Engaged

A fun trip to New York City with my boyfriend turned into the happiest weekend of my life when Chase completely surprised me by proposing in Central Park.

Here’s the story…

Chase and I spent the day exploring the sites of New York City. We toured the National September 11 Memorial and Museum, pigged out on street vendor hot dogs and explored the massive Macy’s in Herald Square.

At one point, he said we should go shopping so he could buy me a nice outfit for dinner. “Why would you do that?” I said. He quickly dropped it, knowing he couldn’t push it without me reading too much into it.

Later that day, we decided to walk through Central Park before dinner. On our way, I saw a store I wanted to stop in to see about buying a NYC shirt. “We can come back after dinner,” he said.

“What if they’re closed later?” I asked. “Can’t we just stop now?” He (politely) resisted and promised we could look the next day.

We continued on to the park. As we walked, the sun started setting, and the pink glow looked beautiful behind the city skyline. Naturally, I wanted to stop and take pictures. He let me take a few before he insisted we kept walking. As far as I knew, we had no reason to rush. We didn’t have reservations, had no place to be, but I agreed and we moved on.

When we reached Bow Bridge, he said he had a few videos for me to watch. The first video showed photos of us in high school to the song “Bless the Broken Road,” by Rascal Flatts—a song we both love.

To answer your question… No. At this point, I had no idea something was going on, because Chase is always sweet. I thought he did this to celebrate our weekend together.

The second video, all photos of us in college, played to the song, “My Best Friend,” by Tim McGraw – our song.

This is when I started thinking, “What is going on?”

The thought of him proposing crossed my mind, but even though we had been happily dating for more than five years, we had honestly not talked about getting engaged any time soon. Getting married one day? Sure, we had talked about that. But getting engaged now, no

The last video (which I ended up watching later on, due to poor cell phone reception), showed photos of us apart last year—some from the summer he moved to Boston and I worked in Des Moines and some from the semester I studied in Italy while he lived in Iowa. This video played to “Marry Me,” by Train and talked about how being apart made him realize how much he loved me.

Yes, I cried.

Chase asked me to marry him while we stood in front of Belvedere Castle in the middle of Central Park. I was completely surprised (you can see my reaction in the photos below), but, of course, I said yes. Turns out he had been planning this since we booked our New York trip in January, and somehow I remained clueless.

After Chase proposed he said, “Let’s go meet Tiffany.”

Tiffany?

“Our photographer for the evening,” he said and pointed to the woman talking photos of us to my right. He had even planned for a photographer to capture of the whole shebang.

My ring belonged to Chase’s great-grandmother who married her husband in 1930. I am extremely honored Chase’s family let me be the woman to wear this special ring.

The whole proposal was better than I could have ever imagined, and I know I’m one lucky lady to have such an amazing boyfriend fiancé. ♥ Let the wedding planning begin!

Special thanks to Tiffany Zack Photography for catching this special moment on camera.