How We Met
We met through our church when we both became leaders in the youth group after high school graduation; fall 2013. We met for the first time on a Thursday, and my first text to him had a really embarrassing typo in it… Great first impression. The next night, I invited him to meet me for frozen yoghurt after my shift and to my surprise he said yes. We ended up walking and talking for hours. In the months to follow, there was maybe a day or two when we did not see each other at least once. After a week we were a couple and have never looked back! We started talking about getting married at about 4 months into the relationship, and we have never really wavered from that conversation. Everyone thought we were insane, naive 18 year olds, and that’s probably true, but now we get to show everyone we knew.
Our first photo together, skating at a local pond.
how they asked
I had always told Rhys I wanted our friends to be witness to our engagement. I don’t have many few close friends, but the ones I do have are very important. Over the years, Rhys has grown closer to this group and it’s been great to see him more comfortable with my favourite people! I also mentioned once that I saw a Pintrest post about a groom giving his bride a new bible with her “new” name engraved on it, the day of the wedding, and that I thought this was absolutely perfect. Clearly he was listening.
Our group of friends went to the aquarium on Saturday morning, and it was nice because we rarely are able to get together all at the same time. Rhys and I (mostly I) have always loved the aquarium, and go a few times a year on dates. We spent a few hours, and I wanted to do and see more, but the boys (mainly Rhys) wanted to get going and take some fun photos in the park because our friend brought her fancy camera to play with. As we were walking through the gift shop, Rhys made an off hand comment about just buying me one of the rings on sale there and calling it a day on the while proposal ordeal. He has been making jokes like this for a long time, on days where proposing would be a nice fit. I laughed and was a little annoyed, complaining to my friends that I had thought that morning, that today would be such a nice day to propose, but now it clearly wasn’t happening.
Not 15 minutes later, in a clearing in the park we had found two years previously, he said he had a gift for me. It was a new bible, exactly how I had described I wanted, with my name and his last name inscribed on the front. I was so extremely pleased that he had remembered, and was satisfied with my gift. He told me he had written something inside for me, so I opened it and found a ring sitting in a cut out spot in the margins, in the book of Genesis. When I looked up at Rhys, he was down on one knee.
I couldn’t say yes enough times, we were both shaking and our friends were cheering.
It was simple, yet so extremely thoughtful and everything I could have imaged and more.
