How We Met
We met accidentally when my best friend at the time brought me to a band gig to see friends of hers play. He was the singer in one of the bands, and I was the one girl not impressed. I already know that his vows will start with my infamous line, “I just don’t understand what girls see in you.” Over time we saw each other so much that when he started a new music project with his friend Rich I was at every single show working their merch table and traveling with them around New England. Quickly we became best friends and really started to understand each other over the past 7 or so years.
Through friend fall-outs, breakups, and everything in between Ben became the first person I went to. Fast forward to the present and Ben is behind all of my achievements. My favorite thing about our relationship is that it grew from such a strong friendship. We spend majority of our time making fun of each other and goofing off, we keep each other so grounded that I can count on one hand the amount of times we have gotten in legitimate arguments. We always joke about how after six years we are still in the honeymoon phase, but it’s just true. Our families love each other, our friends love each other, and at the heart of it Ben and I just love each other.
how they asked
Every year Kristin and I work together to plan a vacation with 15 or so of our friends in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. With a sunset on our favorite beach surrounded by great friends, I knew it was the perfect time and place to pop the big question. A few weeks prior to the vacation I made sure to drive an hour down to visit her Dad who was home recovering from a surgery, getting his approval made it that much more real. Next I got in touch with a good friend of mine that always comes with us on vacation Ben Meyers, who owns 21 Summit Studios, a company that specializes in shooting photos and videos for weddings. I told him the big news and right away he agreed to help and we started planning.
In North Carolina I filled all of our friends in prior to the big day. We always do a surf and turf dinner night in the middle of the week where we dress up just for the hell of it. The plan was to take group pictures on the beach dressed up so that she wasn’t suspicious when the camera was there. The girls were going to play a big roll, but little did I know all of our friends would play a big roll.
That evening we headed down to the beach. Ben had the guys line up first facing away from the camera. Ben snapped a few great photos of the guys. Next we had the girls line up facing away from the camera. Ben counted down (now recording video) 3, 2, 1. As he got to 1 all of the girls pulled away from Kristin with the intent to leave her standing there confused. It worked perfectly. When she turned around I was on one knee and asked her to marry me.
I had this whole speech planned but I was honestly lucky to get out two sentences. The whole time I thought I wasn’t nervous, not even when she walked up to me on the beach right before and my mic fell right out of my shirt (she didn’t notice thankfully!) But in that moment when she turned around and realized what was happening I lost my thought entirely. We’ve talked about getting engaged, but hearing her finalize it with a “yes” was amazing.
To make it even better, our friends secretly set up our room with rose petals and a card signed by everyone by two glasses and a bottle of wine. It was truly fantastic and we are thankful for all of them and what they contributed to that special moment. We spent the rest of the night celebrating with everyone until the early hours of the morning. -B
