We're Getting Married!

I met Vince when snowboarding in Tahoe… I fell into a tree well and he had to help me out with his ski pole. Juuuuuuuuust kidding! Okay, I met him in Tahoe, but it wasn’t quite that cute of a story. We were on a New Year’s ski trip planned by our mutual friend Tomo. Since I was in charge of music selection for the first night, I played my Kygo radio on Pandora, and Vince and I started chatting because we found out we were both going to the upcoming Kygo concert in SF. As some of you know, Vince isn’t the most aggressive of guys, but these were his efforts to get to know me over the next few months: he wanted to invite me to a Klingande concert, but didn’t want it to be too obvious that he was interested in me, so he bought 3 tickets, and then told me that he had an “extra” ticket to the concert, if I wanted to go. After I agreed to go, he found a friend to come with us :D Another time, after we had a picnic in Golden Gate Park with friends, everyone else was going to his place to watch a Raptors’ game. Since I don’t like basketball, I planned on going home, but as I was leaving, he asked me for a ride home since everyone else had left. I had no choice but to take him home, and join them for the game! Finally, eight months after we first met, I invited him out on our official, first real date at After Dark at the Exploratorium, and the rest is history.

I met Julie on a Tahoe ski trip. Tomo invited me to spend new year's eve with him and his friends in Tahoe. Julie and I got along very well from the beginning. We had a lot of common interests and a similar desire to travel and do all kinds of sports and activities.

We went to Japan this past spring, and I honestly didn’t expect Vince to propose on this trip because I planned the whole thing! Plus, my friends had been predicting that he would propose pretty much on every trip we’ve taken since our 1-year mark (and we travel a lot!), so by this point, the “crying wolf” effect had worn down any thoughts that he might propose on a trip. On our last day in Fukuoka, Vince asked if we had anything planned that day. I said our schedule was open, and asked if he wanted to check out any more cherry blossoms. He said, very nonchalantly, Oh actually, I ran through this nice park yesterday, called Nishi Park… maybe we can go there? And I said, ooh, that’s perfect, it’s on my list of one of the top parks to visit for sakura viewing. We got to the park, and went on a search for trees with the most blossoms, since it hadn’t reached mankai, or full bloom, yet. He found a pretty one and suggested that we set up our selfie tripod to take some pictures. We took a few pictures but that tree was really crowded, so we continued to walk around in search of the best trees, and eventually came across a small grove of cherry blossom trees. It was secluded except for a couple having a picnic a little ways away. He set up the tripod again, and while we were taking pictures together, he suddenly got down on one knee and proposed!

In March and April 2019, Julie and I were in Japan for the cherry blossom festival. Our schedule in Japan was packed with great activities planned by Julie. It was difficult to find a good time for me to ask the question. Luckily we did not have commitments on our last day in the city of Fukuoka so decided to go to Nishi park to look at the Cherry blossoms. The day before that I was able to spot a few good romantic places in the park because I had gone through it during one of my marathon training runs. The first few places I wanted to pop the question were full of tourists admiring the trees and taking pictures. I ended up going to my backup location at the back of the park. It was a beautiful meadow with a few cherry blossom trees. I setup the camera stand for us to take a picture together, and proposed.