Engagement Story

The Story by Me:

I knew Devin had planned a date for this night, but I didn't expect it to be a date filled with a proposal. It was the Thursday before Fall Break, and for some reason I was sure that the proposal would happen over the break while we were up north visiting my sister. 
I first started to get suspicious that this wasn't just any other date when Devin arrived to pick me up. I noticed that he had changed his shirt from what he was wearing earlier that day. Small detail, I know, but it seemed out of the normal to me. Then he blindfolded me and took me to the car, and I remember strongly smelling fresh flowers as I sat waiting for him to get into the driver's seat. This definitely added to my suspicions. 

I knew we were going up the mountain even though I couldn't see because I could feel the winding mountain road. I may even have made a joke about him taking me somewhere into the mountains to kill me. When we finally stopped he lead me to a perfect little picnic spot he had set up. 

He had went to St. George earlier that day, for what I had believed was to have work on his car done, and he was so kind to pick up bowtie chicken ceasar salad (one of my favorites) from the Pasta Factory for our picnic. 
We sat and ate and talked about things that I can't even remember now. I could tell he was nervous which made me nervous. Not a bad  nervous... but an anxious nervous. 
Finally he told me that he had a present for me. And he pulled out a box of Toms. As I opened the box I saw a pair of toms custom painted with mustaches and the phrase across the feet "I mustache you a question."

As I looked over to see what the question could be Devin got down on his knee and said some really sweet things, (which I also can't really remember; I was too much in shock) and asked me to marry him.
 I told him "of course."

  The Story by Him:

About a year and a half ago I started looking for ideas to propose to Aliza. As I was looking for options my mom noticed that Aliza had pinned a picture on pinterest of a cute picnic area underneath a tree and Aliza commented on the picture saying “I would die to have a picnic here.” This was the best idea because Aliza would have no idea what I was going to do to propose. 

So at the end of the spring semester 2012 I decided that it was time to save up money to buy a ring. So for all of the summer 2012 I worked and saved my money. As summer ended and the fall 2012 semester began I started narrowing down when I wanted to propose. After a lot of thinking I decided that October 2012 was going to be the month. I wasn’t exactly sure about what day I was going to propose due to the fact that in Cedar City you never know what the weather was going to be like. So as October began I started narrowing down days and decided upon the date of October 18^th. I chose this day because it was a day or two before our fall break and we were going to visit Aliza’s sister Lindsay and her husband Greg. I thought it would be really fun to propose before we left for fall break so Aliza and Lindsay could celebrate and squeal haha. 

In order to pull of the picnic idea for the engagement I started going to stores and finding materials. The hardest item to find was an unfinished door. The door was to serve the purpose of being the table for the picnic. So now that I had all of my materials for the actual picnic I needed to buy a ring. So one weekend Aliza and I went down to St. George to go ring shopping. We first went to McCarthur Jewlers and looked at what options they had. Aliza picked out her top 3. We then went to the jewelry stores in the mall. After looking at all of our options I told Aliza I would surprise her with what one I bought when we actually got engaged. 

So the day of the engagement was here. It was the morning of October 18^th, and I still had a lot to do to set up the picnic. After my morning classes I loaded up my explorer with all of the picnic material and drove up Cedar mountain to set up the picnic area. About a week before the 18^th I had driven up cedar mountain to find a location and found a perfect spot. I found a spot that had a big grassy area overlooking the edge of the mountain and a grove of trees where all of the leaves on the trees were changing to beautiful yellows and oranges. It took about an hour to set up the picnic area just the way I wanted it. 

I then had to drive down the mountain to St. George to pick up the ring because It had gotten sized and all ready to go. After picking up the ring I stopped by the Pizza Factory to pick up some bowtie chicken ceasar salads to eat at the picnic. I then drove up to Cedar to pick Aliza up. I had arranged with Aliza’s roommate Sydnee for her to be the secret photographer. When I got back into Cedar I had Sydnee get in the back seat of the car while I went inside to blindfold Aliza. I then lead Aliza out of her apartment and into the explorer. 

As we drove up the canyon to the picnic area I asked Aliza if she knew where we were going, and she said she had an idea but not exactly where we were headed. When we finally reached the picnic area I lead Aliza over to the table and took her blindfold off. I served the salad and we ate and talked about how pretty the trees were and about school. After we had eaten I told Aliza I had a present for her. For the present I had painted a pair of cream toms with mustaches and on the very front of the toms I had painted the words “ I Mustache You a Question.” As she was opening the toms I got the ring box out of my pocket and got down on one knee. After she had read what the toms said I asked her if she would marry me and go on adventures with me and get old with me. Aliza said “of course” and we kissed for the first time as an engaged couple.