My turn - I'm engaged!

Thank you all for all the love on facebook and through calls and tweets.  We just got engaged yesterday afternoon.  I figure I would just blog the entire story with photos to give details of how it happened.  It's been quite a week (long and short all at the same time).

This is Jacob's version, while I may have added a little bit of my own commentary... in pink! ;)

Since Esther and I are doing a photo a day project, I wanted to take her to a park.  She wasn't really up for it since she was not feeling well and the temperature had dropped to freezing lately.  So instead, I told her my brother and his girlfriend wanted photog practice and we would only have to be there for a short while to give some pointers.  When she finally agreed, I picked her up to go to the park to meet with Josh and Vania.  I had to bring Josh a lens he left in my car (A telephoto lens with an adapter that made it 300mm, which I rarely would use unless I was shooting.... i don't know, maybe birds?  I was already getting suspicious at this point). Once we got there, we walked around to find them then walked a bit further.  We got to the spot where it was all supposed to go down and Josh ran out into a field telling me to take a picture of him with the lens.  Okay, so here's where you get the version of what was SUPPOSED to happen, and what ACTUALLY happened.  So give me some credit here.

Scenario 1: What was supposed to happen.

I panned over and said, "Hey, is that Carol & Bonar?" then hand her the camera to see, while I miss call them to cue the first group to hold up their signs.  She sees them, and once she gets the final one, it tells her to look over there --> so she pans over to find Andrew, Michael, and Liz holding more posters that pours out my heart.  The last one tells her to look over there --> again.  This then leads her to both of our parents holding up the final signs that read "Esther (Ju)Lee Will You... (turn around)" where I am then on one knee holding a sign that says "Marry Me? (cue the fireworks)"  This is then followed by an gasp and a YES and everyone is running in circles around us with sparklers. Then we live happily ever after.

Scenario 2: What actually happened.

I said "What is that over there?" and handed her the camera.  She thinks I'm looking at the tree so she tried to focus on the tree saying "I don't have my glasses/contacts.  It's too far away, I can't see!" I then follow with grabbing the camera and taking a picture of the first bunch and then showing her the picture trying to zoom in to see if she can read the sign.  Heavy lens - It's too blurry. 



So we start moving closer and you can see the groups are confused at this point.  Finally she's able to make out some of it and sees the 'look over there'. (The terrible vision worked to his advantage and disadvantage.  I didn't spot people in hiding, but I also couldn't see them when I was supposed to.  haha)



She follows up with a "look over where?"  I point her in the right direction.  Once again, she has a hard time seeing it and moves closer.



She finally gets to the last group of signs and is able to read it and I hear her mumbling "turn around?".



She slowly turns and sees me on my knee and says "are you serious??"



and I say "Yes, I am.  Will you Marry Me?"  She then softly says "Do I have to answer you now?" Everyone is slowly approaching and I get up to say "Yes, you do!" so she says "Uh... yea, sure!"  Whoo!  I got a 'Yea, Sure!' this is then followed by everyone scrambling to try to get their sparklers up.  Josh is the first to get his on and is running around.  You then hear Michael run by yelling "you can heaaaaar them!!!!" since you couldn't really see them in daylight.  THEN Carol drops a handful of lit Sparklers which started catching a patch of grass on fire, and we all had to start stomping on it to put it out.  Once the commotion dies down we all stand around looking at each other saying "Awwwkward.  So what should we do now?"  Yup!  Success! At least I was able to give her a proposal that was easy to capture on camera herself, and we were able to get the photos in the end.  And I know that's what counts the most to her.  :)

Thank you all for helping put it together and waiting with signs even though it was freezing outside!  You guys are amazzzzzzing.


Ring shots coming soon!  I wanted to do something more creative with them.

Gloria and Frank E-session Slideshow

Frank and Gloria met through teaching Sunday school. Soon after, they began dating and were engaged! After hearing about their clever proposal story, I could not help but share it with one of my guy friends. My friend responded, "Yeah, this guy makes the rest of us guys look really bad." haha I think the more I hear these stories, the more I realize how much thought and effort is needed to orchestrate such a perfect proposal. It's hard to be original. Since I'm not as great of a writer/story teller as Frank is, I'll just give a shortened version his story below the slideshow. (Hope you don't mind me sharing. It's really *that brilliant. But, of course, God is *that brilliant.)



If you can't view this image link, click here.

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Frank's proposal story:

I tried thinking for many months, even soliciting the help of my good bros and sisses, but just couldn't come up with something I was excited to do. Then a few weeks before the actual proposal (on 2/23/09), I was joking around with Gloria. I told her how wonderful she was and how I had no clue how we ever came to be (or in her words, how I tricked her into dating me). In that same breath, she made a comment to the effect of 'You're going to have to trick me into marrying you by luring me to the altar with chocolates and ice cream'. (Gloria eats cookies, chocolates, and ice cream as often as I drink OJ. Okay, maybe not THAT much but she enjoys her sweets.) We both laughed and I warned her that it just may happen. Of course, she didn't think anything of this conversation but I knew right then and there that's how God wanted me to do it. (Quite ironic as I felt God was teaching me a lesson about futility in depending on self even in this piece of my life.)

If I recall, the moment she stepped inside the front door she saw a dimly lit hallway with strange footprint cutouts (made of construction paper) on the ground, beckoning her to walk ahead. On each footprint was an M&M cookie, some Lindt dark chocolate truffles, Ferrero Rocher chocolates (regular), and Ghirardelli Chocolate Squares (both Milk Chocolate with Caramel Filling and Dark Chocolate with Mint Filling). Strings of white christmas lights lined the sides of the hallway off in the distance. As she walked forward, she would see a poster displayed on an easel on her left, saying:

Want to travel to every continent on earth?

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(Free ice cream!!)

(I was trying to include things we had discussed that she wanted us to do together before we died. A couple's "bucket list" if you will.)

As she continued ahead, still following the footsteps and chocolates on the ground, another sign became visible:

Want to learn how to play 'old people' sports?

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(Also, free ice cream!)

As she came near the entrance to the sanctuary, she could see the christmas lights turning to direct her view to the front of the sanctuary. As she turned, she could see the footsteps (and still more chocolates and M&M cookies) leading her to the front of the sanctuary to the altar.

At the front of the sanctuary on the table usually used for communion, I placed one last sign that read,

"Want to start a family? (Try the ice cream)."



(Photo courtesy of Joshua Fu.)

Beside the sign were the same chocolates and cookies, but also three ice cream cartons - one of which being her favorite, Haagen-Dazs white chocolate raspberry truffle, which I introduced to her to early on in our dating relationship. By this point, she was out of sorts, both because she knew what was going to happen, but also because it all felt so surreal. She moved slowly towards the raspberry truffle carton, carefully opened it, and found inside it a ring box. She took it out, placed it in her hand, and studied it for what seemed like an eternity to me (I was standing in a nearby room in the dark, peering out at her throughout the process). Eventually, she opened it and upon finding no ring inside the box, I walked out in a suit - having changed from my casual clothes - with the ring in hand, told her how much she meant to me, knelt on one knee, and asked her to marry me.

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Reading the story over to write my blog just put a smile on my face. So very cool to see how God is always faithful. :) I'm excited to be shooting their wedding, which is in EIGHT days! Hope ya'll are excited!!