To start off this wonderful story, I first need to tell a background story. In May, while I was still living down in Provo and Ry was living in Salt Lake, I drove up for our date night. Ry took me up this little canyon on the way up to Park City called Lamb's Canyon. We hiked around for a bit and then I had this very childish thought. I had always wanted to carve my name in a tree before and I had never done it. Being lame, I mentioned this to Ryan and he being the sweet, sweet man he is did not make fun of me but insisted that we carve our names in a tree of my choosing. We found the perfect Aspen tree to carve our names in. We didn't come prepared with a knife or anything like that, so we ended up carving our names with Ryan's car keys. That date was probably one of my favorites that we'd had thus far. Here is a picture of our tree.
So months down the road, Ry and I had been talking marriage but we had not really talked about a date or anything yet. The first week in September we happened to be downstairs at Ry's house when I told him about a dream that I'd had the night before. I told him that in the dream he had given me something very valuable and it made me very happy. Being Ryan, his response to that was "I gave you a cat? Well that's pretty cool! I wasn't sure if your landlord would allow you to have one so I that's why I haven't gotten you one yet, but I have thought about it actually." I corrected him of course and told him that he had given me a pretty special ring. I could tell he was purposefully avoiding the fact that in my dream he had given me an engagement ring. As you can probably tell, I was getting a little anxious and impatient about waiting to get engaged. I had always wanted my engagement to be a surprise, but I was honestly trying to figure out desperately when he was going to propose. He hadn't had a chance to talk to my dad yet, at least in person and I was pretty darn sure he would have asked my dad in person. I had it figured in my head that our engagement was still at least a month if not more away. After I told him he had given me a ring in my dream, he paused for a couple minutes and then simply told me to be patient (sadly it wasn't the first time he had told me this). He then told me not to make any plans for that Friday night because he had a very fun date night planned with his best friend Garrett and his wife Mckenna.
So Friday night came and I hurried home after my clinic session at school. I was a little confused though because we had just gone to the state fair with Garrett and Mckenna the night before. Ry picked me up at my house and as we were walking to his car he was on his phone talking to Garrett. He said that Mckenna was sick and that they wouldn't be able to make it for our date. Ryan looked very disappointed and insisted that we couldn't do our date because it was much more fun in a group setting than just a couple. So he suggested that we just drive around for a little bit until we found something else to do. He knew that I loved the Fall leaves and the leaves up in the mountains had just begun to change color. He suggested that we go for a drive up in the mountain. As we were driving toward the mountain, I noticed he was sort of going in the direction of the canyon where our tree was and I suggested that we go visit our tree and look at all of the pretty changing leaves up that canyon.
I noticed that Ry was a little more talkative than normal while we were driving through the canyon. I asked him why he was so talkative and he just brushed it off with the excuse that he still was really energetic from playing with his two nephews earlier that day. We parked the car and we started our hike up to our tree. It had faintly crossed my mind that Ry could potentially be proposing, but I tried to piece everything together like when he would have had time to ask my dad and time to get a ring. Besides I had suggested that we go to our tree and he had agreed. Surely he couldn't be proposing, it didn't piece together at all so I simply dropped the idea. I thought this was just another one of our many hikes that we always took. While we were hiking up to our tree, I was telling Ry a rather awkward and embarrassing experience that I'd had earlier that day. Normally he would have probably joked and laughed at me. But he didn't really comment on it at all which really surprised me. As we walked up the trail just before we got to the clearing where our tree was, I noticed a pair of red sunglasses. Ry had a pair of sunglasses just like them. For a millisecond I thought that they might be his and then I remembered that he said he had gotten those sunglasses at a Ute football game. I thought that someone else had been hiking on our trail with the same sunglasses and had dropped them. I reconsidered this and thought that the odds of someone else with the same sunglasses hiking on a rather remote trail was rather unlikely, but we had already arrived at our tree. I walked around to the side where we had carved our names to find this...
I was so shocked that I just stared at the tree for the longest time. When I finally turned around, I looked down to see Ry who of course was down on one knee holding an $8 ring from Claire's. Before he could even say anything I just looked at him with shock and disbelief and asked very seriously, "Is this real life? Is this really happening?" He reassured me that it most definitely was real life and then very romantically asked me to marry him. I've heard of other engagement stories of when the girl is so choked up in tears that it takes her a minute to even get an answer out, but I was so excited I screamed "YES!" and practically tackled him in a hug before he could even manage to get the ring on my finger. Even after 10-20 minutes had passed, I had to keep asking him if this was "real life." I was so excited about the engagement it took me a moment to realize the large bouquet of roses he had in his arms, or the lovely picnic he had set up in the clearing, or the very romantic playlist he had playing in the background which he had made especially for this occasion.
He explained that after we ate, we were going to reenact our first date we had together which was going to a laser light show at the Planetarium downtown. He had planned everything down to the very finest detail. I shouldn't have been surprised by this fact because he is a marketer after all. What I couldn't believe was the fact that he had someone managed to get ME to suggest where we should go. He also planned in time during our date after our picnic for me to call and tell my family and friends. I know many girls may have been appalled to have been proposed to with an $8 ring from Claire's, but honestly I was much happier with the element of surprise rather than going ring shopping together prior to our engagement and picking out my own ring. My $8 ring was very pretty, but Ry did promise me that we would be going ring shopping in the next week or so to find my ring. I honestly believe that I got the best of both worlds. I got the element of surprise and he let me go and pick out my own ring. I don't think he could have planned a better proposal.
As we sat down and ate dinner, I was still shocked and still trying to piece everything together. The biggest question I had was when he'd had time to ask my dad. Turns out he had to call and ask my dad's permission. He really wanted to ask him in person, but yours truly actually messed up his chance to ask him in person. It had been a few weeks earlier when we were spending the weekend at my family's cabin in bear lake. My dad had invited Ryan to go golfing with him. Ry had only met my dad a couple of times and I felt kind of bad leaving Ry by himself with my dad for a few hours. So I ,being an idiot, tagged along ruining Ry's chance to ask my dad permission to marry me in person. He said that he would have asked him at the cabin some other time while we were there, but there wasn't really ever a good moment because we were always together. He also toyed with the idea of driving up to Idaho one night to ask him, but the problem was that we are always together every night after I get done with school. As you can see, he was really trying his best to keep that element of surprise and boy did he ever!
I don't think I had ever experienced this much excitement or euphoria before. I can't wait to spend the rest of my life with Ry. I don't know how that man does it, but he definitely knew just what to do to surprise me and create the best engagement a girl could ever ask for.
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I love my ring so much that I couldn't help but share a picture of it too!
