The proposal was everything I could ask for and more!
Many of you know my now fiance - Eliezer! He is a sweet and loving guy and I couldn't have been more blessed to have him in my life! If you want more details on why I love him so much just read my other blog post about 10 things I am grateful for!
Eliezer and I have been dating since 2013 - so what is that almost 7 years of dating before we got engaged. We have known for quite awhile we wanted to get married but we weren't ready to jump on the bandwagon yet.
Our goals prior to getting married were to get our first duplex (which took about 2 years). Also before we say I do we want to kill our student loan debt. Which I think is well on it's way to being achieved!
So we really started talking about getting engaged recently, or at least seriously talking about it.
Pre-Engagement Checklist
I don't think of myself as high maintenance but what I'm about to write your going to be like, "Girl your're in denial!"...
Anyway so before you get engaged you have a vision of how it is going to be. Well Eliezer got to hear the checklist of my vision, probably a few too many times. Poor kid, I have to make sure he understands what i'm saying so he probably heard my checklist a few (hundred) times.
Here is what my ultimate checklist consisted of:
- Out of the Country
- Something Unique
- Photos must be involved
- If our families are present both sides have to be present
- Ideally want something that could be themed for our future anniversary trips (National Parks, Unesco World Heritage Sites, etc)
- I wanted to be surprised
Okay I was a little high maintenance on this... Okay totally high maintenance!
Anyway as time progressed I understood I was being a bit unreasonable, but hey a girl can dream right!
Truly would I have said no if the proposal didn't meet these requirements...? No - I still would have sais yes. Though I didn't tell Eliezer that (muah hahaha).
Pre-Engagement Preparation
The Ring
I didn't really know the protocol on the ring. Some people don't know what ring they are getting, some do, some have no idea the question was even coming. I don't think there is any one right or wrong way of doing it.
What I did was invite a friend of mine to go ring shopping with me. She has been in a long term relationship and talks of marriage have come up for them too! So who better to go shopping with!
We went and checked out a few places. My favorite place was Nebraska Diamond. They had some fancy lights that showed the clarity of the diamond (which proved to me that noone knows how clear your damn diamond is unless they are in this fancy light). They made the process very comfortable. They weren't pushy and they brought us a ton of rings to try on!
Narrowing down what we liked was the most difficult! We each got down to a few and put down our favorites. He was then going to reach out the gents at a later time to give them some insight. They also send you home with a little jewelry cleaner to happen to leave out on the counter 😉
Anyway I left my top three options with them and told them Eliezer will know which one will be best (he has better style than me)!
Planning the Trip
My jobs are extremely flexible so I got the luxury of planning our trip to Morocco! Which I also love to plans trips anyway so it worked out great. Eliezer has wanted to ride a camel and see the desert for longer than I have ever known him. Probably because he has watched The Mummy movies like trillions of times! I really like the Moroccan architecture and design. Morocco was a perfect place for us!
Eliezer's work is very limited on their vacation so we had to plan using the least amount of days as possible. So we left on Black Friday and got back on a Monday evening a week and a half later.
To be honest I wasn't sure if Eliezer would propose on this trip or not. I did most of the planning so I wasn't sure how/when/where he would do it considering I knew everything that we had planned. On the plane ride over there I was excited because I was thinking he's probably going to do it right?!
Once we arrived in Casablanca my thoughts changed. It was not very romantic and quite dirty. So I kind of thought the engagement possibility was off - or at least I hoped it was. I wanted cute memories not memories of feces on the ground... I'll get more into the story later.
Telling the Family
My dad and Eliezer are pretty close. They chat like buddies and have always gotten along. Quite frankly my parents would keep Eliezer and get rid of me if they could 🤣
Anyway I was very surprised after when Eliezer told me he didn't tell anyone up until the day or two before we left. His best friend Ryan might be the exception (he told him first but i'm not sure when).
We got so busy planning he had to call my dad because there wasn't time to meet in person without alarming me. I can be a little nosy at times...
I guess when Eliezer called my dad to ask he got a bit choked up and gladly agreed to letting him ask me for my hand in marriage! So cute makes me want to cry 😂
He also only told his Dad at Thanksgiving (right before we flew out of the country). Probably a good thing too because I'm sure if he told him mom I would have figured it out. She would have been excited or worried and I would have sensed it and asked 🤗
*Side Story* Right before we left one of Eliezer's nieces said, "Stacy why isn't your last name Fernandez?" Her sister quickly responded, "Because her and Eliezer aren't married." Luckily Eliezer was in the room so I could throw in a quick, "Huh, yeah, that's weird why is that Eliezer...?!" Jokes on me though because little did I know he had a plan to change that!
Engagement Story
I'll do most of the story in photos
Imagine a beautiful landscape of sandy dunes. It was winter time so it was a little chilly but for a Nebraska native it was perfect!
We met our camels - Eliezer named his Alejandro and I named mine Dali. They were both males because females can't carry the weight of a human.
We started on our journey with our awesome "Camel Man" Sa'id (Sigh-eed). We took a nice hour ride into the dessert to get to camp.
We arrived to camp, parked the camels then went sand duning. It sounds way cooler than it was because that sand is hard to climb! Seriously 3 times down and up hills and I was whooped!
Camp was pretty cool. There was only one other group of 6 people - they were awesome couples from Greece! This was our tent, it was very large and surprisingly warm - I even slept with my arms outside of the covers (I never do that!).
Before bed we all enjoyed a delicious dinner prepared by the camel men and the other camp staff. It was delicious!
After dinner we all sat around the fire and enjoyed some traditional music - though they played something about the playa (beach in Spanish) so that one didn't quite make the cut of traditional.
The lovely musicians challenged us, if we couldn't find a beat we didn't get breakfast! Thankfully Eliezer can keep some sort of a beat because if it were up to me we would have gone hungry!
We went to bed shortly after and slept great! Sadly there were clouds out so we didn't get a great view of the stars before bed.
We awoke early in the morning before the sun had risen (early being just before 7am). It was gorgeous!
The photos can't do the justice for the beautiful colors painted across the sky!
It was absolutely breathtaking!
We of course had to get some lovely photos of this sunrise and Eliezer had additional plans 😘
The camera we got was new and I was being a camera hog the whole trip. So when Eliezer was setting up the camera to take a selfie I knew he wasn't doing it right. The 10 sec flash was not going.
Thus once I realized he didn't know what he was doing, I had to go fix the camera to set up the timed flash. To my sweet surprise it was recording...
He was so cute, wondering if this was the right time or the right knee, he did an amazing job and it was more than I could have imagined! It was perfect, romantic and in such a beautiful scene he absolutely out performed my expectations!
My mind was racing at a million miles an hour so excited! To me it seemed like a thousand hours that he was on his knee... Then he switched knees and time slowed down even more. My excitement was so strong I nearly interrupted him to ask if he was going to ask the question or not 😆
Then he asked!
Of course I said yes! Then with the hard part out of the way he pushes the ring up towards me and says, "There you go"! It makes me giggle and is a great demonstration of our relationship - serious about each other but also comfortable and casual. Another one of the many reasons I love him!
We were still trying to learn the camera settings - which in a way made a world of a difference in our photos. Then we had to take a few more photos while the sun was still rising.
Once we had enough photos we took a beautiful moment to enjoy the nature around us and each other and our forever commitment to each other! 🧀
After the Proposal
After he proposed we headed down to enjoy a delicious breakfast that he earned with his beats on the drum the night before. With breakfast finished we headed back to the starting point to meet up with our stellar driver Hassan!
We don't like to buy sim cards when we travel because we don't want to be on our phones the whole time. So we had this super exciting news and we couldn't tell anyone with efficiency because we didn't have wifi.
Luckily we went to the Morocco Excursion office to use the restroom before we headed out on the journey to Marrakesh. We got into the wifi with just enough time to send the messages. We left shortly after so there was no time to receive and respond back to friends/family.
It was kind of nice because we got to enjoy each other and share our exciting news with Hassan - seriously he was the amazing and is definitely invited to our wedding!
He drove us to some beautiful sights and we got to show off our new status a little bit!
He also helped photograph what may come in time with marriage...
Okay really we were just reenacting Gladiator - because this is where it was filmed! Also GOT (Game of Throne) fans, yes this is where some of season 3 was filmed!
In fact I was playing Khaleesi:
It was a great time and I am so happy with how Eliezer popped the question!
Gratitude
Our whole trip was absolutely amazing! I can't be more grateful for Eliezer and the thought he put into our engagement! I'm very impressed with his ability to not get stopped by TSA and have the whole plan revealed. We met the most amazing people along our journey and I can't express the gratitude I have for them and how much they helped to make our experience in Morocco one we will never forget!
I am extremely grateful that Eliezer and I will be joining our families and creating our own in the future. Our engagement will be one that will be told to our children and their children and generations to come! Thank you to everyone that has supported our relationship and will continue to do so in the years to come - we are truly surrounded by amazing people and support!
🙏 Thank-you for reading! What is your dream engagement? How did you get engaged? Have you been to Morocco - and what's your story or dream? 🐪