How We Met
Eric and I grew up in the same, small Massachusetts town and officially met when in high school. We weren’t necessarily friends, but did have a lot of mutual friends; one of which was the one to give Eric my number in the first place (he had seen me in our school musical and asked this friend if he thought I’d be interested in him). After a couple weeks of texting, we had planned to go out on our first date, but he actually ended up bailing on me to hang out with an on-again, off-again girlfriend at the time! I was so young and unfazed, plus he was off to college that year, so was over it within the hour. Fast forward 3 years and I get a text out of nowhere from the same number I had entered into my phone when I was 15 years old. We ended up going on that first date after all those years and have been together ever since!
how they asked
We had been planning a two-week, winter Europe trip for the practically the past year with plans to go all over Iceland, Ireland the UK and France. I had a pretty strong feeling that a proposal was coming for some time (we’ve been dating almost 5 years and living together for quite some time!) and had my hopes really high that he’d plan to propose on this trip. It was the perfect opportunity for him, but I still had no idea if 1. he was even going to propose and 2. if he was, where it would happen. We were going to so many beautiful places, he could have been planning for any day we were abroad. The day after Christmas we left Boston on an overnight flight to our first stop, Iceland. Arriving in Iceland at around 6 am, we thought the best way to fight jet lag was to head straight to the Blue Lagoon and then continue our day with a drive around the country, scoping out a fairly remote waterfall in the process. This plan was easier said than done – I was SO dead after we went to the lagoon and ended up falling asleep for most of the ride. Eric offered to turn around and head straight to our Airbnb since I was so tired, but I agreed that it’d be best for us to stay active to fight the time change. After dozing on and off for the two-hour drive, we arrived at the waterfall. I had taken my contacts out for the ride and was putting them back in when I dropped one of the contacts. I had no spare pairs and hate wearing my glasses; they’re a little out of date and I just prefer the comfort of wearing contacts, especially when we had such an active 13 days planned ahead of us! Between the jet lag and the lost contact, I had a complete meltdown in the car. Eric remained super calm (so surprising looking back at the situation) and assured me everything would be fine. After a few minutes, I realized how silly I was being, pulled myself together and we got out of the car to check out the waterfall.
Honestly, this was probably one of the most beautiful natural sites I have ever witnessed! The falls were snowcapped and gorgeous and the ground was perfectly iced over as if we were standing in a snow globe. I noticed Eric was super quiet (a rarity) and before I knew it he was shuffling us up to a more remote area of the falls. I turned to look at him and he instantly broke down in tears, which made me realize what was happening, also start to cry and blackout. I don’t even know what he said, but I do know it was the best moment of my life-to-date! :)
p.s. the night of the proposal I woke up because one of my eyes was really bothering me. I went to the bathroom and splashed my face with water and what fell into my hand but my “missing” contact!
