Anniversary Week #2 Our Engagement

I am so excited to talk about our engagement today! The day that we got engaged was a day that I never want to forget, so I am glad that I can share it with all of you.

On the day of our engagement, Chanse had made plans to take me to his family's ponds for the day to fish and have tinfoil dinners. Most of his family was going to be there, and I was really excited to get away for the day and just relax. He showed up at my house around 1 in the afternoon to take me to the ponds, and I felt like he looked more dressed up than usual to go to the ponds. At the time I didn't think anything of it, but I should've known. I complained that I hadn't got ready, but he told me that it was no big deal (yeah right, I was only going to have pictures of this day forever ;)!)

We spent the day fishing and talking with his family. One of his sister's even mentioned that she was excited to have me as a member of the family, and then backtracked by saying "if" I became a member of the family and "someday" it might happen, but once again, I didn't even notice the comments at the time. We had tinfoil dinners with chicken in them, which is not the usual for Chanse's family because they are more into red meat. However, I found out later that Chanse had requested chicken on this particular day because he knew I preferred it. What a sweetie! Take note of this boys: Us girls notice the little things and we appreciate them! Anyways, back to the story. I ate my yummy dinner, and looked over at Chanse to see that he had barely touched his. This was shocking considering the fact that he normally ate about twice as much as I did at the very least. 

Once he had thrown his dinner away, he paced around for a bit waiting for me to finish. He then asked me if I wanted to go down by the pond with him. I agreed, and we went down by the lower pond that offered us some privacy. We just looked out over the pond for a while, and talked about how beautiful it was. Then Chanse started talking about all of the memories he had at the ponds and how special they were to him. He leaned down and told me that he had an itch inside of his boot. I didn't think anything of it, but found out later that he was getting the ring box out of his boot and placing it in his pocket. (I know I keep saying that I didn't think anything of it, but honestly I didn't ha!)

After Chanse had done his sly move with the ring, he started saying how he loved me, and knew that I was the one that he wanted to spend his life with, and other super sweet things that swept me off of my feet. He then got down on one knee, and asked me to be his wife. I remember putting my hand over my mouth, in shock and excitement and then saying yes! I was so excited that a lot of it is kind of a blur in my mind. I remember seeing my ring for the first time and falling in love with it right away. I then looked up at the hill above the pond to see that Chanse's older sister had filmed our whole proposal. Chanse had even thought to get me flowers, which just made it all the more perfect. It was the perfect proposal in my book!

The reason why Chanse was able to pull such a fast one on me when it came to our proposal was because I didn't think that he was going to propose for another couple of months. We had talked about getting engaged in June, but he ended up proposing on April 28th. Chanse's family knew about the proposal, and he had of course talked to my dad as well. My mom even knew about the early proposal because Chanse had shown her my ring the week before. 

These pictures below were taken right after the proposal when we drove to my family's house to tell them the good news. As you can tell I definitely didn't dress like I was going to be proposed to ;)

Is that not the most beautiful ring you have ever seen! My sweet husband custom made this ring himself, and he did an amazing job! It also made it that much more special to me because he took the time to create it for me. :)

Our engagement was about 14 weeks long, and we had dated for about 3 months before we got engaged, so everything was pretty fast. I truly believe that when it is right, it is right and no amount of time is going to change that :)

We had our engagement pictures taken at the end of June, and our photographer Melinda Smith did an awesome job! 

Since Chanse was so busy fighting fires that summer, I did pretty much all of the wedding planning with the help of my mom. It was a ton of work, but so much fun at the same time. Those 14 weeks seriously flew by, and before I knew it, it was time for us to get married. I will post all about our wedding on Saturday :)

xoxo

Rachel