How We Met
Spencer and I met in November of 2018 on Bumble! I wasn’t sure what to expect from the date but I was really just going into it with an open mind (I did have a really good feeling about him though!) Spencer had just moved from the Seattle area and I remember he suggested a coffee shop in Portland that I absolutely hated. I still feel like it’s an ongoing joke but we decided to meet at Starbucks instead. It’s always the safe option haha! I was running late and when I arrived Spencer told me he swore he had a table for us but ended up giving it up to a family. Since there was no place to sit, we decided to walk around in the rain downtown, stroll through stores with our coffees, and ended up in a downtown mall seating area, as it was the only place open after a couple of hours of talking. We talked for 6 hours total, so much so that we actually didn’t realize the mall was closed and nobody ever came to let us know.
One of our favorite memories to this day is running around, trying to get out of every mall door and everything is locked. We did have some fun conversations about what store we’d camp out in and even though this should’ve been a panicked situation, we both felt completely at ease with each other. We finally tracked down a security guard and had to go out of an emergency exit. It was truly the most memorable first date :) We ended up being inseparable after that first date, comparing the Portland and Seattle zoo lights for our second and third dates (that was so fun because we both grew up thinking ours was the better one!) and then moving in together just a few months later. The rest is history and we’re going on 5 years this year :)
How They Asked
Every year, Spencer and I get anniversary photos to remember each season of life together! We always travel to new locations to shoot these photos, so we planned to explore the Sun Valley area of Idaho with one of our favorite photographers. We made a vacation out of it and spent the days leading up to our shoot exploring Boise and just having the best time! On October 10th, we planned to shoot at a few different locations within a couple of hours! I didn’t feel like Spencer was nervous at all and I was just soaking the evening in, but I was definitely not picking up on everything going on behind the scenes!
We got to our last location and I felt like we were walking around a lot, but again I didn’t think anything of it. We were about to leave the spot when Spencer asked our photographer if there were any other spots to shoot. She led us down this trail and then I started to hear our favorite song playing on a speaker, and I felt like it was all tears from there! Spencer had the sweetest speech (most that I can’t remember!) and had him send me later but he led me over to the cutest spot with flowers and photos of us and asked me to marry him.
I truly thought that was the biggest surprise but then he told me to look towards the bushes and my best friend (and now MOH!) was there just like she and I had always joked about in the 10 years we’ve known each other. It was all emotions and the entire night was truly the happiest I’ve felt.
During our Italian wine bar dinner, I got all the details on how everything actually went down! My best friend, Ashley, was actually supposed to be set up at another location but because there was no service, we couldn’t find her. I was clueless about it all but Spencer didn’t want to do the proposal without her.
I also found out that Spencer had been sending Ashley items for the proposal for months but when Ashley left for Boise that morning, her luggage got lost and she had to improvise by printing all new photos, grabbing flowers, etc., and then rushing to the location and hide in the bushes for an hour.
I was so surprised Spencer kept cool ALL day with all this happening and I couldn’t have asked for a better best friend being in on it, I truly couldn’t believe everyone was in on making this the most special day I’ll remember forever :)
