(07/30/2016)

When I figured out Emily was the girl I wanted to marry I immediately started thinking of all these really cool ideas on how to propose to her, but none of them really felt right to me. They didn’t really feel like “us.” I wanted my proposal to be done in a way that was special to the two of us and our relationship. After I thought about this for a while it finally hit me. All I had to do was go back to the beginning (of our relationship), and that’s exactly what I did.

 The first trip we ever went on was up to Crater Lake, and this was also the first time I realized that there was something really special about this girl, so I knew it had to be this place that I proposed to her.

 So, a little while after that we had planned to take a trip up there with a couple of our good friends, Darby and Terry. Emily had started hinting a couple weeks prior to our trip about a couple times and places that would be perfect to propose, and Crater Lake was one of the places mentioned. As the day grew closer for us to take our trip, she started becoming more and more convinced that it was going to be the day I proposed to her, so naturally I had to shatter all her hopes and dreams and tell her it wasn’t going to happen because I “didn’t have the ring yet.” This was my last-ditch effort to try and throw her off my trail a little bit so she wouldn’t be spending all day expecting it to happen – it totally worked. I could tell she was kind of upset for a good portion of the ride over there and part of our time around Crater Lake, but this was a necessary sacrifice that I had to make for the bigger picture. The day didn’t go how I planned it to due to a big fire a couple miles away that was making it a bit smoky all around the lake. For a while, I thought I was going to have to ditch the plan and come up with a plan B. It wasn’t until the end of our trip there when we decided to hike up the side of a mountain to try and get a better viewing point of the lake with less smoke that the perfect moment came to me. Emily and I had sort of split apart from Darby and Terry to go look at the lake, and it was when we were standing there holding onto each other that I knew it was going to be as good a time as any to propose to her. (Darby and Terry were in on the whole thing and were standing idly by waiting to capture the moment for us). I had played the moment in my head probably at least 35 times and had everything I was going to say all perfected and I was feeling super prepared and ready for it the whole day, but when it came time for it to actually happen my entire plan went down the drain. I suddenly got super nervous, my mind basically went blank, and my long romantic speech I had planned ahead of time got condensed to less than 15 words. I ended up saying something along the lines of “You’re really pretty, and I love you. Will you marry me?” I felt like a total idiot when I was saying it because I knew it probably wasn’t how she pictured it happening at all, but luckily, she loved this idiot enough to say “Yes!”  and I was finally able to breathe again. It definitely didn’t happen how I planned it to at all, but it was a special moment for us nonetheless, and one we can laugh about for the rest of our lives.