#i fiddle too much and give myself rashes haha

[buttfrovski]

cuute

[phillianhk-blog]

#16 (The Engagement Post)

My dearest (and hopefully, by now, fiancé hehe) Lillian,

Well well well. If everything went according to plan, we should be engaged now! It’s so weird - I’ve felt so close to you and so absolutely sure that you’re the one for me, but it still feels surreal to really be going through it. I can’t imagine myself with anyone else in the history of the entire world except for you, and I can’t describe how blessed I feel to have you somehow placed right into my little old life. Praise God, 100000x over.

It’s a special post, but it’s still a phillian tumblr post, nonetheless. You know what that means? A section to give this post context within time hehe. So, today SHOULD be Saturday, August 26th, 2017, when I decided that I finally wanted to ask you to be my wife. We’ve been going through a dog-sitting phase recently, we’ve watched Barley (A big ol’ bulldog that belongs to Keith, one of your interns that just left HAC) as well as Ziggy (A little ol’ chihuahua-ish dog that is so cute and cuddly but also is dirty and has caused you, me, and Lori rashes to some degree hahaha). We just finished going to NYC last weekend, where we stayed with Debbie and Adam in their new Brooklyn condo. It was awesome to meet them finally, and it was a very interesting weekend - filled with weird encounters with unrelatable wealth but also a realization that we may love NYC and want to move here in the near future.

A little bit of behind-the-scenes, now that it’s over: I struggled a bit with deciding on when and how to propose to you. A part of me wanted to do a really extravagant and extensive surprise, complete with a bunch of banners, signs, pictures, people, etc. But for some reason that didn’t feel like us or our style. So the other option is to go more intimate, private, and simple - much more up our alley, I think - but the issue is capturing the moment! I really wanted my brother to be able to photograph it, but it just didn’t work out with his schedule and I couldn’t give him enough time in advance. Luckily Bennett (a friend of mine from grad school, if that’s not ringing a bell now), who is also very into photography, graciously agreed to do it for us!

I fiddled with a lot of different ideas, but slowly the important details started to come into focus. For where, I wanted to do it at the Emeryville Marina, for a handful of reasons. It’s one of our favorite places, hands-down. Especially if the weather is nice (which I hope it was! It looked like it would be from the forecast), you can get a beautiful sunset (which I hope we got). You specifically mentioned that “you love it here” last time we went on a walk, which gave me a lot of affirmation hehe. We also went there as a part of our grand 3rd date during which we basically hung out all day, I met Eric and Aaron, but going to the marina together was a distinct moment for me, because I remember it was when I really felt a shift in my feelings towards you. Even then, I felt those really early inklings that this could be something special.

I deeply wished that our closest friends and family could have been there. It turned out to be impossible because of our physical separation from all of them, so I opted for a video message from them to show you. I’m glad they could take part in some way! We are so blessed to be loved and supported, let’s always remember that!

My intended overall theme was to roughly re-create elements of our first date. Funny enough, you actually texted me this today (Thursday, August 24th):

Isn’t that crazy? Just another example of us being ridiculously in-sync.

Specifically, I wanted to go back and redeem myself for mistakes that I made on that date haha. For example, I infamously didn’t pay for coffee (Sightglass in SF), I didn’t pay for your dinner (Tropisueño in SF), and worst of all, I gave The-Worst-Hug-of-All-Time and then refused to allow you to walk me all the way to my Bart stop haha. Now that brutal hug/goodbye combo is cringe-worthy regardless, but the part that I regretted the most was that it made you unsure of my feelings towards you; it made you question my thoughts and my intentions. I hope I said something along these lines when I proposed, but I want you to know that I’ll do my best to never make you feel unsure about how I feel about you ever again - I love you, with all of my heart, forever and always. I promise to put your happiness over my own, to be your partner, to always have your back, to strive with you, to struggle with you, to rejoice with you, to serve with you, to grow with you.

Not sure if you noticed, but I also tried to wear the same thing I wore on our first date too :)

I can’t fully describe how excited I am to do life with you, Lillian. We are FINALLY an engaged couple, and thinking about our lives as husband and wife gives me a ridiculous amount of joy. How lucky I am. How lucky we are to be so loved by our God and those we’ve been blessed with in our lives. I love you I love you I love you.

Love (and more love),

Phil