I’ll be honest with you— when I dreamt of proposing to my girlfriend, I never expected the first thing out of her mouth to be “No!” In fact, it was the EXACT OPPOSITE of what I wanted to hear…
But thanks to the complexities and intricacies of the English language, sometimes “No” can mean “Yes”. And in the case of me proposing to Emily, that is exactly what it meant. That “No!” turned into “Yes,” and the “Yes” indicated the start of what is going to be a beautiful life together.
The biggest comment I’ve gotten is how I’m almost as tall as her when I’m on one knee… Clearly, she said yes!
How I Asked
I know there is a website called “How He Asked” that details the day the certain girls were proposed to. And I’ll be honest, I don’t frequent that page as often as some other people. But I have to imagine that since it only encapsulates one side of the story, they don’t necessarily see the entire process that in some cases (like mine) took MONTHS to figure out.
It started when one of her best friends reached out to me on Facebook about wanting to plan a surprise trip for Emily’s birthday in July. After a slight laugh, I responded saying that it would be a great idea but that Emily is VERY hard to surprise. She’s always told me that she loves surprises but hates being surprised, so she goes out of her way sometimes to make sure that doesn’t happen.
After looking at calendars and work schedules, her friend and I decided that we could at least try to make it work, and she booked her flight out here. And so the surprise (and anxiety) began.
It’s Okay to Lie (Sometimes…)
I will preface this section by saying that I do not condone lying unless it is for a very good cause (like a proposal, for example). I consider myself a very honest person, but in order to pull this off, I had to learn myself a few sneaky tricks.
There are three main components to coming up with a successful series of positive lies:
Have multiple, multiple explanations/excuses/backup plans. Things sometimes get out of whack, and you have to be able to fluidly and seamlessly adjust.
Be brief and change the subject often. You don’t want to get caught not being able to answer a question, so in some cases, just don’t answer it and change the subject.
Utilize your cute niece to your advantage. That one is really hard to do if you don’t have a cute niece like me.
That’s pretty much the basics of what helped me get to the point of my future wife telling me “No!” right before I asked her to marry me. The first lie started when her friend texted me to give me her number, and I had to put in her contact as a different name. I couldn’t use a fake name because I wanted to avoid questions. And I couldn’t use her real name for obvious reasons. So I settled on a nickname of a mutual friend we had to eliminate a lot of the suspicions. As her friend would text me asking about certain plans out here in Colorado, I had to be sneaky about when I could check my phone. But somehow we got it done, thanks to the help of other people.
Step One
Before any of the plans were made, we had decided long before that we were going to go to the Rockies game. We love baseball. We met while working for the same team. Her first word was even baseball, so it would come as no surprise that we were planning on going to the game since we hadn’t gone in about… two weeks. But when her friend made the plan to come out to Colorado, something in my mind shifted and I knew for a while that we would never go to that game. In fact, one of the first things she said to me after she said “Yes!” was “So are we not going to the game now?”
That’s where component one of the lying comes into play.
I needed to find a way to get her friend from the airport without Emily knowing what exactly I was doing, and also to get back in time to “go to the game.” I had devised a plan to pick up my friend, Kyle, who actually was not going to be in town until a day later. I told him the plan, and told him that he played a crucial role even though he wasn’t going to be there. He was going to be one of my excuses. I even told him to tell his mom not to post anything on social media about Kyle coming home because I wanted NOTHING to tip her off that this was coming.
So as the plan stood, I was going to pick up Kyle (which was really her friend), and then meet at my friend Zach’s place so she could see him. It seemed a little suspicious, so we needed to figure out a different plan, and that came from the help of my mom and sister.
Step Two
How were we going to figure out how to get Emily to the spot she needed to be in without her knowing? More backup plans, and using brevity and my cute niece to my advantage. My sister suggested that she and my niece would take Emily to get her nails done, and that would allow me the time to go get her friend from the airport and get back in time. She used the excuse that my niece wanted to do it for Emily’s birthday. Who could say no to that? The problem was… the only time they could do it, I wouldn’t have been able to make it in time.
That’s where my mom comes in. After rearranging some travel so that she could be there for the big moment, she said that her job would be to pick up her friend from the airport and bring her back to the spot. Boom. Settled. When Emily asked why my mom was changing her trip, my mom told her that she had some flexibility in her schedule (brevity) and I told her “I don’t know” (changing the subject). So now that that was all figured out, Zach, his wife Katie and I had to formulate an excuse to get Emily to the spot where she would eventually tell me “No…”
Step Three
While I was traveling in Buffalo, I made phone call after phone call to everybody who was involved in this plan. I called my cousin, Abby, to see if she could take pictures for me, to which she agreed. I double checked with my sister and mom to make sure that they were on board still. I talked to my dad who had to work to make sure that he didn’t say anything about tickets unless she asked him specifically. Then I called Zach, who suggested the excuse to get Emily to the park. He told her I should say that we were going to a barbecue where we could see Kyle for a few minutes and then head to the game. This is what I was most nervous about because I knew that it would be pushing the time frame that we would need to theoretically go to the game, and that she might be upset with that. But to my surprise, she didn’t ask any questions and I didn’t offer any more explanation.
My mom brought her friend to the park, and it was set up time.
Surprisingly, I came up with the idea to put the roses on the bridge like that.
The Build Up
After the set up was complete, we waited. Lindsay told me that she would stall until we were ready, and then brought her over in what seemed like about an hour (but was really five minutes). I had everyone hide in the bushes, and Zach was in a quarter squat underneath the bridge getting video of the whole thing.
The Tour de Parker (or what seemed like it) took place across that bridge, as about 15 bikers rode past. One lady stopped and said “Awww” and then realized that maybe she would be in the way. Smart thinking. One guy almost ran over the right side of roses, which would not have been ideal.
And then I saw her from a distance. My heart started racing, and it felt like another hour by the time she got close enough to hear. That’s when two conversations went on simultaneously. Conversation one was Emily seeing someone and telling Lindsay “Someone’s in the bushes!” before Lindsay turned her the other way. The other one was me yelling at a bike cop because he was riding by and said “Oh nice!” I had to tell him to get moving because she was RIGHT THERE. He moved on, and it was time for the big question.
No…
As I said before, hearing “No…” when I was getting ready to propose was not exactly ideal. But that was the first word that came out of her mouth when Lindsay finally got her turned around to see me standing on the bridge, surrounded by flowers and a bottle of champagne that I almost took her eye out with. She walked up, I held her hands, and I told her that I loved her with all of my heart, and that I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with her if she would let me. I got down on one knee, asked her to marry me, and then…
YES!
So here we are, a month into our engagement and planning our wedding. The talks of our future, which were once a thought, are now a reality. Each and every day, I remind myself how lucky I am to be marrying such a beautiful, kind, loving and supportive woman. Someone who believes in me perhaps more than I believe in myself, and tells me nearly every day, “I’ll always be your biggest fan.” The woman that has always had a way to put my mind and my heart at ease. The woman I never thought I would be lucky enough to find and get to call my wife. The future Mrs. Huson.
I thank God for that “Yes!” but I pray He’ll provide a few more chances for me to surprise her, and get that beautiful “No…”