Josh and Emily met while working together but didn’t start dating until they moved on to other jobs. Three years later, they decided it was time for a ring. Thanks to one amazing sales woman and a wonderfully romantic coincidence, they found the perfect ring to seal the deal at Emily’s family farm. We asked them to share their experience!
Give us the details! When? Where? How?
Josh: It required lots of subterfuge! Well, it all started while looking for a ring. I knew the style of ring that Emily preferred, so I found the only jeweler in the Milwaukee-area that sells that style of ring. I went in, spoke with this great saleswomen and decided on a ring.
Emily: By complete chance, I got off work early one day the following week. So, I decided that I would take a peek at some rings. I ended up at that same jeweler and speaking with the same saleswoman. I was looking at my favorite style of ring and I came across one with a gold band. The gold band reminded me of my mother’s and grandmother’s rings, and so I immediately fell in love. I knew that this was the ring. We had already been talking about engagement, so I thought that at some point in the coming months or so I would try to subtly drop a hint to Josh about the ring I liked.
Josh: So, I’m driving home from school the next Tuesday and I get a phone call from the jeweler. She said that she met Emily and I assumed it was a sales gimmick. However, she described some details about her parents’ home and her dad and I immediately knew that she really did meet Emily. Emily had described me to the saleswoman during her visit there and the saleswoman did the mental math. The saleswoman called me because Emily liked a slightly different ring than the one I had picked. I laughed out loud! How crazy! I mean, I secretly went to the jeweler on a Friday and Emily showed up to the same jeweler the next week. I took it as fate and so I drove to the jeweler and bought the ring.
Emily: I had no idea that he was shopping for rings at the time.
Josh: Now that I had the ring, I had to ask Emily’s parents for their blessing. So, I told Emily that I had a group project that I was working on with school and secretly drove up to her hometown to speak with her parents. Her parents were overjoyed and gave me their blessing. So, I started scheming with her parents on a way to get Emily up to her parent’s farm. I knew I wanted to propose there, as that was the first place that Emily had ever told me she loved me.
Emily: A few weeks later we drove up to my parents house for Easter and Josh acted strange during the car ride. However, I still didn’t know that he was going to propose!
Josh: Emily’s dad and I came up with a story about a bald eagle that was spotted on their farm. So, we all piled into a car and drove up to the farm on Easter morning. It was a snowy day but we still stomped through the snow into the field. With a signal to Emily’s Dad, he asked Emily and I to run back to their hunting cabin to grab a pair of binoculars. Little did Emily know, I hid a box with some seeds and a card in the hunting cabin before we arrived. So, Emily and I walked back to the cabin. Once we got inside, I pointed out the box and Emily started to read the card. By the time she turned around I was on one knee with the ring in my hand.
This commitment means choosing to actively seek joy daily in a variety of ways – by being open, honest, and present with each other, willing to apologize and forgive, and never taking ourselves too seriously!
Emily: The card was beautiful, even if it was a little blurry with all of the tears in my eyes. Of course I said yes! However, I’d like to point out that Josh didn’t actually ask me to marry him. It said “Marry me” in the card, but he was so nervous he never actually said the words!
Josh: Once she said yes, we walked back out into the cold and met with Emily’s parents. They were laughing, giggling and smiling with us underneath that cold Easter sky. It turned out that proposing on the holiday was perfect because we got to share our news with both of our families right after! We told Emily’s family on Easter day and my family the next day when we traveled to see them.
Emily: And to top it off, because Josh is a teacher, the next week was his spring break and we had already had a vacation planned. We got to spend the first week of our engagement absolutely over-the-moon happy while exploring New Orleans. It was magical, to say the least!
What has been your favorite experience planning the wedding?
Honestly, creating the Saves-the-Dates and the website has been the most enjoyable. They’re both opportunities for us to show ourselves to the world, and we’ve loved how both of them turned out.
How do you stay sane under the pressures of wedding planning?
Spreadsheets! Seriously. They help us make timelines, budgets, To-Do lists and keep track of addresses. We have spreadsheets for the people that we sent Save-the-Dates to, spreadsheets for our wedding budget and more.
What is your favorite part of using Joy for your wedding?
We love how unique our website looks! Not only was it very user-friendly and customizable, but it also looks like we actually know how to make websites. The day we found Joy, we were able to set up the first draft of our website within a few hours. We initially thought that this was going to be a gargantuan task that we would dread, but Joy made it simple and enjoyable.
At Joy we believe that even though a wedding lasts a day, joy should last forever. What does that mean to you?
Joy stems from the relationships that we build with the people, communities, and world around us. Weddings are a celebration of the beginning of a couple’s lifelong commitment to find joy in each other and their larger communities. We believe that on our wedding day, we’ll commit to each other and our families in a big way. For us this commitment means choosing to actively seek joy daily in a variety of ways – by being open, honest, and present with each other, willing to apologize and forgive, and never taking ourselves too seriously! This allows us to find joys in the big moments (hiking the Grand Canyon!) as well as the small ones (Netflix and snuggling with our Husky!).
