How We Met
Dave and I met from being random roommates! I was living at home after college in Gettysburg, PA. After a few weeks of job searching, I took a position in Washington, DC and needed a place to live for a few weeks before I found an apartment. I knew my friend John was living close by at The University of Maryland. I called him up and asked if I could crash on his couch for a bit. He was more than welcoming. He even upgraded me from the couch to a mattress on the floor in his room. Little did I know, I’d be rooming with 4 college guys in a dirty old four bedroom house.
When I first arrived at the house, I unloaded my things and decided to hang out on the beer stained couch to watch some TV. Being that I was in a house full of guys, the one thing they had going for them was the massive TV with any movie channel you could imagine. Just before I could find something to watch, the front door swung open and scared the sh** out of me. It was Dave. My now, fiance. He was wearing a lacrosse pinny and Chubby shorts (fratty short shorts). He was also pretty buzzed from a day of drinking with his fraternity brothers. “Hi, I’m Dave!” Since I am the type of person who laughs at pretty much anything, I found him to be hilarious.
Over the next few months, we flirted like we were in grade school. Dave would try and tickle me, I would flirt back by smacking him away. Naturally, this moved onto a first kiss, date and relationship. 4 years later, he proposed! The pictures are from the first night we kissed and moved from roommates to “more”. :)
how they asked
Most people know, I like to make plans. So much so that we are normally booked a few months at a time. So for Dave to pull off the proposal, he needed to sabotage my existing plans. In this case it was his birthday plans!
I had everything scheduled for Saturday brunch in Rockville, right by our apartment. I invited 15 of our friends to join us, all of which were sleeping over at our house afterwards. I had called the event planner at the restaurant, arranged for all of our friends to bring extra blankets and air mattresses and coordinated Uber rides to and from the restaurant. Little did I know, Dave was working just as hard to cancel all of these plans.
When I woke up that day, I instantly started hounding Dave about the dishes, the laundry in the bedroom and any other tiny thing that was out of place in our apartment. He so kindly went along with my craziness and helped to clean up “for our guests”. About an hour later, I walk into the bedroom and see that Dave had a bag packed. I yelled out to him “why do you have a bag packed???” His response- “Well babe, today is actually about you. Get ready and pack a bag. You need to be ready in an hour. Oh and by the way, no one is coming over.”
I instantly started crying because I knew what was coming. “Holy shit, I’m getting engaged today!!” Is what instantly went through my head. After hugging me and wiping my tears, my sweet, soon to be fiance left me. Yep….. he took my phone and left me alone in our apartment for what felt like forever. When he finally returned (with my favorite Starbucks coffee in hand), he blind folded me for our 35 minute car ride. I asked him about 30 times where we were going and for some type of clue. He refused every time.
When I was finally instructed to remove the blindfold, we were sitting outside of a huge warehouse. What the??? Then, I saw a small sign that read “Monumental Helicopters”. “UM ARE WE GOING IN A HELICOPTER??” We were!
After flying over the Chesapeake bay and all of Annapolis, Dave popped the question right there in the helicopter.
Of course I said yes!
Our tour guide, Mario, landed us safely back on land and I began to make the “We’re Engaged!!” phone calls. Mostly everyone already knew but little did I know they were all trying to hide the next surprise of the day.
Dave said that we were going to have lunch in Annapolis with my mom, his mom, Renee and Eli. When we walked into the restaurant, I was greeted by about 50 of our closest family and friends. More tears started flowing, which seemed to be the trend for the day. We celebrated all day and stayed overnight in a hotel in Annapolis (Thanks Renee & Eli!).
The proposal was one for the books and it was better than I could have ever imagined. Double brownie points for actually surprising me, Dave! :)
