How We Met
As fellow Psychology students, Matthew’s first words to me were, “Can I join your group?”. Pretty typical. The difference is that this group was for a research-based project about online dating — specifically Tinder! We spent a fantastic semester together studying the psychological effects of online dating and became fast friends. To this day he’ll tell people I told him to date, other people when we first met because he had never online dated and I thought it would be good for the project for him to understand the experience! Six months later after plenty of “friend hangouts” and sitting too close to each other during study dates, he told me that he wanted it to be something more than just friendship and of course, I agreed wholeheartedly. I later found out that he had attended a panel I had been a speaker for several months before we met officially and he knew exactly who I was when he asked to join that group project. Perks of a small university!
How They Asked
For our 1 year anniversary, my best friend was looking for couples to build out her photography portfolio, and so I dragged a very-resisting Matthew to a photoshoot where we actually had a lot of fun! For our 2 year anniversary, he told me he wanted to do another photoshoot with the same photographer to commemorate 2 years together and lots of life changes in between! I thought it was a fantastic idea and asked an old coworker who lives in a high-rise if we could borrow her roof for this photo shoot — we both wanted something cool and urban. I planned almost everything so I wasn’t even thinking that it would be when he would propose! Matthew had told me beforehand that he specifically wanted a shoot of us looking out onto the city together, which I thought was a great idea, but again, I didn’t think much about it. We got up to the roof (after being accidentally locked out for quite a while!), moved around some tables and started taking pictures! Matthew said a couple of times, “let’s start out with some photos of us looking out onto the city” and I even commented, “wow, Matthew really wants this shot of us over the city!”. Turns out, that was his cue to our photographer to get me to turn around and look away while he went down on one knee. Turning around to his voice coming from below me was the moment my stomach absolutely plummeted — I was completely shocked! While we’d talked about marriage for a while, we’re both waiting on some pretty big career promotions, so I thought he was going to wait until after we were a bit more stable. Nope! He gave me an heirloom ring from his mom’s side of the family and asked me to be his wife! We both cried quite a bit and it was all captured on camera by my best friend! She pulled out a bottle of champagne and we hopped right into an engagement shoot!
Afterward, we went out for drinks, called my parents and his parents, and then headed home, which I thought was the end. What a great day! However, when we got home, he said, “alright, take a few minutes to relax, and then we have to leave in about 20 minutes”. What?? When I started asking questions and he said, “Hey, we’re engaged now and my parents would really love to see you”. His parents don’t live nearby but had been in town for the weekend for a conference so I didn’t think much of it. He ordered an Uber and we went to a German beer hall nearby. As we were walking in he said, “Well, you know, my parents don’t really drink but my dad will have a beer and my mom likes German food” and I, of course, agreed like, “oh yeah your mom really does love German food!” and fully expected to walk in to see his parents.
However, when we walked in the front door it was to a MASSIVE surprise party of all of our friends! They had kept this secret for months and everyone knew and nobody dropped the ball! The whole beer hall was cheering as we walked in and I was absolutely flabbergasted by the love and support from everyone there! People came from our hometowns, they had decorated with eucalyptus and banners, and we spent the night celebrating our new engagement with all of the people who will be there to support us through our marriage. It took quite a while for me to grasp that seeing his parents was a total cover and his parents weren’t actually there!
The whole day was absolutely perfect and I couldn’t have imagined a better proposal for us! Intimate, but still got to celebrate with all of our best friends!
