The story of when she said yes

This happened the weekend before last. I ended up writing a lot but i realized its a good story. Maybe this gives you ideas of how you might want to propose.

The story

I had been putting it off for a long time waiting for the right time. She had been nagging me to the point where one day she confronted me. I just wanted it to be special but no time seemed special enough.

Our trip to paris passed. My birthday seemed like an interesting time to do it. Valentines day turned out to be a normal day. Maybe this next vacation we are taking? No. After a year It finally got to the date that i established as the deadline, her birthday.

So heres where you can get some advice if you are thinking about doing this in the near future, but know this day is specifically created around this one person.

So her birthday is getting closer and we decided, a long time ago, to go to see her parents across the country of spain that weekend. Its a 5 hour drive from where we are. we do this very regularly. She goes to see her mother and I go see my grandfather.

At this point, a week before we were to leave, she didn’t expect anything, but later in that week a pothole emerged. It was her nephews birthday and i overheard her talking to her mom about celebrating this birthday with her family. I had to intervene.

Unfortunately, by saying anything would give away the surprise but i had to. I told her “i have something planned so dont make any plans”. This was followed by a string of questions which i responded with “its a surprise. Just dont make any plans please”. She probably suspected something...

The day was planned out for all of Saturday since we would get to her moms house friday afternoon and leave Sunday afternoon. I wanted a whole day.

The plan also had to take place in one day and be dynamic. This will make sense later on.

So it comes to Friday and im nervous. We have a 5-hour drive and i want tomorrow to be special. We brought our weekend suitcase to the car but in my nervousness i forgot something in the apartment. I had to go back three times because i kept remembering small things.

This is when the second pothole appears. While half way in the drive I noticed that I forgot a key item to the surprise (not the ring dont worry). It was a very special present which i will explain later. This was a huge setback, but i decided that i would push ahead and forget about it even though it took me a whole month to make. I needed to alter my plans a little and move on. Even though the present was special it didn’t not alter the plans to much.

That Friday i had one job; drive into the city, 20 mins away, and pick up the ring. I told her i wanted to go see my grandfather and that she can spend time with her mom. This was a normal arrangement when we are visiting.

As soon as i left i went to the city. I got to the jeweler, showed them the slip i had, and they responded with “we have something to talk about”. My heart dropped. What could it be??? I responded “is it bad news” and she said “not really but you should know this”. The place who creates the metal part of the ring made the holes for the diamonds larger than they needed to be so the jeweler had to put in larger diamonds. This increased the price. Not that big of a deal. Crisis averted.

When i came home she told me she went to go visit her sister. Her sister lives just around the corner to my grandfathers house and if she passed the house she would see the car NOT in the street. I later found out she did not pass the house and so did not know i wasn’t actually where i said i was.

Now with the ring in hand i carefully hid it in the car and headed back home. The only way i could sleep or calm myself was to not think or plan out anymore the next day...

Saturday

The day started out with us getting ready. She knew nothing except for what i told her Friday, we might be walking a lot and to wear something “not casual” for Saturday and that wee need to be in the city by 1:45 (15min before the actual time because she is always late). As she was getting ready i zipped over to my grandfathers house.

You see my grandmother (she died this year and was suffering from dementia i love you grandma) had a green thumb. Even after 5 years of not maintaining the garden her wonderful plants flourish. I picked the nicest pink rose i could find and prepared it. By the time i got back she was ready.

Remember when i told you i ruined the surprise by telling her i had a surprise and that she probably expected something? Well smart me told her “happy birthday!” And handed her the pink rose as she got into the car. I later found out this completely threw her off. 😝

Now we can start the day. So, this surprise was a 3 part plan and while it didn’t go completely to plan it still was an interesting day.

Part 1

Months ago i reserved a table at a Michelin starred restaurant in the city. I originally booked it for her birthday so it ended up working out. It was a 13 course meal of exquisite Spanish gastronomy. Pricey but worth going at least once.

In part 1 of my plan we were supposed to talk about when we first met. Life of the past. But something was bothering her. I later found out she was disappointed because she thought this would be the day i propose but now she thought it was just for her birthday. I asked her to enjoy the day because i worked really hard on it and she complied. From then ok she was happy.

Part 2

Part 2 was hard and thats why it had to be dynamic. We love to travel and we do it all the time. We have been almost everywhere in Spain, the country we are in, and especially around her parents house.

So for part 2 i decided to go traveling but it needed to be close, a very interesting place (surprising very very easy to find interesting towns in spain) and especially a place she, nor us, have been to. When she was a teenager she was part of a band that traveled the country so any place i pick she could have already visited.

So during dinner i asked her to pick where she wanted to go. The first two places she had been to but thats ok. The third she never heard of but we later found out was a place her sister, a travel guru, recommends. The fourth was a place she always wanted to go to.

The fourth place she picked and after a 1.5 hour drive we came to a town that was well worth the trip. The town was beautiful with a fortress and a stunning cathedral on top of a mountain. It was great.

My plan here was to talk about our current life. How we are happy and i moved to this strange country for us so we can be together. We did all of these things so thats good, but i also planned on taking many pictures. I even brought my camera but through the nervousness i didn’t take many.

I wanted to document all of the day by taking pictures of the food we ate and the place we visited. Its ok because we still took a few pictures and even though they didnt come out good they still document the day.

Part 3

As we were driving home she asked me if we were having dinner with her mom. I replied “i have one more surprise. I need to give you your present but first we need to go somewhere”. The place we were going was a very special place for the both of us.

The place I originally picked was where we had our first date, and where i fell in love. But this was kind of a weird place behind a weird guys house near a park.

Luckily, the week before, i was thinking about alternative places and i remembered a monument that the town built for her dad. Her dad died when she was in college about 10 years ago. It was in the middle of the forest near a stream. It is this big rock with an engraving poetically describing her dad.

When she first took me there my heart dropped. It was the first year we met and she didnt know me well but she brought me to this place that was so significant to her. It was a moving gesture. This was the right place.

This is where the present i forgot would have come into play. Let me prefaces this by saying the greatest present i ever received in my life was a book she made the second year we were together. It was a handmade book detailing our travels and adventures that year. She made it by hand and it told our story and all the happy adventures we went on. To this day it is the cutest and best present i ever received.

So my present was the sequel to that book. It was not handmade but instead made on mixbook.com and was very professional looking. It took me a whole month to make. It detailed all our adventures after the first book BUT it played out as a story of two sloths (me and her) and their struggles of a long distance relationship, getting through college, and the struggles of trying to become a teacher while still talking about these sloths (her and me) adventures across different countries.

The book was a 3 part narrative that seemed to end with a happy ending of the sloths but a flip of the page you find out that the female sloth had something missing in her heart and that the male sloth figured out what it was. The story ended with the male sloth building... something and the book ended with a window that she would need to peel away to revel the question and ring.

This never happened because i didnt bring the book but something else happened.

So when we got there it was sun down and it was to get dark within the hour. Luckily i came prepared. I had a towel for use to sit on, a blanket for her because she is always cold, a lantern, and a bottle of wine. This was all in the trunk of the car.

I laid out the towel and covered her with the blanket and cracked open the wine.

The proposal

So here we talked about our love and most importantly about our future. I wanted to prepare some sort of speech but never found the right words so i thought i would wing it.

I sensed she might have suspected something because she was hitting the bottle unusually hard. But i was too in the zone to care anymore if she suspected or not.

She asked me when we she will get her present and i told her i needed to talk about it first.

While my speech wasnt the best it was still... hmm, interesting is the only word that comes to mind right now.

“There are there parts of a relationship; the beginning and death.”

“Are you going to kill me?” 😐

“What? No”

“Oh ok good.”

“The beginning is when we first meet. death is when our physical relationship ends.”

“That’s kind if morbid.”

“What? 😳 No. i mean like our physical bodies die but our love lives forever. And if there is an afterlife we will be there together forever.”

“Ok thats better. Wait... you said there was three?” takes big swig of wine

“Yes you keep interrupting me.”

“Sorry.”

take bigger swig of wine “you see the second step is dedicating your love to one another...”

To be honest this was the boiling point for me. I blacked out. The nerves got to me but what i gathered from her story and the snippets of my memory was i went to pull out the ring from the backpack near me and instead pulled out the cork of the wine bottle. I went back in and pulled out the ring and asked her. She immediately took the blanket and put it over her head. I pulled it off and asked her “so?” and she said yes.

Thats the story of how she said yes. We went back home, i had a drink, and showed her mom.