How We Met
I met Bennett my second year of college right after Christmas break. I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend at the time, I was mostly just focused on hanging out with my friends and having fun. On the first day back from break, in January he posted a Facebook status saying he was bored with nothing to do on our tiny college campus so I told my best friend we should see if he wanted to hangout. We ended up going to Walmart that night (where we went to college, there was literally nothing else to do) and became friends. We would hangout with our friends, go bowling or to Walmart or Cookout and gradually we started hanging out just the two of us. We started to really like each other, however I wouldn’t let him ask me to be his girlfriend until he made the trip to Charlotte to meet my family. He ended up making that trip and asked me to be his girlfriend in March. On the same day he asked, my parents let me know that I needed to move home from the college we attended. So the first two years of our relationship started as long distance. Me in Charlotte and him in Greenville, SC. After two years of visiting on weekends and sometimes going a few weeks without seeing each other, I decided to move to Greenville. I absolutely hated it. Even though I lived in the same city as Bennett, there were just a lot of things going wrong for me in South Carolina but somehow I ended up sticking it out for two years. Eventually I decided I was just going to move back to Charlotte because thats where I felt I needed to be. I moved back at the beginning of this year and not even a week after I moved home, Bennett was offered a job in a city only 45 minutes away from Charlotte! So far our relationship has been two years of long distance, two years living in the same city, and then back to long distance (just slightly closer this time ;) ). For the past year of our relationship, I have been not-so-subtly hinting to Bennett that I was ready for him to “engage me” (propose). He had his own place and a full time job so I figured we were at that point in our lives for it to happen. He kept telling me he needed more time or needed to save more money and that it wasn’t happening “anytime soon”. Until December 16, 2017 when he popped the question.
how they asked
On December 16, I was told that I would be attending two different Christmas functions. One in the early afternoon with Bennett family and then one later that night for my family. We went and visited with Bennett’s family all day and of course I was completely obvious while pretty much everyone else in the house knew that he would be proposing later that night. I absolutely love spending time with his family so it was a really fun day full of food and many laughs. When it was time to go, Bennett’s immediate family gave me hugs and we said our goodbyes as I was under the impression that they would be making the trip back to Easley.
Bennett and I left and were headed to my family event next. On the way there, he said his stomach hurt and he needed to make a pit stop at the gas station. This is quite normal (sorry Bennett) so I didn’t think anything of it! We stopped and I stayed in the car and he went inside to do his business. He was in there for TWENTY minutes and the whole time I really just thought he didn’t feel well. Little did I know that he was really on the phone with his mom talking about how nervous he was and he was also stalling to give everyone enough time to make it to the venue.
He finally got back into the car and of course I joked with him for how long he took in the gas station. We made it to the venue and I only saw my families’ cars parked out front and everything seemed completely normal. I was still, of course, oblivious. We walked in the door and the first thing I see in the middle of the open room are huge gold balloons that spell out B & E. Surrounding those balloons were both of our entire families and closest friends. At this point I am beyond confused as I keep walking, Bennett is walking behind me. I make into the room and turn around to ask him whats going on and he was down on his knee. Apparently he had this long speech prepared but he “cracked under pressure” (his words) and really fast he said “Elaine, will you marry me?”.
Of course I said yes and we had the best engagement party with our families!! I think the funniest part of that night was right when we walked in, Bennett was super nervous and wasn’t fully inside the room before he dropped down on a knee. I still had my back to him so my dad is frantically motioning at him to stand back up and instead of standing up, he just scoots on his knees closer to me until I turn around. We have that on video if any of you ever want to watch ;)
