We're gettin' hitched!

We are getting married on March 28th. We are having a very small ceremony and will live-stream it to those who cannot be there.

We bonded through a mutual love of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Daniel sent me a message on OkCupid asking me which type of bender I would be and we messaged each other 40 times over the course of 4 days. We just had so much in common! I told him he was cute and so phone numbers were exchanged. We met in person on April 10, 2016 at Baked Bear in Carmel Mountain and 3 dates and 6 days later, we were official! Everything was wonderful and we exchanged ‘I love you’s on May 6th. That was 3 years ago! How time flies!

One of the things we do as a couple is collecting pressed pennies where ever we go. So I thought that finding a penny for such a big occassion as getting engaged would be really special. I found a seller on Etsy that has “will you marry me?” pennies and ordered one in March 2018. I kept this penny in a little brown envelope folded up in my wallet for a year. If Daniel popped the question, I’d be ready for that too! For our 3rd anniversary, we went to Disneyland. I had made reservations to eat at Blue Bayou, Disneyland’s fancy restaurant inside Pirates. I didn’t tell Daniel until that morning about the reservations. So it’s finally time to have lunch and we unfortunately get the worst waiter you could want in your corner on such a big day. Lonny. Lonny is in his 50s and just a few crayons short of a full box. But he was all I had! While we were eating, I excused myself to go to the bathroom to track down Lonny. This is where things go wrong. I gave Lonny 100% not enough instructions. I walked up to him and said, “I’m going to propose to my boyfriend. This is a pressed penny. Can you bring it out with our creme brulee?” He said sure. He was so NOT sure. After our lunch plates were taken away, without any prompt, Lonny comes to our table and puts down the creme brulee, saying “here’s your dessert.” Daniel is confused. I’m confused. Lonny is confused. And sitting in it’s brown envelope on the side of the dessert is the penny. After a painful 20 seconds of silence, Daniel finally asks about the brown paper. So I tell him to open it. Lonny chimes in with “it’s a gift!” It’s really dark in the restaurant, so he struggled to read it. He looked up at me, shocked, saying “really??” I said yes. Awkward silence. He was obviously still processing so I had to evoke an answer so I asked, “...so?” And he said yes. Then Lonny told us congratulations because he never left. So that’s my story! I ruined Daniel’s original plans so you can scroll down to read his proposal story.

From the start one of the movies that we bonded over Is Disney's Tangled. A recurring theme in the movie is that Rapunzel wants to go see the Floating Sky Lanterns. I decided, this was how I wanted to propose. I had planned to surprise Em after our 3rd anniversary but was a couple weeks too late, as you read above. C'est la vie. After a short drive, a night in Vegas and listening to Disney songs in Em’s new “Baby car” we arrived at the venue. Found a spot to take a seat and played some games, talked, played on our phones, and doodled on our lanterns to pass the time. As nightfall approached, the staff lit torches and gave instructions for the lanterns. An announcement is made to coordinate the lantern launch and of course, there are already some lanterns flying. Em and I wait for the cue and get ready, this is when I start a mental checklist of where the ring is and what I’m gonna do. Shortly we were given the go ahead to start lighting our lanterns, we wait our turn for a torch and begin to see a growing flock of glowing sky lanterns start to swell into the air. We finally get to a torch and are able to light our own lanterns, and with minimal trouble, we light them and watch them float away. As we walk back to where our seats I prepare. This is moment I was waiting for, Em is walking ahead of me, looking all around but not at me. I quickly try to pull the ring box out of my pocket while I begin to kneel, and with great finesse and timing, the ring box then proceeds to fall apart… sending the ring tumbling into the dirt… not my proudest moment. I pick up the ring as fast as I can and call out to Em. She turns and I pose my question, “Will you keep being my fiancé?” luckily she said yes! But that's not the all… suddenly while we’re sharing a kiss my neck feels warm and something hits my head, seems someone released their lantern too soon and nearly set me on fire. After the scare, we get a hold of that lantern, and release it safely into the sky.