With our one year mark of being engaged coming up rather quickly (December 21st!), I figured it was better time than ever to sit down and write about our engagement story! With us just beginning to start planning, our “day of” story is probably the first of many more lifestyle type posts I’ll share on my blog. I’m really excited about sharing a lot about the wedding (and future really) with my readers from where to start, planning, all the break-downs (I already had one), making sure it’s accessible for Jonathan, DIY projects, and money saving tips that I learn along the way. If I can help one person with their planning, then I’ll be happy!

A little background (If you didn’t already know)

Jonathan and I are currently going on 7 years together (insane) in February. We originally met through E-Harmony (it works!!) during one of their free communication weekends. From there we begun to email each other for about a month before we had our first date. From there, we have been pretty much known as Alexis & Jonathan. We moved in together a little over two years ago in Seattle. In March this year, we got a puppy together named Cuba. We do have a few plant baby too. We have always had the mind set of being together, build a connection and best friendship prior to and not rushing to get married. With that being said, we have always talked openly about our future: marriage, homeownership, and children. So we are both excited to begin our next chapter and graduate from boyfriend/girlfriend to fiancé/fiancée for a while, hence it almost being a year.

Now onto the story

Jonathan and I normally go to a movie every week. It’s our date ritual; movie, popcorn, dinner, coffee. With the flexible of our jobs at the time, we usually go on Wednesday mid-day. It’s the best because no one is around so it’s like you have the theater to yourself. So it was a normal day on that Wednesday, December 21st. Normally, I am the one to initiate the conversation of what movie we are going to see but this time around he had it all figured out before I even asked, which was surprising but I didn’t really think much about it. We were going to go see passengers (which ultimately we did go end up seeing way later than we had planned #wegotengaged and it wasn’t that great), mid-day after we went and had lunch at the Ivar’s at the park near the theater. In my mind, this all seemed normal, I was just excited he had actually made a plan without me nagging him!

Fast forward to getting ready to leave, he seemed totally cool, calm, and collected (thank god), but he was like we need to leave now so we were late. He was very adamant about getting to lunch on time. So I hurried and got ready, slightly starting to question why he was acting so odd about timing.

Finally we left the house and drove to the park as planned to grab lunch. The Ivar’s kind of sits on the pier to the left of the park, you can walk down the pier and it forms like a big U in the water. When we got there, I started to walk in to grab lunch and Jonathan said, let’s go look at the lights first. At the park, they have these huge displays of clam lights (yes, clams, I live in PNW!) throughout the park and pier for Christmas. It was mid-day so I kinda looked at him like he was crazy and of course was really starting to question the whole event. Jonathan hates being cold, like hates it, so why he would want to take a walk in the middle of December by water to look at lights DURING THE DAY, had me start to freak out. I just took a deep breath and said okay and we started walking down the pier.

This is some of the display during the night, this isn’t what we saw.

So we kept walking down the pier and around. There were a few people on there, but not many. Jonathan kept talking about the lights, how do you think they are hooked up, when do you think they turn on as I was looking at him like he was crazy AND trying not to freak out. We finally got closer to the corner of pier and started to slow down a little. I noticed there was this guy in a huge Seahawks jacket, in the corner, taking pictures of the water with his IPAD. I saw this and almost said to Jonathan, look at that nerd (#sorrynotsorry if you take photos with your ipad, just stop.) but then Jonathan told me to look in the direction of the clam lights on the park so we turned around and looked.

From that point, we were just talking for a second then I hear this guy walking by with his kids yell out, “Hey! Is that Champagne?!”. We both turned around and then that’s when I noticed the guy who was standing there was actually Jonathan’s friend drew and he had been covering the little area. There was a little table with a bottle of champagne and some rocks that spelt out A & J. I was completely surprised, obviously, and just started crying, of course.

Jonathan began his spiel, which sadly I don’t remember at all, I felt like I completely blacked out during that situation. The only thing I remember was he kept saying sweet things and he did have to stop once because I was crying and backing away from him so he grabbed my hand and continued.

At that point, he asked the question and of course, I said YES! He pulled out the ring box and opened it and we both looked down and laughed because the ring he got me actually is in three pieces, and when he opened the box, they were not placed perfectly in the center. They must have slipped out of the crease and were just in a pile. It was hilarious. After the ring was put on and we hugged and kissed, his friend came back around and said congrats! He then took one of my favorite pictures ever! You can see I’ve been crying cause my face is completely red.

After a few pictures I found out that the whole thing was recorded via the IPAD! The one thing I told Jonathan is that I wanted a video of it no matter what, and he made it happen! Later on when we watched it, funny thing, you can’t really hear anything but the guy yelling about the champagne, but either way it’s a memory I can watch whenever I want!

As planned, we did go to lunch at Ivar’s and I proceed to cry the entire time there (I know, I’m horrible) cause I was just so excited and I couldn’t believe we were engaged. We then decided to go make the rounds of family in the area, show of the ring, and proceed to FaceTime all the people and let them know the fantastic news! We’re Engaged!

We just got out engagement shots back from our photographer, Karissa Roe Photography. Will share more soon!