Our Proposal Story
It's been a couple months since Jason asked me to marry him, and now that the craziness of moving and a new job and initial wedding-planning has subsided a little, I thought I'd write down the story of how he asked. I've told it countless times to friends and family already, and I know it's something I'll never forget, but I want to make sure to get all the little details written down so I can come back and read it and be sappy anytime I want ;)
While Jason and I will both be living in Atlanta soon, we've spent the last couple years of our relationship dating long-distance. This past April, our four year anniversary was coming up, so J bought me a ticket to come up and spend the weekend with him in Pittsburgh. Since that was something we did every month or two, I didn't think anything suspicious of it.
I'd complained to him a few weeks earlier that as the "photographer" in the relationship, I had a ton of photos of him but was never really in any of the pictures myself (I don't count our 2-person selfies). So, I purchased a small phone tripod and bluetooth remote, and asked if we could snap a few photos together throughout the weekend. He agreed.
He met me at the airport Friday afternoon with flowers (which he'd done a few times before, so nothing suspicious there either :), and told me we were going to Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens to walk around and take some photos to kill time before our dinner reservation. We started our tour off with a snack (someone had missed lunch and was grumpy. ok, me.) and then made our way around the conservatory, talking and laughing and snapping photos as we went.
At this point, I have zero inclination that he's going to propose. I mean, we had gone to look at rings together a couple months before, so I knew it would probably be happening this year, but we were planning to have a big birthday/memorial day celebration with both of our families a couple months later, so I suspected he'd do it then. Boy was I wrong.
We walked into a particularly gorgeous room, full of tropical plants and a waterfall, and set up the tripod to take a couple more photos. After snapping a few, we walked over to look at them, and J said "I look silly, let's take one more."
We walked over and posed for the photo, but then he pulled away. And, well, this happened:
I wish I could tell you what he said (something about making happy memories of the long distance I think?). But honestly, in that moment, everything went silent and all I could see was his face looking up at me with that adorable, hopeful smile. And of course I said yes.
I can't believe he got pictures of the whole thing! There were a few tears during the proposal, but a couple minutes later when we were sitting there (and I had finished saying "oh my god" six hundred times), it really sunk in and the waterworks started, ha! We sort of half-finished our tour, mostly hugging and taking photos together and stopping every so often to admire the ring and burst into tears again ;) On our way out, we stopped in the gift shop and bought a hand-blown glass ornament with the shape of a small bonsai tree inside to commemorate the day.
And there you have it! Jason couldn't have planned it any better; I felt so special and so loved. I will love him forever for capturing it all in photos. It's hard to believe this is just the beginning, and that I still have a whole wonderful life ahead of me with this guy. He's the best.