How We Met
Daniel and I met in college at the University of Oregon. We both lived in our church’s college housing, he in the Alpha Omega House, and I in the Trinity House. Daniel is a year older, so my sister was friends with him before I was and mentioned she had a feeling that we would be good together. However, when freshmen year rolled around, he took an interest in my roommate instead, while I was busy enjoying life in college. As the year progressed, Daniel realized he was more interested in me than my roommate, and in order to complicate things further, I began to realize I had feelings for him too. Towards the end of the year he gave me a ride home on his motorcycle, and after taking the long way home, he asked me out.
On the very last day of my freshman year, we went on our first date. We could have made it official then, but we had both been planning on going with a team to Bolivia on a mission trip that summer, and so we decided to wait until after we returned from South America to officially become boyfriend and girlfriend.
how they asked
As we dated it became evident to us that we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together, and so the topic of marriage began to come up more frequently. Daniel wanted the proposal to be a surprise, but he also wanted to make sure he got the ring I wanted, and wanted to be sure it fit. In December, we went to look at rings, “just for fun.” Over the next few months, I would subtly bring up the talk of a proposal timeline, but Daniel kept throwing out dates in late summer. I knew he was probably joking and that it would undoubtedly come sooner than he was saying, however, I didn’t expect it to happen as early as April. Little did I know that he had been working on his proposal since December, secretly filming himself telling me things he liked about me on several occasions.
A few days before he proposed, he told me that we were invited to a dinner with his parents and some family friends that Saturday. I didn’t think too much of it and went along with his plans. I was under the impression that it was going to be a fairly normal Saturday, so I decided to plan a group hike to Tamolitch Pool in the morning. Later I found out that caused a lot of stress for Daniel, as he had to make adjustments to his plan to make sure everything went accordingly. A few of my friends came along with us on the hike, but one of them had to “be home for work” at 4:00. That small detail took away any suspicions that he was going to ask that night, because I figured that he would involve my friends in the proposal. We got back from the hike, and I started getting ready for the dinner. Daniel sent me a Snapchat asking if I was ready, and in it he was wearing a dress shirt. He is not one to dress up for just any occasion, so I found it a bit odd, but decided I better curl my hair to look a little nicer for dinner.
He picked me up and we went on our way to dinner. He was playing it cool, but because I know him so well, I noticed some things that were a little off. Despite these suspicions I kept telling myself it wasn’t going to happen that night. We drove about 20 minutes out of town in the direction of his family friends’ house when he asked me if I knew what else was out that way. I answered that Carroll’s Country Christmas Tree Farm was close to where we were. I have always had a special love for Christmas, and that was the tree farm where my family has picked out our tree for the last several years. He mentioned we should stop by for fun, and I told him I thought that would be weird. However, it was obvious he had something up his sleeve, so as he confidently drove down the driveway of the farm I stopped my protesting. He parked the car and unbuckled, so I followed his lead and got out of the car with him. Amongst the trees there was a blanket on the ground in front of a bench with a TV on it and lights across it.
He positioned me in front of the TV and pressed play. He had made a video with secret footage from the last several months including everything from fights, to sweet moments, to my dad giving his blessing.
When the video was over, he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.
I said “yes” and then he called out of hiding some of our friends and family to celebrate with us. Then we headed over to an engagement party that was set up at my parent’s house to continue the celebration with more of our friends and family. We will be getting married next December and are more than excited to spend the rest of our lives with each other!
