Our Engagement Story

Cody and I had such a blast when we were dating. You can read about that here. You can read about our first date here and how we met here. In fact, we had so much fun that we wanted to take a trip together. We'd met in Las Vegas and wanted to head back there. Now, we both looooove Vegas but while Cody loves gambling, I love wandering the strip and going to the pool, so we knew we needed to make this a trip with friends. In fact, we even booked separate hotels and made different plans, knowing we'd hang out just part of the time.

On Thursday night Cody, my sister, our friend, and I flew to Vegas. Another group flew earlier. We arrived late and shuffled off to our separate hotels. Amy, Jamie, and I stayed at Mandalay Bay. I loved this hotel but it's really far south on strip so it can be inconvenient. But, if you want to walk the entire strip, it's nice to be at one end. Cody and his friends (same ones from the last trip) stayed at New York New York.

At the MSP airport

We did things separately and together. The girls went to the Foundation Room at the top of our hotel, went to an amazing brunch at the Wynn, walked the entire strip, explored as many hotels as we could, saw Cique du Soleil "O" at the Bellagio, and lounged by the pool at our hotel. Here are pictures of these activities:

We also met up with the guys for a night of wandering casinos. Some played blackjack. I sat at penny slots until I got free drinks. No shame.

We also planned to do a big group dinner at Nine Fine Irishmen, where Cody and I had met. It's a really fun bar and the restaurant gets super busy so Cody booked a reservation far in advance. The day before our reservation, they called him and told him someone had booked the entire top floor of the restaurant. So Cody suggested lunch. Almost no one else was available to go at that time so it ended up being just me and Cody. I even said, "Do you really want to go for lunch?" He said, "Absolutely." So we went.

We met up in the hotel casino and went to the restaurant. The hostess took us to our table, and I was like, "Hey! I know this table. We met right here!" Oblivious as can be, I asked Cody if he had arranged that. Of course he had. We had a great lunch and talked about the last year; how it had taken a while for us to actually get together, how exciting it has been to fall in love so quickly, how fun this weekend has been, and our future. I felt so lucky to be with someone so sentimental, that he would remember exactly where we met and was so happy with the day. I had no idea it was about to get so much better. I told him how special it was that he had arranged for us to share a meal in the same place we met.

Suddenly, he was staring at me intently and saying the sweetest things. I clutched his hands but he was pulling away from me, so that he could get down on one knee! I wish I remembered all of his words but my head was reeling, I was gasping, and my eyes were filled with tears. The most important part was when he quoted both of our favorite movie, "When you know you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start right now." I think I screamed, "YES!" when he asked me to be his wife and I threw myself at him before he could even put the ring on my finger.

The ring, by the way, was exactly what I wanted. Something vintage, something unique.

Cody wrote a version of this from his perspective on our wedding website that includes some of the hoops he had to jump through to ensure the logistics of this all turned out.

People have asked me how I didn't see this coming. We were back in Las Vegas, we were at the restaurant where we'd met, it was one year to the day since then. But honestly, Cody was always doing special and sentimental things for me. It seemed to me like we were just celebrating our (sort of) anniversary. Before I left, two of my co-workers even said, "Well, you're going to get engaged this weekend" and I completely dismissed it. We were, after all, on sort of separate trips. Cody had even said about a month earlier (trying to throw me off) that he wasn't sure if he could make the trip happen. And to top it all off, we'd only been dating ten months! We knew for sure that we wanted to be together forever, but I never would have thought Cody had already gotten everything lined up to propose. It was the best surprise ever and I loooooved that it was a surprise.

After lunch we went to find my sister and it was fun to see how long it took her to notice the ring. She was absolutely speechless and then really emotional. It was so nice! Then we met up with friends and went to Areole at Mandalay Bay for happy hour where the manager and a nice guest both bought us champagne. We went to a couple more bars and to Fremont Street in celebration and then in the morning it was back to Minnesota, happily engaged!