Now I sorta knew it was coming, I just didn’t know where or when.

At the beginning of last year, we were on a date and a song came on. In it, they mention a specific date, and I said, “that’s the night we should get married, it’ll be easy to remember”

I was kidding at first but then a second later I decided I was serious. So I asked Eric to look up what year that date would be a Saturday. “Next year” he said, and that was pretty much how we decided it was time to get engaged. We’ve been together 7 years!

Fast forward a few months. We picked out my engagement ring over the summer together, and then from there I had to wait. I didn’t actually see my ring until he asked me; we had it custom made. We’d found a vintage loose diamond from the 1920s and had it placed in a new setting. There’s about a century between stone and band.

In November we took a vacation to the mountains again [we went back in 2021] to celebrate our dating anniversary. I had a feeling he’d ask me to marry him then. He waited until about halfway through our trip, which began in Nashville.

These are photos of Rend Lake [Illinois] at sundown, we drove to Nashville on a Friday night and stopped here to take in the view on the way down.

[The hotel we stayed in looked nicer in pictures than it was; there was no trashcan...not even in the bathroom…and the tv didn’t work. But we only slept two nights, and were really only there to sleep. It was a warm and relatively safe place to stay]

We left Nashville on a Sunday I believe, for a week in the mountains.

I feel a peace and sense of belonging when I’m in the smokies that I just don’t feel anywhere else.

And now it will forever be an even more special place because of our engagement!

On this day of our trip, we were going to hike up Cingman’s Dome, where we’d gone on our last trip. It’s the highest peak in the park, where you can see for miles and miles. The last time we came, the entire observation tower was covered in a thick fog, you couldn’t see past your own hand. Still it was really beautiful and we were excited to see a better view. But when we got there we realized they don’t allow dogs [because of the bears], and we had one of ours with us. A park ranger told us about the places dogs were allowed, so, we went there instead. He told me later that he planned to ask me at the top of Clingman’s Dome, because it’s where we went last time we were here. He asked me to marry him at the Oconaluftee river instead, which was quiet, peaceful and private. It was perfect!