After much back and forth, Andrea convinced me to write the story of our engagement. I guess that makes sense given that for about a good four months I was being VERY sneaky behind her back and working with a lot of you guys in preparing a special and unique, though imperfect, proposal. I wrote a post about my other engagement ideas (the rejected ones), in case you’re wondering whether this my first idea (it wasn’t). Before going into the story, though, I wanted to thank all of the friends and family members that came together to help me put this together. You guys mean the world to us. Now to the story…

On October 2nd, 2010, I sent out the following message to many friends and family, titled “A Most Happy Day”. It read:

Today, at Benziger Winery in Sonoma, California, I asked Andrea to marry me. The scene was idyllic, just shy of 80 degrees, the vines at full mass (to be harvested within the coming weeks), sitting out on the deck with a glass of wine with Wayne and eating cheese and crackers. Wayne excused himself from the table and I non-chalantly (honestly – no sign of nervousness, ask Andrea!) asked if Andrea had seen a video on Wayne’s iPad (if you know Wayne well, then you know he’d bring it to Sonoma). I went next to her, hit play … and it didn’t work. Attempt two: no luck. After a few seconds of playing around with it, it worked. As the video starts, it has a few words about Andrea followed by pictures to support the words. During this, in the background, is a song that I wrote for Andrea. After a few seconds, the message flashes “FOLLOW THE LETTERS”, and the real message kicks in. Each photo is of someone close to us, holding a specific letter, and ultimately spelling out “Andrea, will you marry me”. By the first “M”, Andrea was in tears (I think she figured it out) and I was on one knee. She said yes. The video wasn’t exactly 100% finished … Andrea “surprised” me by taking half a night off earlier in the week and caught me red handed working on the project. While she mentioned “I was acting funny”, she didn’t figure it out (whew!). We’re going to work to finish the video “as it was intended” and then we’ll send it out for our friends and family. In the meanwhile, we’re going to enjoy the next few days and start to figure out some of the details (like when). We can say the wedding will be in 2011 and will likely be in Michigan. Thank you everyone – whether family or friend!

I was a bit inaccurate about a few of the details such as the wedding being in Michigan and whether we’d finish the video as ‘it was intended’ (that didn’t happen). We figured it was just as powerful in its pure imperfect amateur-esque state. Without further pause, here’s the video:

The Engagement from Tim Schaaf on Vimeo.

A lot of people helped make this engagement happen and I had more photographs than letters required. Thank you to everyone for your help and contribution:

Gina, CJ, & Natalie Buresch, Aunt and Cousins
Katie & Brook Derwich, Cousins
Sarah & Nick Facchini, Cousins
Barbara & Michael Facchini, Aunt and Uncle
Philip Gort & Dawn Schout, Friends
Andrea & Ryan Hanson, Friends
Tia Kadiu, Friend
Nancy & Ray Lindsay, Parents
Ray Lindsay, Jr., Brother
Kelsey Duvernois, Neice
Darcy Millon, Friend
Sara, Josh & Ellie Patton, Cousins
James & Lori Prince, Friends
Grandma O’Dell, Grandmother
Aaron Schaaf, Brother
Carol & Kenneth Schaaf, Aunt and Uncle
Cherie & Ben Schaaf, Sister-in-law and Brother
Hudson Schaaf, Nephew
Jon & Laura Schaaf, Cousins
Wayne Schaaf, Father
Gabe & Katie Shipley, Friends
Kristen & Matt Sunna and Family, Cousins
Hazel Uy, Friend
Danielle Weist, Friend