Valentine’s Day Giveaway: The Winner

Hope­fully, you all remem­ber the Valentine’s Day E-Session Give­away we posted a few weeks ago. I want to thank each per­son that entered the give­away. Your sto­ries are absolutely beau­ti­ful and I wish you all a future filled with lots of love and a whole lot of laugh­ter. Today I’m thrilled to announce the win­ner of the Valentine’s Day give­away is Stephanie Wong! Here is her sweet engage­ment story that she shared with me.

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Dave and I have been together for three and a half years, so when he asked me to marry him on Decem­ber 18, 2009, there was no hes­i­ta­tion in my mind to say, “YES!” (although I was choked up cry­ing and couldn’t ver­bal­ize it right away!)  The set­ting was per­fect: roman­tic, sim­ple, and so “us.”

We were snow­shoe­ing around Bad­ger Pass in Yosemite National Park in the late after­noon, with no par­tic­u­lar des­ti­na­tion in mind.  Even­tu­ally we came to a beau­ti­ful over­look of the snow-covered Yosemite Val­ley.  While I was look­ing out at the view, Dave, still wear­ing snow­shoes in 2 feet of fresh pow­der, got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.  He placed a beau­ti­ful fam­ily heir­loom – his great grandmother’s engage­ment ring – on my fin­ger.  Com­pletely sur­prised and shocked, I nod­ded “yes” since I was cry­ing and couldn’t speak yet.  Appar­ently nod­ding was not good enough for him.  He asked again, obvi­ously want­ing a ver­bal answer!  It was all perfect.

Unbe­knownst to me, Dave had also packed two glasses and a small bot­tle of cham­pagne.  We cel­e­brated with a toast on the moun­tain top.  Then, with the sun set­ting in front of us we hiked down the moun­tain back to the car.

The attached pic­ture was taken at Bad­ger Pass, Yosemite Cal­i­for­nia, while we had our cham­pagne toast.  Dave had promised my sister-in-law that he would have a cam­era and would record the actual moment that he pro­posed.  For­tu­nately for me this pic­ture was taken a few min­utes after, so I had a lit­tle time to com­pose myself (although not really).

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Stephanie and Dave’s story res­onated with me for two rea­sons. The first item that caught my eye was that Dave gave Stephanie his great-grandmother’s engage­ment ring. I absolutely love the idea of an heir­loom wed­ding ring which is why I was given my grandmother’s engage­ment ring and then her wed­ding ring when we mar­ried. Nice job, Dave! The sec­ond item that just cracked me up when I read it was, “Appar­ently nod­ding was not good enough for him. He asked again, obvi­ously want­ing a ver­bal answer!” The rea­son this is so funny to me is because when Vitaliy pro­posed to me, I answered him “yes” but in Ukrain­ian. He looked at me con­fused and asked me a sec­ond time. I answered him again in his lan­guage think­ing that it would be so sweet for him. He still looked con­fused and hes­i­tated, so I exclaimed, “Yes! Yes! I will be your wife!” Finally, he smiled and put the ring on. Later on that evening, I asked him if I was say­ing the word incor­rectly in Ukrain­ian and he just didn’t under­stand me. He answered me, “No, you said it per­fectly. But mar­riage is a major com­mit­ment so I wanted to hear you say it in your own lan­guage so you knew for sure what you were say­ing yes to.” Still cracks me up today.

Stephanie and Dave, we really enjoyed read­ing your story. We can’t wait to meet you and pho­to­graph the two of you! Con­grat­u­la­tions and Happy Valentine’s Day!

Love,
Vitaliy and Candace

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