Q: Give us all the details about the proposal. How and where did it happen? Was it a surprise? What was the planning process?

A: Like many proposals, I was at the point where she was starting to get impatient waiting for that ring! Eric and I had talked about our timeline and what we wanted and we were on the same page, but he would not give up any clues. Thanksgiving holiday arrived and I had friends getting engaged and I was so confused why he hadn't popped the question yet. He just kept telling me to "Trust him." We decided together to have more date nights because he hadn't been going out as much, so Eric planned a date night for the first Friday in December. I honestly thought it was regular date night. He told me it was a surprise, and for some reason, I still was not suspicious. I wasn't even suspicious when he told me he wanted to start the date 2 hours earlier than we had planned! We started at the local wine bar which we could walk to from my house, he told me there was another surprise before the surprise dinner that we had to drive to. On our walk back to my house he said he wanted to go look at the tree in the square and I didn't really want to but I saw some students caroling so I said okay. Turns out the kids were my students from the school I yeah at so I stood and listened to them. Eric disappeared to the other side of the tree hoping I would follow him and I didn't so he had to come to get me around this huge tree and make me go to the other side. As soon as I saw his face when he pulled me to the other side of the tree, I knew what was happening. He pointed to an ornament that said "will you marry me?" and the rest is a blur. I do remember his best friend running down the hill out of nowhere trying to take pictures and me taking the ring out of the box and putting it on myself because I was so shocked and excited! The next hour we called family and friends and then had a lovely dinner at our favorite restaurant. The next day he surprised me with my best friend at the ACC championship game in Charlotte and it was a perfect weekend!