Proposal Stories! đ
In the week leading up to Valentine's Day, we held a contest asking you to share your proposal stories and to show us the first selfie you took after getting engaged. We gave away two free engagement sessions to couples chosen randomly by drawing their names from a bowl, and it's a good thing we did! Some of the stories were so touching and incredible that there's no way we could have chosen just two winners based on the stories. We're including them on our blog because they are just that good. Thank you for sharing!
As a consultant, I spend more time in hotels than I do home. After a particularly grueling few months of traveling for work, Mike planned a weekend of hiking and relaxing just for us.
Friday we arrived to the cutest house on a lake and spent the day bbqing, drinking wine, and enjoying the lake. I should have guessed something was up when Mike (who hates mornings more than anyone I know) set an alarm for us to wake up the following morning to hike a nearby mountain.
Saturday morning roles around and to my surprise Mike actually wakes up and we make our way to the mountain. After a beautiful, peaceful and moderately grueling hike we arrived at the top with the most stunning views. I was wondering around snapping pictures when Mike came over and put his arms around me. As I turned to him I felt him dropping down and couldnât help but squeal. Honestly I canât even remember what he said I was so over the moon.
As we started to hike back down I started to try and call my family. No one was picking up - Mom, dad, siblings, friends - and I began to get super frustrated because I wanted to share the news with EVERYONE. So frustrated that Mike ended up taking my phone so we could enjoy the rest of the hike.
About an hour later we pulled back up to our lake house. As I was stepped into the kitchen, I was super confused because there were platters of food we definitely didnât leave there. All of a sudden I hear surprise and see my family, Mikeâs family, aunts, uncles, cousins, and our best friends pouring out. mike had somehow figured out how to get everyone to this lake house 2 hours from where we lived for a surprise engagement party. I cried for about two hours straight and we spent the day celebrating the best day of our lives (so far!!!) - Alli S.
This guy COMPLETELY surprised me I had NO IDEA what was coming!
I moved 3 states away to Columbus Ohio to be with my fiancĂ© (then bf) who is also originally from NJ. I moved with nothing but a suitcase and figured it would work or it wouldnât. Prior to that move, we did 7 months of long distance flying back and forth to see each other sometimes 6-8 weeks between visits.
1 week before the proposal, he recreated our first date out here in Columbus and on THAT day I thought for SURE it was coming. Low and behold, no proposal. I shook it off disappointedly and thought, oh itâs close to our 3 year anniversary and heâs trying to keep things fresh. Cute! The very next weekend he recreated our first Valentines date! I didnât see anything coming because I thought that he would have done something the week BEFORE if he was going to propose! The fountain near the restaurant we went to for lunch is a very special spot for us. We take pics there every time we go at various times throughout the year cuz Iâm obsessed with this fountain lol. Anywho, he asks someone to take a photo of us and Iâm like ok no big deal, we do this all the time! I turn around to take the photo, but instead he drops to one knee and proposed! We canât WAIT to come full circle when we tie the knot in NJ on November 17!!!! - Theresa C.
Ah, you just made me realize I don't have a selfie of myself & my future hubby(Khris) right after the proposal! Anyhow our story is oh so romantic...
It was a random lazy Sunday. We had done absolutely nothing all day. I dont even think I had gotten changed out of my PJ's it was that kind of day. It was getting late so Khris took our son to get ready for bed. They both came out to me, Khris was all ready for bed too as he was in his PJ's aka underwear (I told you it was romantic đ) My son was excited to show me his new "toy" he had. To my surprise it was a ring! I was in complete shock! The perfect ending to a perfect day!
I grabbed my son & had khris snap a quick photo of us so I could send it to my family. It may not have been glamorous but I wouldn't have it any other way! - Heather R.
I seriously had just finished saying I was farting for like 3 hours.... and then he pops open a ring box... đđ. The ring was custom made with all of our birthstones in it đ - Amy S.
Our anniversary fell during the week so we decided to wait until that Saturday to go out for it. Saturday came and we went out to a nice Italian restaurant. It was a small place and beings though we went out for an early dinner, we had the whole place to ourselves and enjoyed a delicious, intimate dinner together.
Afterwards, we went home, only for me to open the door to our families waiting inside shouting, âsurprise!!â I have never had any type of surprise party or anything, so it took me a minute to process what was actually going on. Shawn began to tell me how much he loves me and how he wants to spent his life with me. My reaction was basically automatic: I put my hand up and told him, âthis better not be a joke!â (Which was completely justifiable beings though it was April Fools day!) He laughed and proceeded to tell me âthis is no joke.â Right there, in our new, first home together, he pulled out a ring, got down on one knee and asked me to marry him, to which my reaction was also automatic: OF COURSE!
The whole day was amazing. We had started the next chapter of our lives together, surrounded by the people we love- I couldnât have asked for a more perfect moment! - Erika S.
I bought Noel tickets to see The Rockettes for Christmas since he has always wanted to go when he was a kid. When the day was coming around he told me his best friend Keith was going to come with us to take pictures of us around the city. Keith has a photography facebook page he was starting up and told me he was doing a couples project. He wanted both of us to write paragraphs about ourselves but not show each other, just to send it to him.
The day comes and we go to NYC and meet up with Keith. We walk around for awhile and take some pictures as we go along. We left Keith to go to the show and meet back up with him later. Noel and I have always talked about going to Rockefeller Tree since we started dating, so after the show we went. We get to the tree and Keith tells me to head over to Instagram to read something he wrote about me. I skim over the paragraph, which I should have just read the entire thing, but I wanted to see what Noel wrote about me. After staring at my phone for a few minutes, I turn around to hug Noel and he drops to his knee! I had no idea what was coming since he always told me he never wanted to get married. They had the entire thing planned out for months and I didnât have a clue. I couldnât be happier â€ïž - Ashley H.
Iâve known Rose Erin for 10 years. We met in our senior year of high school and we had mutual friends.
We didnât really become close until our freshman year of college where we tried dating. The timing wasnât right, but we stayed friends. Eventually we dated again in our sophomore year, but we were too busy and at different schools (2 hours away).
After we graduated, she got a job teaching in my hometown, we got dinner a few times together, and at the end of one of those nights, in November, she kissed me. It took 3 months for her to decide whether she wanted to actually try dating again after that, but once we did we looked back at that night and saying âThank god for November Rose being so impulsive.â
Around the anniversary of November Rose, I took her to a nice restaurant before we went back to her apartment. I surprised her with a Rubikâs Cube that I customized. It had pictures ranging from 1) Our first date when from freshman year, 2) A picture from the second time we dated, 3) Us reading together at the beach, 4) Us at a wedding photo booth with Thorâs Hammer and a Wolverine Mask, 5) The two of us at a concert, and 6) the two of us dancing at her college roommateâs wedding.
Weâre notoriously bad at remembering to take pictures. It was a struggle to find 6 pictures of us that we were close enough together to be used. And to make matters worse, the pictures from the first two times we dated were stuck on a Micro SD card in my old phone (I had to buy a micro SD to SD converter and an USB SD card reader to retrieve them).
I sent the pictures, tinted to match the colors of a Rubikâs cube, to a company in Hungary (OlivĂ©r's stickers) to print them out custom fitted to the cube I would be using.
The cube itself has a special mechanism so that when itâs solved, you can remove the top layer of the puzzle to reveal a hidden compartment. Inside, I stored the ring in a velvet pouch to keep it from jingling around.
I had planned out an elaborate speech to say while explaining the cube and solving it. But in the moment, I knew I wouldnât be calm enough to solve it while proposing.
So I explained the cube, the six pictures arranged in order of date from the beginning of us dating to the most recent picture of us, then showed the hidden compartment to propose. Rose says she didnât know it was a proposal until she ârealized the cube was a boxâ.
The next day, we were meeting up with our friend to see Star Wars, so we stopped by to say hi to the ladies at Zales who sold me the ring. When I took my coat off, the reactions to my shirt were priceless, and one of the ladies snapped this picture of my fiancée cracking up about their reactions.
February 16th will be our third anniversary of take three. - Corey Y.
Where to begin....
About a year ago I had just came back from a trip to Australia and I had asked Julianna âif you could go anywhere in the world, where would you go?â
She said âTokyo, London or Paris.â
Knowing this, about two weeks later I said âHey hun, guess what? I just booked a trip for us to go to Cape Town, South Africa over Christmas!â
She was not happy about that at all. She didnât know or care too much about traveling down there nor did she want to be away from her family. After about a month or so of convincing, she finally went along with it, but I told her we didnât have to stay in South Africa the entire time. âWhy donât we go to somewhere in Europe for New Years? How about somewhere like Copenhagen?â
Again reluctantly she agreed, but what she didnât know was that I picked that place in particular so she could pack cold weather clothes so I could take her to her dream place: Tokyo.
So I forged all the tickets, the hotel reservations and even got the Danish currency to throw her off the trail on anything involving Tokyo. Heck even when we went to go get our yellow fever shot, I had the doctors get in on saying she was going to Copenhagen!
So with my everyone including my family covering for me about the trip, I booked out the activities for Cape Town while she did Copenhagen. The hardest part was making sure I didnât slip or no one else did while I made the reservations for Japan.
Fast forward to a couple days before Christmas. We had gotten to Cape Town and had an epic time. We got to pet a Cheetah, ride around on a quad in a safari, climb a mountain, swim with penguins, go to the most southern point in Africa, saw Robbenâs island and baboons and Ostriches at the Cape of Good Hope. I had to plan some pretty amazing things in South Africa to help her forget it was Christmas time and to gain her trust on the trip. But the day before we left Cape Town, I broke the news to her that we were not going to Copenhagen and that we were going to Tokyo instead.
...she didnât believe me at first. I then showed her the Yen and the Real tickets to Tokyo and she cried in happiness.
The next day we packed our stuff and went from Cape Town to Dubai and Dubai to Tokyo.
Now as all of this is going on, I have two things that I am dealing with. 1. The ring is sitting in my backpack that I carried with me everywhere we went. I was constantly checking on it. When ever Julianna saw me digging around my bag it made me nervous. I actually ended up putting the ring in a sock that she thought was dirty to detour her from looking. 2. I had a contact in Japan I was constantly communicating with. I had known her for a couple of years and she knew about the proposal idea for months and agreed to help. She was going to be a random person I asked to take our photo with Mt. Fuji in the background at Lake Kawaguchiko on New Yearâs Eve. That way we started off the New Years engaged. But she had told me that a couple days before that we had to adjust the schedule a day in advance due to possible snow.
Now as we are in Japan, Julianna is just taking all of the Japanese culture in while all of this is running in my head. The day after we landed I was going to propose.
We took a very long route to get to the proposal site. She always wanted to take a bullet train if she went to Japan, but of course that was no where near where we need to go. We ended up having to take a couple of buses swerving through the mountains to get to where we needed to go. Julianna was actually getting a bit irritated with me because we were so close to the mountain but I couldnât look out the window.
Now how did I get her to this amazing lake in Japan?
Well, that was easy. Her and I have done marching band activities for a long time and not only was this small town a perfect place for my contact and I to meet, but it had a musical museum right next to it. I told Julianna that the only thing I wanted to do was go to this music festival they have going on. It was the perfect set up. And it was right near where I told my contact we would meet.
We get to the music museum and I said âI know I didnât get to see Mt. Fuji in the bus that well so why donât we get a picture?â She thought it was a great idea and we went to âthe spot.â I immediately saw my contact there as we timed it down to the minute. She brought her dog with her to make it easy to spot her, but I knew her by her face... however Julianna got distracted by the dog.
I asked this ârandomâ Japanese woman if she could take our picture and she took my phone (all the while I had my go pro running right behind her). Julianna, with her selfie stick in hand, asked âwhy did you get the girl with the dog to take our picture?â I said âbecause itâs harder to steal my phone if you have to run with a dog.â
Then the moment happened. One knee with the sun shining in the lake and the mountain.
After I did it, Julianna realized I had once introduced her to Naoko Nacchi Akiyama before in the US and felt terrible she didnât recognize her at first glance. But after me taking her across Africa, the Middle East and Easter Asia, she was too dazed to recognize anybody (which was part of the plan).
After petting her adorable dog and all of us having lunch, Julianna and I went back into Tokyo. We had an amazing time celebrating New Years in Shibuya, went into Tokyo Tower, saw some amazing shrines and explored great parts of the city and culture in general. I even took her to Tokyo Disney, the Snoopy Museum and to see the Emperor speak (which only happens for foreigners once a year). Mind you, Iâm just an average guy who saved a lot so that I could give the most unforgettable experience someone could have.
We eventually made it home after another intercontinental flight. Tired, but at least back in the US.
But that, in a nut shell is what I like to call âThe Proposal her around the World.â - Tom D.
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so i met My fiancĂ© 2 years ago on a missions Trip to Guatemala, i was invited to Speak at a youth Conference, and it was there where i met my FiancĂ©. we immediately fell in love! we have been doing long Distance relationship for 2 years and 7 months, traveling back in forth to from NJ to Guatemala. after not seeing her for 5 months i told her that on december 16 2017 we were going to have a special family dinner. with my family and hers on a beautiful beach resort in Guatemala. Not knowing that i was going to propose. to make things less noticeable i got to Guatemala the 15th of december a day before the actual date. (She didnât know that) while i was sitting on the sand of the beautiful beach on december 16 in the morning i called her to tell her that might flight Got canceled and i would not make it in time. she was heart broken, Not knowing that on that very evening i was going to surprise her with my presence and the beautiful Proposal. - Luis P.