How We Met
In order to tell any good proposal story, we gotta start at the beginning. In this case, a dating app, followed by a message sent to my Instagram DMs asking how I knew the one mutual friend we had. I know, I know, insanely romantic. The small talk was short and he asked me if I was free and if he could take me to dinner, I was skeptical at how successful the date would be, but I figured at the very least it would be free food. Lemme tell you though, the second I saw him when he came to pick me up I was stoked, the guy was straight outta the perfect boyfriend dream: tall, dark, handsome, and Italian.
We immediately hit it off, it was so easy to talk and laugh with him that by the time the date was over and he was dropping me back off at my apartment, I knew I didn’t want it to be the last time I saw him. Thank freaking goodness it wasn’t. The next few months were filled with romantic and adventurous dates, deep and meaningful conversations, and there I was slowly but surely falling in love not even having a clue.
We worked through long-distance, disagreements, and miscommunications, which as hard as it was made me finally stop and realize, “Yo! I low-key might be in love with this extremely patient and loving dude”. One of my favorite memories is when he came out to visit me while I was at the time living in LA, and he took me to the Griffeth Observatory late at night. We looked out over the city’s glittering lights, he pulled me in close and said, “Hey, I love you”, not gonna lie, at that moment my heart was beating insanely fast, I couldn’t stop smiling, and I never wanted the moment to end.
How They Asked
Before I can continue to the super romantic proposal lovey-dovey stuff, I have to note one last thing, which is he asked me to be his girlfriend at the top of the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas. Great, with that knowledge you are prepared to continue on this journey where you will read the most beautiful and romantic proposal ever (not that I am biased or anything). Okay, so before I officially started dating Jared, my family had been planning a trip to Europe in October where we’d hit up France, Italy, and Greece. Now I must also mention that my mother is Greek and is very much that overly loving and inviting mom that makes you feel like you’ve known her for years, so when I finally brought Jared home to meet the fam she immediately invited him on our family trip to Europe, “if we were still dating by the time it came around”. Naturally, I was incredibly embarrassed and fully believed Jared was going to leave me over how weird that was, but he laughed it off (because he’s really easy going and understanding and have I mentioned how I lucked out with this guy?). Cut to October, Jared and I are still going strong, and he is still very much invited with us on our family trip, but by this time jokes had started accumulating about how “Europe was super romantic and if there’d be any time to ‘pop the question’, it’d be there”. Little did I know that was already his plan and he was mad stressin’ that all the jokes were going to ruin the surprise. Flash forward to Europe, the trip was amazing, the food changed my life, and the pillows at the Marriot are probably the softest things on planet earth but I digress. We make it to Paris where the rest of my family had planned to take a day trip out to the Normandy Beaches while Jared and I stayed in the city and “shopped”. Our plans for the day were extremely vague (not suspicious at all), but Jared assured me he just really wanted to check out the city and buy some cool stuff.
He then casually mentioned that we should go see the Eiffel Tower that night if we had time, which of course we did. Once we made it to the Eiffel Tower things started to click and I was like, “Oh dang, tonight might be the night, tonight I might get engaged”, and that’s all I was thinking about as we waited in line. Right on cue, INSANE windy weather hit outta nowhere and they closed the top of the Eiffel Tower, which meant the highest we could go was to the middle level where the cafe was. We got to the middle, it was super packed (I later learned that Jared was trying to find a more isolated area where he could propose since his original plans to propose at the top had been foiled), with no luck he “gave up”, and after admiring the view and grabbing food we headed back down. Now at this point, I was low-key bummed because it looked like he wasn’t going to propose after all, which I had been starting to get excited about. We walked on the path that goes around the pond under the Eiffel Tower on our way out to order an Uber, when Jared randomly stopped and goes, “Let’s go over to the pond and get a pic”. Also to note, there was a fence around the walkway keeping people from walking out to the pond and grassy area under the tower so I responded, “Umm we can’t, there’s a fence and I don’t want to be arrested in a foreign country”. So homeboy ignores the possibility of being locked up in a French prison, grabs my hand, and somehow found a spot where the fence was already weak and he climbs right over. I’m freaking out looking around trying to see if he’d be tackled by some sort of French SWAT team, but he started walking to the pond and I quickly hopped the fence to follow him before anyone could see. The pond was, of course, beautiful and we took a picture with the Eiffel Tower right behind us glittering against the night sky. Jared then goes, “Oh shoot! Did I leave my wallet at the cafe?”, so I turned around to look in his backpack to see if he had left it there, but it was the oldest trick in the book and when I turned around he was on one knee.
PICTURE THIS SIGHT!!!! A handsome Italian man in a black turtleneck, on one knee, holding a small black box, next to a glistening pond, with the Eiffel Tower lighting him from behind. It was straight out of a movie! He said some incredibly romantic and sweet things followed with, “Will you marry me?”, which had me crying like a baby as he put the gorgeous ring on my finger. I literally sat on a bench looking at the Eiffel Tower in Paris eating macaroons with the man I loved, and to top it all off it started to lightly rain. Ladies and gentlemen, let me repeat myself, SOMETHING FROM STRAIGHT OUT OF A MOVIE. I was filled with so much love and gratitude and I tried to soak in every single moment, never wanting it to end. And that’s the whole story or at least the extremely condensed version, but hopefully, you get the idea. I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with the love of my life and forever remember my France proposal that was an absolute dream!
*Also, if you haven’t watched the video you need to immediately because I don’t want to brag, but the iPhone cinematography in congruence with the perfectly chosen music and hot man is enough to be considered for an award.
