Marriage proposals are usually best told by the woman because she is in a state of euphoric shock and they ooze a glow that radiates into their story. However, I decided to write up this story because you will get to see all the lies and secret stuff she wasn’t aware of.
Those who know Dani and I, know we met while living in two separate parts of the country and we began doing the long distance relationship thing. To keep our sanity during this hard time we had a web journal to write down each other’s thoughts and tell each other how our days went. Over time this web journal turned into a place for love letters and this is really where the proposal starts.
Dani really has a way with words on this web journal so I took 16 of my favorite things she has ever said to me on there and packaged them in pretty pink envelopes. Since this was a web journal, I had all the dates and times from when these things were said so I labeled each envelope with the date and time she said each quote. I wrote her a letter saying how much her words mean to me and that I’ve sent her on a scavenger hunt to search for these envelopes. I said the scavenger hunt would end with dinner on Friday, March 25th. As the week went on she found more and more envelopes and at one point she even said.
“Babe, this is fun! You should have saved this idea for a birthday or special occasion!” (little did she know)
Here is where it got fun and terrifying for me. I had to plan this proposal and needed to be out of the house to do so. I work in the field and don’t have an office to go to and occasionally have events to go to at random. I had my boss, Matt, email me a fake event to go to on Thursday night so I could get out of the house and plan this thing. I don’t want to give away the end of the story too soon, but the planning consisted of meeting Dani’s best friend, Heather, at a park and overnighting 125 glow sticks to Heathers house. The small chance that Dani would come to this park while I was with her best friend was not even fun thinking about trying to explain. Luckily, I didn’t run into that issue.
Friday came around (the BIG day) and she found a couple more envelopes and she was really hyper and excited for dinner. When we got to the restaurant I managed to hide an envelope in her menu and of course she found it. She asked if this was the last one. I said
“Nope! There is one more, but after dinner we have to go find it!”
We got done with dinner around 10:00PM and she asked
“Okay, where are we going?”
I said, ”When I first visited where was our first outside date?”
She, almost immediately, guessed the Park by our house. She had a confused look as to why we were going to a park in the dark and 10 o’clock at night, but she went with it. When we got to the park I asked her
“This whole week what have you been looking for?” She said pink envelopes. I said “and what color is my shirt?” She said, “It’s pink!” I said “Okay, in the park go look for pink.”
After I said that she gave me the most confused look I have ever seen her give me. She was insisting that it’s dark and she wouldn’t be able to see any pink, but I egged her on. As we are walking on this trail, in the dark, through the park she lets out a tiny Gasp as she sees a pink glow stick hanging from a tree.
She said, “Is that for us!?” I said, “Keep walking, you’ll see.”
As we walked the trail some more there was another glow stick hanging from a tree and as she looked down there were hearts made out of glow sticks on the trail as well. She was confused and even wondered if I was worried about anyone stealing or messing up these glow sticks I set up. We came to a large set of stairs that leads up to a round enclosure at the top. On the stairs there were more glow stick hearts. This is where I began my speech. She had to know something was up because my speech was full of stutters and shakiness. When we got to the top of the stairs she saw something glowing in the middle of this enclosure. We walked a little bit closer and instantly she covered her mouth and went from confused to crying in about 1 sec as she read “Will you marry me?” written in pink glow-sticks. I got down on one knee and said aloud will you marry me. She, through gallons of tears, said yes.
I then gave her the last envelope with her words that meant so much to me. It was dated that day and approximate time and on the inside all it said was, yes. Our friends who helped me pull off this whole shindig, Heather and her boyfriend Brandon, jumped out with wine and started taking pictures.
This was literally a wonderful experience and the happiest moment of my entire life. I can’t wait for the adventure Dani and I embark on.