Chris' version:

I had been planning our engagement day for a long time. Veronica's engagement ring was completed around her birthday, but I knew I had to wait until after August to ask so that she wouldn't expect anything particularly special if we went out. It was hard to wait all those weeks, but September 18th finally arrived and I was ready to ask her. I asked Veronica to spend her day off with me. I told her I wanted to have a nice, relaxing picnic while the weather was still good. I also needed a good excuse to carry a bag to hide the ring box in; it was too hot to wear a jacket. First thing in the morning, I packed everything up and drove over to Veronica's house to pick her up. Before we could get to the picnic spot, Veronica wanted to run a short errand at the mall. Since it would be really suspicious if I clung to my bag in the mall, I reluctantly left it in the car with Veronica's ring inside. I quietly panicked as I thought abouteverything that could go wrong with the ring sitting in the trunk. After what felt like endless hours of waiting in line and suffering through vapid sales clerks, we were finally finished at the mall and ready to go to our destination, Hakone Gardens. Once we arrived, we went straight to the gift shop to buy fish food for the koi pond. As we fed the fish, I could tell Veronica was getting a little suspicious of my intentions for taking her out. I decided that it was time to get into position. I led her to a lone bench on the upper bamboo path, away from the other park visitors. While we sat on the bench and talked about our lives together and how much I loved her, Veronica was fighting the urge to interrupt me to ask if I was getting ready to propose. I finally pulled out the little gray box from my bag, got on my knee, and asked Veronica "will you marry me?" As soon as she said "yes!", everything became a blur. All I can remember is holding her and kissing her for the longest time. We walked through the entire garden, keeping the secret of our engagement to ourselves for several hours before returning home to tell our friends and families.

Veronica's version:

I don't remember why, but Marcy, my boss, offered a random day off in September. She said I could take this certain day off or if I really wanted I could choose another day. I just took the day without thinking about it. As the day grew closer I started to think I wanted to change the day for another one. Strangely, Chris was saying that I should just take the day. Normally, he doesn't have an opinion if we don't have specific plans, but I decided he was right. It was going to start getting cold and we hadn't gone to Hakone Gardens like we planned earlier in the summer. When he picked me up that day, I asked if we could swing by MAC at Valley Fair to pick up a Viva Glam lipstick before it sold out. He agreed, but with a little hesitance which was a little odd. We went and normally Chris is more than patient shopping with me, especially with makeup; but this time I could feel him crazy eyeing the saleswoman who was trying to show me a lipliner to go with the lipstick. I didn't want the lipliner and Chris' look worked because she rushed us to the register. The whole ordeal really only took maybe 10 minutes. We got to Hakone Gardens and It wasn't very crowded, which was nice. I love feeding the koi, so we took our time doing that. But while we did that, something felt different but not in a bad way. I almost, definitely asked, "...Are you going to ask me to marry you?" Since I actually wanted to marry Chris, I decided for the first time to not say what I was thinking. We walked to a little bench in the bamboo garden. I can't even remember if we ate or not to follow up with the ruse of a picnic Chris wanted to have. After we waited for people to pass by and talked for a bit about us and all the adventures we have had together, Chris gave me a leather notebook he wrote in and decorated with colored gems. It was filled with the story of our 11 years, at that time, together. When I reached the end of the book, Chris slid off the bench, knelt down, opened a ring box, and with many promises and declarations of love for me asked me to marry him. I of course said Yes, along with many variations of yes. Then we sat and just enjoyed just being us. He told me how hard it was to keep a secret from me and all about my engagement ring that he designed himself. We continued walking the Garden after a while, taking a million pictures. Then we headed to Los Gatos and walked around, continuing to enjoy our moment that only we knew about together. Chris had asked my parent's blessing, but did not tell them when it would happen so we went and drove to each of our parent's houses before we posted it online or texted anyone. It was a perfect day."

Photos