How we met
Me and Aaron met one night that I was dancing at a Utah Jazz game and by some strange coincidence Aaron was an extra in a commercial promoting the Jazz. I was on the court practicing and noticed Aaron kept looking at me. On this specific game night we were doing a daddy daughter dance and my dad, being the protective guy he is, kept cracking jokes that if Aaron kept looking at me he would go over and have a nice chat with him. I told him not to worry about it because I thought Aaron was so good looking. When we were done with practice we headed back to the dressing room and I figured that would be the last I would see of Aaron since he never had a chance to talk to me and there was no way I could find him when the game finished. A few weeks later, Aaron followed me on Instagram (thank goodness for social media) and he looked familiar so I followed him back and he ended up getting my number and we went on our first date not too much later.
I had never been so nervous to go on a date as I was to go on my first date with Aaron. He had texted me before he picked me up and gave me a heads up to wear something warm so when he came to my front door the first thing I asked was if I looked okay and if I would be warm enough and before he could even introduce himself, the first thing out of his mouth was “You look beautiful.” in his cute Australian/British accent. Our first date was a dream. He set up a croquet set at a park and we would say something about ourselves every time we hit the ball and went out to sushi when we were finished. I was still so nervous because he is literally perfect and I just wanted to make a good impression. We sat and ate and talked for a good two hours while I struggled to pick up the sushi with my chop sticks and ran to the bathroom to call my mom and tell her there was no way he would take me out again and that I wasn’t funny or witty enough. By some miracle he came to watch me in a game not to long after that and we went on our second date and things just took off from there.
My grandparents would always joke around the they “met in bed” because my grandma was a nurse and helped my grandpa while he was a patient at the hospital that she worked at (yeah I know, real life Grey’s Anatomy). Aaron and I would always joke around that we had to one up them and, in a way, we kinda did. My grandparents might have met in a hospital bed, but Aaron and I fell in love in a hospital bed. Aaron loves to ride motorcycles so him going on a ride through the canyon with some buddies was a regular occurrence so I didn’t think much of it when he told me he was going out to ride bikes with a friend. Little did I know that Aaron was planning on surprising me at a movie premier I had been dying to go to but his plan didn’t work out and instead of being surprised to see him at a movie premier I was surprised to see him in the hospital. He had gotten in a motorcycle accident and completely destroyed his right hand. Like literally destroyed, it looked like he stuck it in a blender for a couple minutes. Through something so scary, I stayed with him at the hospital almost every day for 2 weeks and that’s when I kind of knew I wanted to marry him someday. One night, we were alone and he had just been waking up from sleeping all day and asked me to come cuddle because that was the only thing that made him feel better so we sat in bed and watched some TV for a while. Later that night he told me he loved me and now here we are a few months later engaged!
how they asked
Now for our proposal story. After Aaron’s accident we both knew we wanted to get married and started ring shopping and talking about dates and what we would want, but even though we had been talking about getting married for a while before we got engaged, I had NO IDEA what was going on when he proposed to me. I had been working for the Jazz at an appearance all day and hadn’t been home, meanwhile Aaron was at my house planning away and setting things up to propose to me that night. I got home and was exhausted so we napped for a few hours and when I woke up, he was all of the sudden in this huge rush to get up and start doing things so I got up and got ready for dinner. We went out to one of my favorite restaurants and drove to the Capitol (one of our favorite places) after. Just when we had gotten there, Aaron got so weird and was hiding his phone from me and was in such a rush to get home and couldn’t remember how to get home. So we sped home and he was silent the whole way there. Right as we were driving up the hill to my house he undid his seat belt like he was going to James Bond it out of the car at any second. When we pulled into my driveway there were candles all up the stairs and I could see lights and a movie screen and a teepee set up in my front yard. Me, being the oblivious blonde I can be sometimes, thought it was my 17 year old sister getting asked to homecoming and almost walked right past everything and tried to go inside. Luckily, Aaron insisted we go check it out. It was the most romantic set up I have ever seen.
There were flower petals and candles and lights everywhere with a teepee with sparkling cider and pillows and blankets inside and a movie screen set up. Aaron pressed play to the movie he had worked on for hours, came and sat by me in the teepee, and started shaking and tearing up.
That’s when I FINALLY had an idea that he might be proposing. The movie was so thoughtful, full of our favorite movie scenes, me singing our song, and pictures of all of our favorite moments together.
When the movie ended Aaron got down on one knee and said, “Makenna, I have waited for you my whole life. Will you marry me?” At this point, I was sobbing and said “I can’t even see the ring because I’m crying so hard.” and Aaron said, “Soooo is it yes or no?” and I clearly said yes.
After this, Jess came out with her camera and told me she got pictures of the whole thing and all my best friends and family came out of my house clapping and crying. It was so sweet of him to think of including my friends and family and having everyone be a part of such a big night.
I wish I could go back to this night every night. It was absolutely perfect. More than anything I could have ever asked for. I can’t believe we are getting married this month. We honestly could not be more excited.
