How We Met
Mike and I met 3 years ago at the musical festival Lightning in a Bottle. It was the first time for both of us and we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. He went with a big group of his friends. Like 20 people! I went with my two best friends. They had gone the year before and were invited to camp with some friends they had met that year (friends of my now fiancé). I remember being nervous to meet so many new people in one day, but Mike stood out to me as someone special and I knew I had to get to know him better. The second day of the festival I got up the courage to talk to him. I walked over to him and began having a great conversation! I was so excited! Halfway through the conversation I looked down and saw a wedding ring on his left hand and realized I had been talking to his twin brother Matt the whole time!
I looked around and saw Mike talking with my best friend, Amanda. As I walked over to him to strike up a conversation the next set started to play. I remember being disappointed that I would have to wait until the set was over to talk to him. We stood next to each other, dancing by ourselves for the beginning of the set. My best friend, being the intuitive person she is, could see that we both needed a little help to make a connection. In the middle of the set she pushed me into Mike! He caught me and asked if I was alright. I told him yes and smiled. He then asked me to dance. Flume was the artist playing at the time and at that moment his remix of You and Me came on. We danced together for the rest of the night and spent the rest of the festival together. During the festival we realized that we both lived in LA and that we worked 10 minutes from each other! We went on our first official date 3 days after the festival ended and we have been together ever since!
how they asked
After being together for 3 years we knew we wanted to get married. We started talking about how we both wanted a huge wedding with all of our friends and family. The only trouble was that I was still in school and we wouldn’t be able to afford the wedding we both wanted for at least 4 or 5 years. So, we came up with an unconventional solution. To have TWO WEDDINGS! We knew we wanted to get married, but thought it was silly that we had to wait until we had the money for a giant party.
So, we decided to have a small wedding with just our immediate family this year, and we would through a huge traditional wedding with all our friends and family in 4 years! We decided on this, started planning our wedding, and told our family. We decided to call our small wedding “The Big I Do” and our big wedding “The Big Day”. It wasn’t until later that we realized we needed rings, and that Mike hadn’t proposed!
I told Mike that since we were already doing things out of order and unconventional that he didn’t need to do an actual proposal for our small wedding. But he wasn’t getting out of it! He would need to do a big proposal before the big wedding in 4 years. He agreed and said he definitely still wanted to propose to me. Little did I know he would plan a small proposal for our wedding this year! On July 15th, 2018 we got up super early to drive to a bar in Culver City to watch the Worl Cup. Mikes favorite sport is soccer, so we couldn’t miss it!
After that, we had a meeting with my Aunt(who is officiating our wedding) to go over the details of the Big I Do. After, we went to another soccer game in LA! We ended the day with dinner and watching the sunset at our favorite spot in Hermosa Beach. Mikes friend and our roommate had been with us the whole day and they helped make it a surprise. The entire day just seemed like a typical fun weekend to me. As the sun was setting Mike asked me to put my feet in the sand with him. I followed him down to the sand and that’s where he proposed! His friend took pictures and our roommate took a video. I was so surprised! I was not expecting a proposal with only a month left before our wedding.