos wasn’t worried about Reks turning him down. Nevertheless, he decided to have the proposal stenciled instead of tattooed permanently so he could wash it off. He didn’t want to risk others reading it and accepting his proposal.
“I almost sweated the stencil off a bunch of times because I was so nervous,” Bellos said.
He had actually planned to have the proposal stenciled on his left thigh so Reks could have read it while he got down on his right knee, but he forgot to wear shorts so instead he had it stenciled on his upper back, one of the few parts of his body without a tattoo. Reks loved the stencil.
“I thought it was super creative and fitting,” Reks said. “It really tied back to something we bonded over right off the bat.”
Bellos, 33, and Reks, 31, both have lots of tattoos that they never plan to remove. Bellos said he has more than 70 and Reks figures she has more than 50.
“I don’t know the exact number of how many I have,” Bellos said, “but if you point to one I can tell you who did it, when and what life was like then. It’s almost like a living photo album on me.”
One of Bellos’s favorite tattoos reads, “Mum,” and it’s located behind his left ear.
“Because you’ve always got to be listening to Mum when she talks,” he said.
Another favorite is the tattoo that he and his late father Steve had inked on their right biceps of the “B” from the Boston Red Sox logo.
The couple estimates they’ve spent close to $10,000 each on their tattoos.
“That could have paid for our wedding,” Reks said.
They plan to get married on June 8 at City Hall with only 10-15 people on hand, but they’ve invited 150 to attend the reception on the second floor of Ralph’s Rock Diner, one of their favorite hangouts.
The couple doesn’t plan to add any new tattoos this Valentine’s Day, but Reks did get an unusual one on her arm on Valentine’s Day last year at North Moon Tattoo in Millbury. It’s a switchblade cutting through a heart.
“I look at it as collecting art from people who I really admire,” Reks said, “and I think are talented. I love their art so much that I want it permanently on my body.”
Bellos said most people love their tattoos.
“It’s a really genuine and authentic expression of who we are as people,” he said.
Reks didn’t have any tattoos when she got married for the first time seven years ago, but she’s looking forward to showing hers off in June.
“I feel like I’m my more authentic self now than when I was in my 20s,” she said.
“We’re going to look awesome,” Bellos said.
Reks said getting tattoos hurts, but the pain is well worth it and that tattoos are always a conversation starter at parties. She admits sometimes she doesn’t feel like talking about them, but Bellos said they have no choice.
“We signed up for that,” he said.
Bellos is an academic support teacher and assistant varsity girls basketball coach at Bancroft School. Reks works remotely from their West Side apartment as a creative product manager for G2, a technology company based in Chicago.
They met on the Bumble dating app in March of 2022 and hit it off in part because of their shared love of tattoos. She especially enjoyed the photo he posted on the app of himself with his arms and legs covered with tattoos while hanging off a Yosemite National Park sign.
“I was like, ‘Wow, this guy really went for it,’” Reks said.
For their honeymoon, they plan to drive throughout the south and add to their tattoo collections at parlors in Tennessee, New Orleans and possibly Austin or Savannah.
“Instead of a T-shirt saying, ‘I got married in Aruba and all I got is this T-shirt,’” Bellos said, “you might as well go to New Orleans and come back with a more permanent souvenir.”
Reks hasn’t ruled out some day having her back stenciled with “I’m pregnant,” but that idea isn’t etched in stone or ink.
Bill Doyle has been a professional journalist for 47 years, most of them as a sports writer for the Telegram & Gazette. He covered the Boston Celtics for 25 years and has written extensively about golf, boxing and local high school and college sports. He also worked for the campus newspaper when he attended UMass-Amherst. He can be reached at billdoyle1515@gmail.com
