A few weeks before the proposal, Sam mentioned that we hadn’t gone out to a fancy dinner in a while, so he suggested we plan one for a particular Sunday evening in October. We agreed on a restaurant and he “made a reservation” and put the information on our shared calendar. About a week or so before dinner, Sam started talking about how he needed help with a work task, and that he was going to talk to a mutual friend of ours (who is also a software engineer) about it. Before dinner on that Sunday, Sam mentioned that he had talked to the mutual friend and our friend had some stuff to share with him. Sam started waving around a jump drive and said that he needed to go download it onto the drive because they didn’t want an email trail. Sam then said that we would need to stop by the friend’s house on our way to dinner so he could download the files because it would be late when we returned from dinner.
When we got to the friend’s house, Sam went inside and Crystal stayed in the car. Shortly after, our friend came out to say hi to Crystal and mentioned that his mom was in town. He then asked Crystal to come in to say hi to her. When Crystal opened the door to the house, the house had been transformed. There were flowers everywhere, a big “MARRY ME” sign in the corner, and Mario’s “I Choose You” was playing in the background. Sam was in the center of the living room on one knee with the perfect diamond ring in his hand.