Where to begin? Let me first start by saying that it’s still surreal that I am evening typing this right now. Surreal in the “perfectly happy can’t believe I get to marry my best friend/man of my dreams/ etc.” kind of way. It is pretty awesome. I will try not to be overly mushy and sappy during the duration of this post…but I make no promises.
So, the fiancé and I are pretty active and outdoorsy, if you haven’t already noticed from my Instagram pictures. We like to spend a lot of time outside: hiking, camping, that kind of thing. Picnics and wine-walks (yes, you go on a walk with wine; I recommend a wine glass tumbler to prevent spillage) are not uncommon. So when he asked me if I wanted to go on a picnic on a Friday evening I didn’t think too much of it. We had some friends coming into town on Saturday for the Panthers game so a pretty normal weekend around town was planned and this was our time to hang together before everyone arrived.
The BF (at the time) picked me up and we headed to the Ann Springs Close Greenway in Fort Mill, SC. It is a 2,100 acre nature preserve that serves as a place for countless activities – from hiking, mountain biking and horseback riding, to picnics, and kayaking. There’s some seriously gorgeous scenery and big, elegant horses all around.
When we arrived we got out and walked about a half mile or so down a trail way to pick out the spot that we wanted to sit and have the picnic. When we spotted this large tree situated just before deep rows of a peach orchard and it looked like the perfect place. We spread out the blanket and opened the wine, cheese, crackers, meat, and grapes. We talked about our day and I kept gushing about how gorgeous the tree was that we had right in front of us. Craig suggested that we get a picture of us with the tree in the background so we stood up and took a selfie (that we clearly couldn’t fit the tree in with us). He then kissed me on the cheek and I said “oh, let’s get a picture of that, too!” (I’m such a girl), so I was holding up the phone with the camera facing us and I could see that Craig was no longer in the frame of the camera. As I went to tell him he was no longer in the picture, I looked down and saw him on his knee! *Holy crap* I think my heart stopped for a second! As he is trying to hold my hands, I am still holding my phone. I don’t have pockets and my bag was over by the blanket so I didn’t have anywhere to put my phone…so I literally chucked it through the air so I could give him both of my hands! Lol. This was where I got totally lost in his eyes and the things he was saying to me…I also might have temporarily blacked out but I remember most of it 😉
He asked me to marry him and of course I said yes! He put the ring on my finger and the shock I was in continued. Hugs and kisses happened and then, a bit of a delayed reaction, I started crying. My emotions were just trying to keep up with the excitement of everything.
By that time, the sun had started to set and we got to watch the most gorgeous sunset on the perfect southern evening. It was about 75 degrees and no humidity at all. We watched the sun go down until it was almost completely dark outside and we began the walk back to the car…where we started calling family & friends to tell them about the good news.
That was on Friday, September 18th and I’m still just floating on a cloud! I feel so lucky to have found the man for me and I can’t wait for our wedding…Next October 🙂 If you start seeing lots of wedding stuff pop up on my Pinterest, you know why!
Has anyone else gone through the wedding planning process? Any tips?!?!
Here are pictures from that evening:
xo,
Bess
Hey Bess,
Congrats! That was a beautiful engagement story. I got married last October, my fav month. I will say to try and be as organized as possible and get a good photographer. I loved ours and our pic turned out wonderful. I’d say try to stick a budget but we didn’t, it was hard lol I wanted everything!