Rachel's Take

I will never forget February 25, 2006…the day Jesse proposed to me!!! It was a Saturday, and Jesse had come to visit for that weekend. We had a lot of fun that day. We decided to make homemade chocolate chip cookies because Jesse had never done that before. I must say…he did a pretty darn good job! ;) Those cookies were delicious. Toward the end of our cookie making adventure, we decided to plop the rest of the dough on the pan and make two huge cookies. It was quite the good time.

We also played outside that day!! I remember it was quite windy, but we had wanted to play basketball on the driveway. Sadly, the basketballs weren’t in the best working order and we couldn’t find the pump. However, Jesse found one of those oversized, multi-colored, rubber balls rolling down the street. We decided to play with that. This came as quite a challenge considering the wind, but we had a lot of fun doing it. We kicked it around for a long time and even tried to get it balanced on the basketball goal rim. It was definitely a good time.

Later that night, we did what seems to have become a tradition. Jesse always brings his projector so that we can watch movies projected on the white wall in the apartment above my garage. It is always a lot of fun. This particular night, Jesse really wanted to watch Meet the Parents. He had told me before that he had seen this movie before he came to visit me for the first time. I thought this was pretty funny and luckily the first time he met my parents was no where near Ben Stiller’s experience in this movie. I’ve always had a hard time watching this movie because it is so stressful. I just can’t believe the things that happen!!!

Toward the end of the movie, Jesse made sure I was paying attention. He told me his favorite part was coming up. It was the part where Ben Stiller goes into her room to propose to her. He has to wake her up, which is sort of ironic considering I was really tired at this point and had been doing some dozing of my own. All of the sudden, In the middle of the scene, the screen went to static and that little test screen came up with all the different colors. I remember being quite confused at this point and asking Jesse what in the world was wrong with the DVD…haha…little did I know that it was all part of his master plan! After a few seconds of the static, the screen changed to an announcement that said “We interrupt this program for a special announcement.” I didn’t know what to think at this point. I kept looking to Jesse for some kind of clue as to what in the world was going on, but he would give nothing away. All I could do is watch. Then some music starting playing and words started scrolling up the screen.

As I read the extremely sweet words that Jesse had written, I started to feel butterflies in my stomach as I slowly realized what was going on. Toward the end, he said there was just one question left…I remember staring in shock and then turning to face Jesse as he got down on one knee and produced the most gorgeous ring I have ever seen. I was ultimately in shock and kept repeating “oh my gosh” over and over again. Of course I said YES!! It took quite a while to sink in what had just happened. The screen then went back to the movie and showed the ending. I definitely wanted to keep this DVD and Jesse let me. It was so hard sleeping that night. I couldn’t take my eyes off the ring and I was trying so hard to fathom what had just happened.

The next day, I got to tell my family for the first time that I was ENGAGED!!! It was fun watching their faces as I told them the great news. My mom had known already, since Jesse had shown her the ring and asked her ahead of time. My dad had been out of town so he had yet to find out. My mom ended up getting us Champaign and a cake that said Congratulations on it. It was a great day…definitely one of the best days of my entire life!

Jesse's Take

As Rachel said, February 25th, 2006 was most definitely a day I will never forget! Sometimes when I look back on it, it seems like it was just yesterday. I am surprised I remember as much detail as I do about that day, because my mind was a blur, especially that night! If you haven’t figured it out yet, the night of Feb. 25 ’06 was the night I asked Rachel to marry me!

I don’t know how much time other guys have spent planning their proposal, but I had been beginning to brainstorm ideas starting probably as far back as the end of December 2005. Sadly, I can’t remember when I had my epiphany, when I came up with the general idea for my proposal, but I’d guess it was late January. I do remember being incredibly psyched about the idea I had just come up with though! I knew it was perfect. It would be a total surprise, it would be plenty romantic, and it would definitely be my style. ;)

The real trick was trying to get the element of surprise. So I had been consistently telling Rachel about how I was saving money to buy an engagement ring, and that I probably wouldn’t have enough until sometime after her spring break towards the end of March. That gave me the chance to spring it on her about a month early. I also remember the day I went into Kessler’s to look at rings. There were a lot of pretty nice looking diamond rings, and I already had a good idea about the kind of ring Rachel liked because we had perused some jewelry stores in Independence maybe a couple weeks before that. I knew she wanted the three diamond set with white gold. Back to Kessler’s: There were a lot of qualified rings that I’m sure she would have loved… but early on my mom and I came across this one ring… it just stood out from the rest. There wasn’t anything else quite like it in the store (at least in my price range that is ). After comparing a good dozen or so other rings… nothing could really take my mind off of this one special one. I think the moment I saw it, I knew “that’s the one”. (kind of like when I started emailing Rachel, I had a good idea she might be the one right away too!) I got the ring in my possession on Tuesday after work and proceeded to show it just about anyone who I thought would care, and even some people who might not have cared! It seemed like the first question anyone asked was "how do you plan on proposing?" I even got that question from the 3 saleswomen at Kessler's when I went to pick up the ring. They all seemed to LOVE the idea. And it seemed genuine, not just sucking up to a customer. But then everyone else I told the plan to seemed to think it was a great idea too, so that gave me a lot of confidence going forward. I didn't want to disappoint in any way! It was SO hard keeping it a secret from Rachel! I wanted to blab so bad, but managed to contain my excitement just enough.

If you’ve read Rachel’s take on the proposal, then you know all the specifics already, so I won’t rehash them here. Her description was right on. And really, being a computer science guy, was that not the perfect idea? OK, so I had this great idea to propose during a movie, but the tricky part was finding an appropriate movie to use! There are a lot of romantic comedy type movies out there no doubt… but really, think about it… how many culminate in a proposal scene? Not many! And Meet the Parents provided what I felt was the perfect scene to go with the scene I was creating in real life! Guy at girl’s parents house; girl completely unsuspecting; guy professes love; guy produces ring and proposes! Perfect! Now of course, I admit the plan hung on delicately on the premise that Rachel would agree to watch Meet the Parents if I asked. Thankfully, she did agree. I think I pulled out some cheesy line like “I know we’ve both seen this movie but am really in the mood to watch it.” Rachel also made me this awesome little coupon book for Valentine’s Day, and one of the coupons was to watch any movie of my choice. So I figured it was a safe bet she’d go along with the movie. Another good thing about Meet the Parents, is that my brother already owned the DVD, so I could put the doctored (burned) disc inside the real case to make it look like I was really putting in the real movie! ;) Slick, I know.

Like Rachel said, I ran the idea past her mom that morning while Rachel was in the shower. I would have showed her dad too, but he was away on a camping trip, which I am actually a bit grateful for. I was nervous enough just asking her mom! Well, through everything that Rachel said we did that day, I decided it would be a good idea to keep the ring on me at all times. This meant keeping it in its relatively large case too. And for whatever reason I chose to wear jeans that had super small pockets. I can’t believe she never noticed it! It must have stood out! Or maybe I was just being paranoid. Well, the ring survived the rigors of the day and then when we laid down to watch the movie, I deftly pulled it from the pocket and placed it under the bed where I could quickly produce it during the big moment.

So, the movie is going along fine when it starts getting close to the moment. My heart was going a million miles an hour, I was so nervous! This is another reason why I liked my proposal idea so much, it meant I didn’t have to say too much and fear messing it up. And I could carefully word everything too ahead of time. Then, when the screen said, “That just leaves one question,” I slipped off down to a knee, swept up the ring and opened it in front of her and said, nice and simply, “Will you marry me?” She said yes immediately, I slipped the ring on her finger (a perfect fit by the way!) and the rest, as they say, is history!