EPT
For reference, we got together a little under 6 months after I registered on TL, which predates me becoming staff by a solid 1.75 years. She has really been there through everything, including some incredibly dark times.
I'm sure some people will be interested in the details. Originally I had planned to propose on our 10 year anniversary (which was the 9th), but one of her friends was getting married out of town last weekend so we had to spend a day travelling to the wedding. This meant that our anniversary would be spent mostly in a car and was now entirely inappropriate to propose on. The obvious date then became the day before since we had already agreed that we should have an anniversary dinner then.
I planned to include as many subtle throw backs to our early dates as possible, with hopes that she wouldn't catch on (she didn't). First up was sending her a boquet of yellow roses to her work since when we first started going out I gave her a yellow rose on our first three monthiversaries (I had no idea that yellow meant friendship
it was just a rose to me at the time!). I mentioned that there was 'more to come' this evening, but she had no idea what that meant. Not only was this a throwback to our early relationship, but it also meant that her coworkers would be aware that we had plans tonight and would make sure she left work on time!Next up was dinner at our favourite Japanese restaurant. Conveniently, that restaurant is located at Mission Bay which is where we had our first date. Since it's our favourite Japanese place I knew she wouldn't pick up on the fact that we were right back where we started 10 years ago. So we had dinner and had the usual over-dinner chitchat. She casually started talking about our first date and what we did on it (movie then a walk). She asked if I knew where we ended up walking after the movie and I said that I remembered -- I had already planned to propose in the exact location that we took a selfie on our shitty 2004-model phones on our first date. After dinner I suggested that we go take a 10 year selfie since hey, it would be cute to have a 10 years later picture (of course this was just an excuse to get her over there).
So we went on a brief walk to the location. On the way there she happened to bend down and tie her shoelace and remarked "it's like I'm proposing to you!"; completely oblivious to the fact that in less than 5 minutes I'd be doing exactly that! We got to the bench at the far side of the beach. We took the selfie and then I said I had a surprise for her. I jumped over the wall separating the path and the beach and turned on some fairy lights that I had placed there before she arrived. Those lights spelt out "I <3 U =)" (with the heart and the smiley face vertical, thanks keyboard restrictions!). She wrote that in the sand (also approximately where we were standing) on a date a few months into the relationship and it's kinda stuck with us as a reminder of those days.
Right then she was getting very confused, not really realising what was happening. After an awkward "I'm going to hold your shoulders at armlength" grab, I started to tell her about how I loved her and how much she means to me (neither of us can remember what I said exactly) and then pulled out a fake rose out of my jacket. I had given her a boquet of roses about 8 years ago with a fake one inside which had some earings for her and that rose had been special since. However this time within the rose was an engagement ring. I got down on one knee, asked her to marry me, and she said yes and started to get emotional.
Then her sister popped out of the tree behind us which caused her to start crying out of joy. You see, her sister is studying out of town and she wasn't expecting to see her for a while. For my fiancée, her sister is one of the most important people in her life and I knew that she would want her there for the occassion. After celebrating amongst ourselves for a bit and taking some photos, we headed back to our car and drove to her parents restaurant to swap her car (because it needed to get serviced). It also served a double purpose because inside were all our closest friends ready to celebrate the occassion, which caused her once again to cry with joy. We spent the rest of the night celebrating with friends and family and it really couldn't have gone better. In her words, it was the perfect engagement.
TeamLiquid has a pretty important role in all of this. When I was more active around the site and TL was experiencing a surge in popularity, Naz wanted to pay me for my services around the site. While I protested at first, I eventually agreed to with the plan of putting that money towards the eventual engagement right. Well last month I did just that; the ring was largely funded by TeamLiquid as a result
and I honestly don't think it would have been perfect without that exact ring; so thank you Naz for that Anyway, you can expect to see more of me once my PhD is completed (hopefully around August if everything goes well!) Hope things are well with everyone around these parts
