How We Met
Matt and I have been together for almost four years. We meet the first weekend of freshman year at Virginia Tech and immediately hit it off on a hiking trip with friends. He was SO easy to talk to, and I felt like I had found a little piece of home in my new college town. Matt made me feel so adored and instantly became my best friend. I knew within 6 months of dating that he was mine forever.
How They Asked
When Matt and I started talking about getting engaged, there were three things that I had always envisioned being a part of the proposal.
1. I didn’t want to get engaged before we graduated from college.
2. I wanted our engagement to be private and just us.
3. I wanted to get engagement on the beach if possible. He hit all three of these requests out of the park.
We graduated from Virginia Tech in May and Matt ended up proposing in August. Granted, this year was super weird with COVID-19, but it was the perfect timeline to get settled in our new home up in Alexandria, Virginia.
Back in June, Matthew started talking about taking on last summer vacation before our careers really took off. I thought it was a little strange since we already had a family vacation planned to go to the lake, but I love the beach and definitely didn’t argue!
All throughout the drive to Duck, NC I was texting one of my close friends almost convinced Matt was going to propose. He was acting sooo strange and I knew something was up! But that first night came and went, and no proposal!
Saturday morning I woke up at 6 am SO excited because I just knew that was the day I was going to be engaged. It’s so strange that I was that certain about it, but I just knew in my gut it was going to happen. I was so excited that I ended up waking Matt up at 6:30 am, and we left around 7:15 am to get donuts from Duck Donuts. The plan was to pick up donuts for breakfast and then enjoy them on the beach.
As soon as we got to the beach to enjoy our donuts, Matt’s nervous energy was palpable. He wouldn’t let me anywhere near our beach bag (dead giveaway!!) and it was super obvious that his head was somewhere else entirely.
When Matt suggested taking blog pictures and setting up a tripod to get a picture together I knew it was the moment. We stood together to take a picture, facing the tripod, and I could feel his heart beating out of his chest. I told myself to live in the moment because any second we would go from boyfriend and girlfriend to an engaged couple. It truly felt like this was the perfect moment that our past 4 years of dating had brought us to. The moment just felt right. Matt clearly knew it was the moment too because he pulled me close and perfectly summed up our love story and dedication to one another before getting down on one knee.
The tears, the laugher, the smiles from that moment will forever be engrained in my mind. I am now engaged to my best friend! Matthew was super cleaver, and when I thought we were taking a picture together, he actually had his camera set up taking a video. We now have the sweetest video to remind us how we got engaged.
We sat out on the beach for an hour after the proposal calling our friends and family to tell them the good news. Huge shoutout to my freshman year roommate, and still to-this-day close friend, Claire. She lives in San Francisco and got a 5 am wakeup call from me to share the good news.
I was like a giddy school girl for the rest of the weekend. I couldn’t believe I was finally able to say I had a fiancé!
