It’s my absolute favorite story to tell. I’ve told it occasionally over social media. I tell it to new friends when they ask how we met. And sometimes I sit back and reminisce in awe to myself how I ended up meeting the love of my life because well…. I’m not usually one to brag, but it’s a damn good story.

No really, every time I finish telling someone the story of how Andrew, my husband, and I met their jaws are on the floor. Looking back when I was a little girl, a wide-eyed hopeless romantic, I always dreamed of having a magical “movie moment” story of when I meet the love of my life. I didn’t have any specifics per say. I just wished for my love story to start in a spectacular way. Call me high maintenance I guess.

The funny thing is, God gave me my spectacular, “movie moment” meeting story with my husband… and I didn’t even realise it until years later. So how did Andrew and I meet? Why I’m so glad you asked….

---

It was the summer between my sophomore and junior year of college. I was apart of a campus ministry at my school, and oftentimes in the summer, when most students are back home, we would have fun get togethers for those of us who were still in our college town. On June 22, 2012 one of those silly summertime activities happened to be a video scavenger hunt. You know, where everyone groups up into teams, has a list of silly things each team has to get on video, then everyone comes back together to watch them all while laughing at how ridiculous everyone was. We didn’t get to pick our teams. For being a casual summertime function, this event was strangely organized. I was paired in a group of four other people. Three of whom I knew. One whom I’d never met before. That one happened to be a boy fresh out of high school. This was his first college church activity he’d gone to that summer before starting his freshman year at the University. We all jumped in the car and started off on our video scavenger hunt adventure. Slowly we crossed off items on our scavenger hunt list, filming it all on one of our group member’s iPhones.

Reenact a movie scene. Check.

Swim in a fountain. Check.

Dance to the Locomotion on a train. Check.

Then we got to this item on the list… Propose in a public spot.

Somehow my group members chose me to be the star of this particular video. And the guy to propose to me? Yeah… that new kid I had met 30 minutes earlier.

We found a coffee shop with outdoor seating downtown and figured, “Hey this is public enough, let’s do it here.” So this new kid takes a ring from another group member (let it be noted that it was a man’s wedding ring LOL), and he awkwardly leads me by the hand out in front of the coffee shop. He says, “Lindsey, you’re the love of my life. And I can’t think of anything that I’d rather do less than to spend it with you.” (Sidenote: To this day I still can’t be sure if he was just silly nervous and mistakenly said the word “less” when he meant to say “more” OR if it really was just THAT awful of a fake proposal…haha) Then he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.

I said yes… awkwardly. He awkwardly tried putting our group member’s MAN ring on my tiny finger. We hugged awkwardly. Our group members cheered, while the coffee shop spectators looked around awkwardly as if thinking to themselves… “Wait was that for real..?”

We all laughed. We thought it was hilarious. Then we moved on to the next item on the list. No big deal. Funnily enough, when we all met back up to watch every group’s scavenger hunt videos, I don’t even think our proposal video was the best of the night.

We parted ways that day, me and my new fake fiancé. I honestly thought he was a dweeb. He was two years younger than me, fresh out of high school, with nerdy glasses. I was in no way interested. The video scavenger was a fun laugh, but nothing more. I laughed about it on facebook, and then promptly forgot it ever happened.

What floors me about the whole story is how unaware, innocent, and silly it is. Had you told me that day 5 years ago, that this new boy I’d just met, who proposed to me 30 minutes into knowing me, would one day again get down on a knee and ask me to marry him (this time for real – and much smoother ;P), I would have laughed in your face. It’s crazy looking back on how it all started, and I truly think God was chuckling to himself SO HARD on June 22, 2012, while thinking, “If you only knew…”

But I’m kinda glad we didn’t.

I’m glad that 2 years after I met that boy, he would become my best friend and then boyfriend. And a year and a half after that, my husband. I’m glad I didn’t know the future 5 years ago because it makes Andrew and I’s story that much sweeter now. We didn’t know how special June 22, 2012 would end up being. We didn’t know that silly video proposal would in fact be the start of forever. But it was. And I love that. I love our story because it was meant to be all along.

---

See, didn’t I tell you our story was a good one. 😉 But hey I’m also biased. Now there’s one more piece of our story that I haven’t shared with you yet. Two years after that summer when Andrew and I actually started dating, I thought back to the ridiculous way we met…. and it hit me. We met during a video scavenger hunt. A VIDEO scavenger hunt. I tried to think back to that day, and remember who’s iPhone we used to film our team’s videos on.

“You think he still has… no… there’s literally no way it still exists. No one would keep silly videos like that on their phone for 2 years.”

Turns out Joel, the guy who’s phone we used to film everything that day, NEVER deletes anything from his phone. (God bless you, Joel.) I reached out to him to see if he still miraculously had the video from that day, and for some reason I’ll never understand, he did.

And now you get to watch THE video I’ve spent this whole blog post talking about below. In all of it’s awkward, painful-but-hilarious-to-watch goodness, here’s the clip from our video scavenger hunt of Andrew “proposing” to me 30 minutes after we met for the first time… Enjoy. 😉

Photos by Jenna Kutcher

---

Lindsey Roman is an adventurous, destination wedding and intimate elopement photographer based out of Oahu, Hawaii but travels worldwide. She lives for outdoor adventures, intimate moments, and candid images. Her style is raw, passionate, and authentic. She believes in chasing sunsets, laughing too hard, and most importantly: capturing genuine moments that evoke feeling over perfectly posed photographs.