I’m going to start our story off by admitting something maybe a little embarrassing. Before Jovanna and I officially met, I had semi-stalked her on Facebook. Creepy, I know, but I can explain! During the winter semester before we met, I was in Florida working for Walt Disney World in their College Program. Toward the end of the program, many of us were getting everything ready to get back into school in April. Well, one of my good friends, Nicole, had received an e-mail listing the names of the girls who were going to be her roommates during the spring semester. So, of course, she did what most every girl at BYUI does before she starts a semester with new roommates…stalk them all on Facebook! I happened to be there when she was stalking away, and then up popped Jovanna’s Facebook profile. My reaction…”Woah she’s cute!”

            Anyways, fast-forward a couple of weeks and I’m back in Idaho helping Nicole move into her new apartment when I actually meet Jovanna. She was the only one checked into the apartment at the time, and all I really remember from meeting her the first time is that I could only form the words “How’s it goin?” and that was about as much as I could come up with. Thank goodness she didn’t hold me to first impressions, otherwise that may have been the only phrase that I could have said to her!

            Starting from the first week of the semester, I started to spend a lot of time at that apartment. I would go over there to do homework, to eat, watch movies, you name it. That entire time, however, I figured I would try to play things cool with Jovanna and not be one of those guys who seem so desperate for a relationship, which was actually the truth. A relationship was the last thing on my mind at that time in my life. Well I came to find out months later, from Jovanna, that she thought I was not interested in her at all because my “playing it cool” came across as jerkiness and disinterest. I’m telling you I am one lucky guy that, despite my constant failures of trying to be cool around Jovanna, she still gave me a chance!  

            I have another embarrassing fact to share. Up until this time period, I hadn’t really formally asked a girl on a date since 2007. Yeah…lame. This was 2012. Five years of not stepping out of my comfort zone to ask a girl on a date! How embarrassing. That being said, after weeks of hanging out and getting to know each other better, I was really starting to like Jovanna. I would think about her when I went home, and I would try to be at her apartment as much as possible just so I could be around her. She brought this positivity into my life that I had never felt. So, I was ready to take the big step. I was going to ask her on a date. I had heard that she loved flowers, so with the help of my best friend Charles, I got her some flowers to ask her out. It’s a good thing Charles went with me to get the flowers because I was really liking the red, white, and blue bouquet until he told me I was an idiot and helped me pick out the right ones.

            I didn’t just want to give her flowers when asking her out, so I went to ultimate cheesy status and I wrote her a poem. Not one of those lovesick poems, no, this one had all kinds of inside jokes between us, and was probably one of the least romantic things I could have written…but I am kind of proud of it. Anyway, she said she’d go on a date with me, and, on May 28, 2012, we spent our first date at an indoor trampoline park and ate at Famous Dave’s Barbecue. We went back to her apartment afterwards and watched a movie for the rest of the night.

From then on, we pretty much spent as much time as we could possibly spend with each other. We officially became a couple on June 12, 2012. Several months later, in late January/early February, I was thinking to myself about all the amazing experiences I had shared with Jovanna just in those few short months. Never wanting those experiences to end, I began planning out how I was going to take the next big step. Her birthday was also coming up and I wanted to get her something really special. For those of you who don’t know, Jovanna is a big fan of Josh Groban. Well during the break between fall and winter semesters, I had found tickets online to a concert of his on July 4th at the Hollywood Bowl in California. Now, to give an idea of my excitement when finding these tickets, Jovanna is a fan of Josh Groban, she absolutely loves fireworks (4th of July), and she had been asking me for a couple months when I would take her down to California for her first visit. I had just found the mother of all birthday gifts! I couldn’t wait to give them to her.

Well, she was super excited when she found out about the concert, but little did she know that around the same time I had gotten the tickets, I was already making arrangements for when I was going to ask her to marry me. I had been through so many proposal ideas, and I had decided on a plan. Jovanna had mentioned to me several times that she really wanted someone to be there to capture the moment whenever I did pop the question, so I contacted my friend Krista down in San Diego about the possibility of her being able to photograph the moment. She said that she would love to and we started planning how things were going to work.

We’re now at the beginning of July, and Jovanna and I are headed down to Southern California for the 4th of July weekend. Things worked out so well that week as we were able to see some sites of California. We were lucky enough to go to Disneyland while we were there, and it was Jovanna’s first time! That was also the first time she ever rode a roller coaster, Space Mountain, but I don’t think I’m supposed to go into detail about that traumatic experience for her because she might kill me…but I’ll always have a ride photo to remember it by ;) We went to the Josh Groban concert, which ended up being amazing! I’m not a huge fan of his but I will admit that he is extremely talented live. Jovanna thought I was going to propose that night to her, so she was trying really hard not to act disappointed after the concert.

Now to the proposal story. I know most of you have read the story on Jovanna’s blog, but I’ll run through it from my point of view. Real quick side story…so I had been planning that the proposal would take place on Saturday, July 6th and had everything set to go before we left for California. A couple of days before we left, Jovanna and I were eating at Subway. She was texting her best friend Stephanie’s boyfriend, Trevor, who was also in the planning process to propose to Stephanie soon. As we’re eating she goes, “Oh! Trevor is planning on proposing to Stephanie this Saturday!” That would be Saturday, July 6th. I was freaking out (internally because I couldn’t give anything away). I didn’t want the proposals to be on the same day! I wanted each of them to have their own special day, so I got a hold of Krista as soon as I could and asked if it would be alright if I moved the proposal up one day to Friday. Luckily, that day worked better for schedules, so…. crisis averted.

Now it’s Friday, the big day, the day that I’m going to pop the question. I had been such a nervous wreck all morning, but somehow managed to keep it together. As we were heading to the Huntington Library & Botanical Gardens, where I planned to propose, Jovanna felt that she should text Trevor and see if everything was set up for his proposal on Saturday. The reply she got from him was that he had proposed earlier that morning and that they were engaged. My heart dropped to my butt. What were the odds? But I decided that I would still follow through with the plan. We got to the gardens and started walking around. I was trying to sneakily text Krista to see if she had gotten there yet. In the gardens, they have a section themed like a Japanese garden, which has a really cool arch bridge that I thought would be perfect for the proposal. Well, we get there and the bridge is closed off so people couldn’t cross. Trying to improvise, I tried to convince Jovanna that we should get on the bridge anyway, using the genius quote, “It’s better to ask forgiveness, than to ask for permission.” Like I said I’m trying to improvise here so I’m kind of unintentionally being an idiot.

I suggest to Jovanna that we should go check out the Rose Gardens, so we headed uphill toward that section. In her blog post, she explains better the awkwardness that was present during this period as I tried to find the perfect spot but still maintain small talk. We walked around the roses for a little while until I grabbed her hands…well one and a half of them because she had her giant camera in one hand…and got down on my knee and asked her to marry me (along with some inside jokes of course). And, of course, I can’t make any big steps in life without crying in some way (I can thank my mom for that) so I cried. But that’s beside the point. Things ended up working out perfectly with Jovanna and Stephanie getting engaged on the same day. It turns out they love the idea of being able to share that day together! So everything turned out the way I had hoped for that week, and with all the curve balls thrown leading up to the proposal, it was the most perfect disaster I could have hoped for.

Well there you have it, the story of how Jovanna and I met to the moment I asked her to spend the rest eternity with me. I cherish the great times and the hard times that we’ve shared together and I look forward to the countless experiences we have ahead of us!