How We Met
Alex and I met in high school. We were just friends in the first few years, and would even joke about getting married one day. During a football game our junior year I turned to my best friend and told her that I thought Alex was cute and I was actually the one who decided to pursue him! Little did I know we would still be together 11 years later…now ENGAGED!
How They Asked
We were going to Los Angeles to celebrate Thanksgiving with my best friend (the same best friend from high school who I first told that I thought Alex was cute to at that one fateful football game!). Our 11 year anniversary was the upcoming Monday, so Alex told me that he planned for us to go to a winery to celebrate while we were in LA, but a few days before LA went into a stricter COVID lockdown and our winery date was canceled. I didn’t know it at the time – but Alex had been planning to propose at the winery! Talk about a stressful situation for him trying to find a backup location!
After the winery got canceled, my friend texted me a screenshot conversion between her and one of her “friends” saying that she worked at a hotel and could get us into their rooftop restaurant for dinner and drinks as an alternative plan. I put “friends” in quotation marks because I once again now know that the whole screenshot was a fake conversion between my friend and her boyfriend, whose name she had changed in her phone haha! I said I would let her know but never ended up following up and decided we could always celebrate our upcoming anniversary when we got back home.
Fast forward to the Friday after Thanksgiving. Alex told me he had come up with a last-minute date for us, but because it wasn’t going to be as fun as the winery, he was going to keep it a surprise to still make it as fun! He told me I could get dressed up and to pack an overnight bag!
When we got in the car he finally told me that the big surprise was dinner and drinks on the hotel rooftop that my friend had helped set up. We got to the hotel and were ushered into an elevator that took us all the way to the rooftop. When the doors opened, I quickly realized that this was going to be THE moment. Throughout the rooftop, Alex had set up different “pages” of our love story. It was so romantic and beautiful. We walked through reading the different pages, and then at the last one, he gave a speech, got down on one knee, and asked me to marry him! I said yes of course! It was all absolutely perfect and I can’t wait to marry him!
Instagram: @rachelshnayder
