Oh boy did I say yes! Here's the story :)
Tad proposed on 11/23/2010, after almost 4 and ½ years together. We’re very excited to be planning our wedding for July 23, 2011. <3
*Her Side*
For me and Tad, the answer to the question “Have you talked about getting married?” has been “yes” for a while now. Early on though, we decided we didn’t want to get engaged until we had lived in the same city for at least a few months. So when Tad moved to San Diego last December, after almost 3 and ½ years of dating, I was pretty sure I’d be getting engaged sometime this year. I just didn’t know when.
I knew he was planning it by summer, as I overheard snippets of conversations between him and my mom and my friend Raelene. I looked for hints of a proposal any time we went out starting at my birthday (in June). Yet he still managed to completely take me by surprise.
The week of Thanksgiving I was working at my internship Monday-Wednesday. I saw Tad Monday evening and was not expecting to see him again until Thanksgiving. I had class Tuesday night after work and was coming back home right after my internship on Wednesday. That being said, here’s the story. =)
I woke up bright and early (6:25) on Tuesday morning and was immediately confused. I use a travel alarm clock and am extremely regimented in where I put it. When it goes off in the morning , I jump out of bed and turn it off as fast as I can so it doesn’t disturb anyone else. My alarm clock was in a different place than I usually put it. I discovered that it was in some sort of open plastic tub, which had other stuff in it, namely feathers. My only thought while digging to get to my alarm clock was “Why the heck did Anja (my roommate) put my alarm clock in a box of feathers after I went to bed?!?”. I got the clock switched off (really hoping I hadn’t woken Anja) and set out to figure out what this mystery box of feathers was.
Again not wanting to wake my (supposedly) sleeping roommate, I took the box into the bathroom and flipped on the light. I then saw that taped to each of the feathers were pictures. Some were of me as a kid (holding my little brother as a baby, blowing bubbles, dressed as an angel for Halloween when I was six), some from high school and college (me and Raelene before prom, one of my senior pictures, my favorite picture from Romania), and some of me and Tad (our first picture together, on vacation with my family in Hawaii, celebrating his new job in San Diego). There happened to be 23 altogether: an interesting coincidence since I’m 23, he proposed on the 23rd of November, and we will be married on the 23rd of July. Looking at through the pictures, it clicked (as I became more awake) what I was looking at. In Tsubasa Chronicles, the anime series that got me interested in anime (and still by far my favorite), a princess suddenly loses all of her memories, and her childhood friend takes great risks to travel across different dimensions to find them. These memories are found in the form of feathers. Tad had found all of my feathers. I knew that the pictures were what he had asked my mom and Raelene for.
I had a minute of thinking about how sweet this was, and then remembered that I wasn’t planning to see Tad at all that day, or the next. For the second time that morning I was very confused. I wondered if maybe I wasn’t supposed to have found the box yet. Though not wanting to wake him up before 7:00 a.m., I decided I should call him. I intended to say something to the extent of “I’m confused, and I think you know why.”
Yeah, the thought didn’t even cross my mind that he could possibly be in my apartment. I threw on a sweatshirt over my pj’s, grabbed my phone, and went into the living room (once more thinking of my “sleeping” roommate).
I closed my bedroom door behind me, looking at my phone to find Tad’s entry in my recent calls list. I hit send on my phone and looked up and was momentarily startled by a figure sitting on my couch. I hung up the call when I realized it was Tad. First question “Who let you in?”, COMPLETELY confused once more. And Anja replied from the corner “That would be me.” So much for being concerned about waking her! I found out later that Anja had been enlisted to plant the picture box, let Tad in, and take pictures.
I went and sat on the couch next to him. “You have no idea what’s going on right now do you?” he asked, grinning mischeviously. “I have some idea,” I replied. Um, no, by this time I (finally for that morning) knew EXACTLY what was going on!
He handed me his stuffed Mokona (a Tsubasa character) who had a feather taped to him. I noticed another glob of tape and peeled it off to find a ring. Tad took it from me, got down on one knee, and said some very sweet things (only a few of which do I remember because I was thinking “holy cow he’s proposing” over and over again) which concluded with “Lindsey Rose Hastings, will you be my wife?”, to which I very enthusiastically replied “YES!”
I didn’t cry. I just smiled and laughed, a lot. One of the funniest things to me, besides being caught completely off guard, was that for the last couple months I have carefully planned every outfit in case of proposal, and when it actually happened, I was in my pajamas!
Tad saved me an hour on the bus by driving me to my internship, where I dragged him inside to show him and the ring off.
It was a perfect way for him to propose, and I’m so blessed to have him as a fiancé and soon-to-be husband.
*His Side*
I guess my side of the story is a lot longer than hers. For me, I'd been planning to find a way to propose to her since April. It started by finding her ring shortly after Valentine's day this year, and watching the "extra inventory" get helped out the door with a discount. Not to try and be cheap, but I was on an extremely short budget, and was hoping to get something really nice while being frugal. It worked.
As for the how, I was first going to try and get her on April 1st, being the generally silly person that I am to lure her into a sense that I was being silly the entire day about how I didn't want her as my girlfriend anymore, and then propose towards the end of the day. But I had yet to ask her dad at that point, and was working very long shifts at work; finding the time to meet with them was near impossible.
Now, on to plan two. Along with three, four, five, and several others, I felt like any good ideas I had were never going to pan out in my favor. I went through phases of modifying songs (most notably "Love Story" by Taylor Swift, knowing how much she loves it, and knowing that it would make such a big deal to her if it was made into something she would always remember. Conveniently, Lindsey Rose fits in the same relative space as Juliet).
With the talking we'd been doing about planning our wedding, (after four years, it's a natural progression), we had decided on some dates and she had wanted to get it official for planning's sake soon (being Thanksgiving). Being that I was at this point "running out of time", and having finally gotten a solid time to ask her dad, I went on to plan some way to get a complete surprise.
About half-way through June, I figured out my method of proposing. While I didn't completely decide every detail at that point, I thought that I should start the preparations. I started hunting down some pictures from her mother as well as best friend in order to get a broad spectrum of memories that she would have from throughout her entire life, not just ones since I was involved. After I had my pictures, I got them printed off, and then had some feathers ready to tape them onto. Then I grabbed my Mokona doll, taped the ring onto it, and that part was set.
The hardest part was trying to figure out how I was going to ambush her in the interest of actually surprising her. I knew she knew, and I knew she was constantly expecting me to propose any time we were together. That meant only one thing to me, early morning, preferably before she'd even left for the day. It would be even better with her telling me, at one point, that she didn't want it to be "too late". I knew that this would probably catch her completely off guard, which the way any good proposal should be. I was originally going to surprise her at work with the ring, but had to alter my course when I found out that I would need to be at work in the morning instead of at night, as I had thought.
The most nervous part for me, out of all of the various things, was definitely asking her dad (although they were both there, so it was more parents than just her dad). While I had no concern if she would say yes, I know her parents had gotten to see a really bad side of me and my life way back in the beginning of our relationship, as I was struggling with a lot of life issues at that time.
As for the actual asking her, the worst part was waiting from alarm clock going off to her coming out. While it may have only been 15-20 minutes, it definitely felt like an hour or more. I was worried my surprise was ruined when her roommate's dog barked, knowing that I was there. After she finally came out, it was a huge relief, because I wouldn't have to care about the logistics anymore, and it would finally be over. I hadn't really written out a speech in my mind, or honestly really planned the speech part out at all. The only part that mattered was the actual question to me. The irony of it all was that I thought that I was going to be the one who cried, just because I know that I had certainly not deserved her for the time I had her, even if I knew she'd say yes. The only part that I can really say was scripted was the fact that I knew I was going to ask her with her full name, and that I would ask her to be my wife, over "marry me".
It might be nit-picky, but I thought it means more to be asked to be something of that level of importance to a person, instead of just an action. You get married on a day, you get a wife for the rest of your life. And I will indeed have a wife, Lindsey Rose Tilden, and she will be mine until the day God takes us home.
Taken by my mom on Thanksgiving
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