Angie

how we met: we met through a now-defunct online meetup site. it was called stir.com and it got bought out by another company so now it's nothing like it was before. i actually preferred the old site, lol...anyway, it was after i'd JUST decided to stop trying to chase guys and let them come to me so i wasn't even actively looking to date, much less meet anyone...and out of the blue he messaged me. we messaged and texted for about a month before we worked our way to phone calls, then we met for the first time for dinner. i asked my sister to come along (i didn't have a car at the time and i was wary of meeting a guy off the internet) and it was completely cool, never a dull moment (probably due to the fact that my sis thought he was my coworker's friend and just talked like normal instead of trying to make chit-chat). hung out again for my birthday (later that week) and then he had to leave to go to dallas for a gig. we couldn't stop talking to or thinking about each other, we'd clicked SO well that we decided to try out dating. so exactly a week from my birthday (his birthday) he asked me to be his girlfriend. he says i'm the best birthday present he's ever gotten! met december 2009, been together since jan 2010 :) the proposal: a couple of things before i start that may make the story a little easier to read/understand. my fiance's name is joel, and he's a video/audio technician with a company that does all kinds of corporate shows.  they also do corporate meetings, annual conferences, conventions, even tours and stuff like that too. he's gone a lot at differing times of the year just because with a business like entertainment things can change at the last minute and nothing stays the same year to year. anyway -- without further ado! * It happened on Saturday, July 21, 2012. Apparently this whole thing had been being planned for a month!! He also bought the ring the day after I picked it out at the store, all the while making me think he hadn’t given it much of a second thought… Anyway, I guess the original plan was for Joel to check out the beach and surrounding areas to make a plan last Monday or Tuesday (off days) before flying out on Wednesday to help strike a show and he would be back Friday…but last Sunday he got called in to help out the show early and to fix some things, which I’m assuming put a biiiiig monkey wrench in everyone’s plans. He would still get back Friday night, but all the planning fell to Joel’s mom’s and my sister’s shoulders to reorganize and make the game plan from there. Turns out that wasn’t the end of the bad news! Friday, as he and his coworker Ben were at the airport, Joel was first told their flight to Atlanta would be delayed and they might miss their connection. No big deal, they would just have to hurry to make the connecting flight. Then, minutes later, he was told they would miss the connecting flight. Okay, that stinks, but they’ll just rent a car in Atlanta and drive a few hours, and he’d be home late. Then, a few minutes after that, he was told the flight was cancelled entirely. He and Ben drove 11 hours from Nashville to Orlando. I had to pick him up at the rental car place at 6am. He was still sooooo insistent on wanting to go to the beach – I figured he was just super stressed and really needed a day at the beach to just rest and relax and recharge his batteries, lol, so I obliged. I drove to try to let him sleep some (which he didn’t, he was awake the whole time texting and trying to see if everyone was there yet!) and we got to the parking lot, and I nearly hit someone head on because I was about to turn down an aisle that apparently everyone had parked in, i found out later on we found a spot a lot closer and as I was waiting to turn into it, he tells me he has a surprise, that he’d asked my sister to make us a picnic, just the two of us, and that he knew it was corny but he wanted it to be special, and he wanted to set it up and put a blindfold on me, etc…so I said fine, it’s what he wants, and waited in the car until he came to get me. He helped me put on the blindfold and led me through the rest of the parking lot (which warranted some strange looks from people walking by, hahaha), all along I’m saying things like “you’re going to push me into the water, aren’t you” and “please don’t let me fall flat on my face.” LOL That’s where the facebook videos start – with me being led onto the sand by Joel. He stands me in one spot and suddenly I hear music (the opening chords of Jason Mraz’s “I Won’t Give Up” – if you have time, you can search for it on youtube and listen)…since the beginning is just an acoustic guitar, I thought he’d gotten a CD player into that picnic basket – turns out it was Ben playing (he is a super awesome guitarist)! My sister was behind me to untie the blindfold and when I opened my eyes, he was on his knee on a towel in the sand and behind him was his parents, his 3 cousins, his sister in law and her daughter, our friend and her 3 sons (my godsons), our friends who’d just gotten married the week before, his coworker and his wife and stepdaughter (taking pictures), my best friend from work and her husband and son, and our friends – most of whom were crying because I started to cry. He made the proposal itself very simple – I doubt I could’ve remembered most of it anyway because I started crying as soon as I was sure I wouldn’t fall over – and of course I said yes! Everyone cheered and yelled and clapped and then we had a little mimosa toast before going to enjoy the waves. My sister also had to coordinate getting my dad to fly down here, which was its own fiasco in itself. His connecting flight got cancelled and he had to spend the night in the airport before having to reroute his flight in through Tampa and renting a car, causing him to miss the actual proposal but he still got to surprise me later on while my godsons were distracting me by being simultaneously cute and afraid of the waves, lol. All in all it was a WONDERFUL day and we were thoroughly pooped by the end of it!   us :)