Exactly one month ago Broc and I got engaged!!! On the three year anniversary from our first kiss, Broc slipped this rose gold beauty on my hand while we were snowboarding in Tahoe.
Broc and I met in the Philippines and fell in love on a trip to Bali. I was leaving the Philippines with a friend to restart my 30 day visa and Bali was the perfect 10 day escape. I casually suggested to Broc that he should come with his friends, hoping he would say yes. Broc came to my cabin later that day and literally flipped a coin to decide. Bali won even though our bank accounts were screaming please don’t. I guess the rest is history (aka documented in tiny instagram squares).
Our proposal story begins like most: one person acting weird and the other cold and irritated. Broc had set it up to propose at the 2pm Northstar Tōst, but it was snowing so hard that it was canceled that day. Broc was acting sketchy all day, and when he didn’t want to drink a beer at the lodge, I knew something was seriously off. He was on his phone and said he wanted to meet up with friends, but he was actually trying to still set it up in secret with the manager. I dropped down into the trees right before the Tōst area and started making my way over to the run where his friends were. Broc comes down and tells me he wants to do that run again because it was fun. I was perplexed because he had just said he wanted to go over to the park. It was at this moment I decided to just surrender to this weird day. We go on the same run and ride up to the Tōst area again and this time he stops and takes his board off. He says he has to go pee and would I come with him? Ummm, okay. He walks up to the closed area and as I’m dragging my board and stomping behind him in the snow, I hear one of our favorite songs come on. I remember thinking “Oh, I love this song!”. It honestly took me way longer than I like to admit to figure out what was going on. Broc turned around, dropped onto one knee and asked me to marry him, cue the ugly tears and me saying “Are you serious?!” more times than I said yes.
*The girl filming was trying to stay extra hidden which gives the video a nice stalker effect*
Broc had it all set up with champagne and a little fire and some of our favorite songs playing. It was a dream and he is the cutest.
We’ve spent the last three years side-by-side on a fast track to this very moment. When you spend so long with someone you learn and grow with them. You understand their little idiosyncrasies and you set out to please each other, sometimes by choice, sometimes by plain habit. My love language is acts of service, which I wrote about in this blog post. So when Broc pours me my morning coffee and when I put toothpaste on his toothbrush, I feel like we are at the height of our relationship. These small actions rooted so deeply in love make me oh-so happy. The flip side of this is that we also know exactly which buttons to push to make life harder for each other. I hope we always choose the former, but I know we won’t.
I don’t believe in soulmates. Sure, there is compatibility, there is give and take, there is lust and attraction. But above all, there is choice. To wake up and choose each other over and over again, no matter how much you love or dislike them that day. I think we’ve been taught that we need to find someone who “completes us”. What’s the point of being complete? To be complete is to be without progression, a standstill. Life seems a lot more fun when we’re moving forward every day, learning and growing together, choosing.
As for the wedding planning, Broc’s whole vocabulary has suddenly become “I don’t know” and “You choose”. Who knew planning a big party could be so torturous? I’m just excited to have someone legally obligated to tell me I’m cute and to get me food even when I said I wasn’t hungry. Oops, better save the good stuff for my vows.