How We Met
We met when I was a junior and he was a senior in high school. It was on an October night in 2015, I was standing beside the bonfire at a friends house when I looked over to see this really cute boy walking towards us from the driveway. A little later in the night he came over and introduced himself and we exchanged a little conversation and that was it. I left that night wishing that I would have the chance to get to know him, thinking that we would be really good friends, little did I know that it would lead to so much more.
I had also met his sister that night and had been talking to her afterward and in December ended up inviting her to a birthday hangout I was having and told her that she should invite her brother too. She immediately sent me his number and told me to ask him myself. So I did, I invited him to my birthday hangout that wasn’t happening for like another three weeks. This began a constant flow of text messages back and forth between the two of us and he began hanging out with myself, one of my friends, and a mutual friend that we had. We went swing dancing and the whole night was just so much more fun when I was with him, another time we baked cookies altogether and everything just felt right, I didn’t realize it at the time but I was falling for this boy that I met at the bonfire.
Everything felt comfortable and right, I could be myself with him and he joined in on my silly dancing in the kitchen and had serious talks about anything under the sun and I could always count on him giving a wise, thought out response. We quickly became like best friends and in the beginning months of 2016 he told me that he had feelings for me that were more than just friend feelings, I was so excited that I forgot to respond right away and let him know that I felt the same way. We have spent the past 3+ years continuing to dance in the kitchen, laugh, adventure, and walk through life together.
How They Asked
It was a Saturday and he had just gotten home from college the night before after finishing his junior year, so as usual we were taking our yearly end of school picnic to Pinnacle Overlook to have a sushi date and celebrate the end of another year of school. He arrived at my house around 2 pm and we went to Starbucks to get coffee because, well I love coffee, we then went back to my house and just talked for a little before going out and picking up our sushi and something to drink and hitting the road for the hour drive to the overlook. We talked and listened to fun music and I kept dreaming out loud to him about what our wedding will be like one day, and how great it will be to be married, and how exciting it will be when we get engaged, all while having not one thought that it was happening later that night.
After all, it was just our yearly picnic to one of our or favorite spots! We got there and put out our blanket and began our picnic, although he was barely eating especially for how excited he said he was for sushi earlier that day, I made a comment about it and he just brushed it off and I didn’t really think much of it beyond that. We sat and talked, played silly games and asked each other would you rather questions. Partway through he said “that path over there.. there’s always a lot of people that walk down there but we never have.” to which I just replied “Oh yeah! you’re right!” and continued on with what I had been talking about. haha oops! He then said “Well, do you want to go see what’s down there?” so we did.
We walked down the path and over to these rocks that overlooked the river and I was being silly as usual and as we started walking back up the path I told him I would race him and took off towards the top of the hill, luckily I stopped before the turn that went up the other hill to our blanket.
We slowly walked up together hand in hand and when we got to the top I looked over and saw that a photographer had moved our blankets, I assumed that was to get a good picture of the river and I leaned over to Ben and said “Babe, they moved our stuff.” and he said “they were supposed to..” and at that moment I looked over and saw this beautiful half-circle of jars with candles and flower petals around it. My heart was soaring as we walked into the middle of them. He stood there, looked me in my tear-filled eyes, talked about the past 3+ years together in a trembling voice, got down on one knee, and asked me to marry him.
That was the easiest question that I have ever had to answer and was the beginning of this beautiful new journey together. This past weekend I asked him when he first knew he wanted to marry me, he said: “That one day in December 2015 when we were asking each other would you rather or just silly questions.” I immediately knew the day he was talking about even though we had done that a lot and said “so before you even told me that you liked me..?” and he said “yes..” Which was true for me as well and now we get to be each other forever.
