Joel proposed on Saturday!!! Several people have been asking for the whole story, so here you go! (I’m sorry it’s so long… I wanted to include everything!)
A few weeks back, we realized that our favorite band (The Alternate Routes) were in Charleston on Sept. 5. With the concert taking place during Labor Day weekend, I suggested that we go and Joel was totally on board. Little did I know, this spontaneous plan provided him with the perfect opportunity to pop the question!
So we started planning this fun weekend, complete with visiting our friends Luke and Christine – the reason we’re together in the first place, seeing how we met at their wedding! As plans came together, his brothers decided to come along (they were there the night we met) and Ben and Amanda decided to come as well (Ben was the one who introduced us)! So, everyone instrumental in our meeting ended up being in Charleston, which was so wonderful.
Friday night, Joel mentioned that he’d like to go to the beach just for a little bit on Saturday morning. “You can’t come to Charleston and not see the beach!” he said. So of course I agreed we should go.
Little did I know that Saturday morning, as Joel and I made our way over to Sullivan’s Island, Luke and Christine had built a dune a little ways down from where we parked that let Joel know where to propose. So as soon as we started walking, Joel kept trying to get me to walk in the dry sand. Being a baby, I pulled him over to the water and would not give into his attempts to get me to walk back up in the dry sand. He tried everything from “I don’t like the way my feet get sandy after they get wet” to “That dune got separated from his family. Let’s go see it.” But I was not having it.
So we completely passed the dune and kept walking down the beach, with Joel racking his brain to come up with a way to get me to go over to the dune. Finally, when we turned around and walked back down the beach, he said that we could keep walking in the water in a minute, but first we had to go do something.
Still not aware of what was about to happen, I followed Joel up to the dune. When we got there, I stumbled across the Cheerwine bottle with an antique-looking message in it that he had written. For a split second, I thought maybe he was proposing. But then I remembered that he had just asked me the week before to start looking at rings I liked so that he could have an idea of what I wanted… so I thought he was a month or so away from being ready to propose. Plus, it wasn’t out of the ordinary for him to do something like this for me, so I thought it was just Joel taking an opportunity to be sweet and romantic.
We kept on talking for another thirty seconds or so and I was mid-sentence when he dropped down on one knee and asked me to marry him! I was in total shock, but after a couple of seconds, I was able to say, “YES!!”
Luke and Christine, disguised as a dune and a sunbather respectively, took pictures of the moment for us, so I will make sure and upload those as soon as I get them!
After the proposal, we went to a delicious lunch together and then watched the UGA game with all of our friends. We ended the perfect day (minus UGA losing) with the concert and headed back to Madison in the morning.
When we got there, Joel surprised me yet again with an engagement party with several of our friends and our families! It was incredible to get to share our joy with those we love so much!
On top of all of it, because of Labor Day, we had Monday to relax and soak everything in! It was such a perfect weekend and we are so excited about the future!!
